Sonny Gray got pulled after 70 pitches in Wednesday's loss to the Yankees, and he did not pretend to be fine with it. That is the Sonny Gray Red Sox story this morning, and it is a small story sitting on top of a very large one: New York swept Boston out of the AL Wild Card Series and outscored them 18-2 doing it.
Seventy pitches is the number that makes a starter feel like a guest at his own start. It is not a complaint about workload or a shot at anybody; by the time Gray spoke, the Red Sox season was over, and a man whose whole professional identity is built on finishing innings had been handed a towel in the middle of one. He said he was frustrated. Of course he was. You do not get to be an ace by being easy to take out of a ballgame.
The uncomfortable context is the 18-2. Across two games, Boston scored two runs. Two. When your offense puts up that number, every pitching decision looks worse in replay, because nothing a starter does in the sixth matters when the lineup cannot get to three. Gray's frustration is real and it is also the smaller half of the autopsy. The bats never showed up to Yankee Stadium, and the manager who lifted him was managing a game his club had already stopped threatening to win.
checked the almanac: the Red Sox and Yankees have been arguing about when to take the ball out of a pitcher's hand since at least 2003, when Grady Little left Pedro Martinez in during Game 7 of the ALCS and lost the job over it. twenty-three years later, same rivalry, opposite complaint. there is something almost funny about that, and then you remember who went home.
What comes next is split in two. The Yankees move on to the ALDS against the Rays, with Game 1 in Tampa on Saturday at 6:31 PM ET, and they get there with their pitching plan intact and their bullpen barely taxed. Boston goes into an offseason where the questions start with the lineup, not the rotation, and where their veteran starter has already told everyone exactly how he wants to be used next October.
I will be watching how the Rays series gets scripted, because New York's staff is the healthiest thing left in this bracket.