Red Sox season comes to fitting end as defensive blunders loom large in Game 3 loss to Yankees
The Red Sox season came to a fitting close on Thursday.
The team that led the league in errors failed their rookie starter in the do-or-die Game 3 of the American League Wild Card series as the Yankees advanced to the ALDS to take on the Toronto Blue Jays in their 4-0 win over the Sox.
Twenty-three-year-old Connelly Early was incredibly impressive in his fifth big league start, however, the Red Sox defensive implosion in the fourth inning is the reason — outside of a historic performance by Cam Schlittler — they’ve been sent home packing.
Early was through three scoreless in effortless fashion before Cody Bellinger led off with a bloop to right-center. Neither Ceddane Rafaela nor Wilyer Abreu was able to get there as it fell for a leadoff “double.” And then, the wheels fell off.
The Yankees rallied to score two runs on a pair of singles by Amed Rosario and Anthony Volpe before Austin Wells stepped up with the bases loaded and nobody out. Wells bounced one to first and off the glove off Nathaniel Lowe, allowing two runs to score off the error.
“We didn’t play defense,” said Alex Cora after the loss. “The pop-up, drops, there’s a double, and there’s a walk, and they didn’t hit the ball hard, but they found holes. It just happened fast.
“The kid did a good job. He threw the ball well, induced them to weak contact, but it didn’t happen for us tonight.”
Early’s final line was 3.2 innings, six hits, four runs (three earned), with one walk and six strikeouts. However, had the Red Sox played defense, his game would likely have gone much differently.
Boston led baseball in errors during the 2025 regular season with 116. More than the Colorado Rockies, Chicago White Sox, all of them. Oddly enough, the Red Sox ranked 11th in defensive runs saved and fifth in defensive fWAR, however, leading the league in errors seemed to be more fitting with their performance in the field this series.
Cora’s squad is certainly disappointed with the way their season ended, especially after allowing the Yankees to become the first team to lose Game 1 of a Wild Card series to come back and win.
However, 2025 was the first year (or even a year early) of a window of expected contention with a crop of talented young players as they entered the season with the undisputed best farm system in baseball. The team was without their best hitter in 21-year-old Roman Anthony (oblique) who posted a .859 OPS in his first 71 MLB games.
“We didn’t finish the way we wanted. That’s not — kind of like that’s not great, but we will sit down and reflect how the season went,” said Cora. “We will talk about it in the upcoming days. As an organization, compared to other years, we took a step forward in certain areas.
“Like I always said, we are not a perfect team. We are a good team that needs to keep improving, and let’s see what the offseason brings. But I truly believe we are going to keep getting better.”
Yes, their season came to an end, but they are just getting started.
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