Just when you thought things couldn’t get any weirder at the Stadium once Gerrit Cole had his No Mas moment with Rafael Devers in Saturday’s fourth inning, there was Boston manager Alex Cora blithely admitting prior to Sunday’s game that the Red Sox had tried to hit Aaron Judge with a pitch in the sixth inning.
“That’s not allowed,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said when informed of Cora’s declaration following his team’s 5-2 victory in which Judge crushed a 445-footer to dead-red center for No. 53 in the third inning. “That’s for someone else to deal with.”
This 27-hour slice of life will become a peculiar footnote in the history of The Rivalry. It is not Harry Frazee selling off the Babe. It’s not Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk, it’s not Graig Nettles and Bill Lee, it is not Bucky Dent going deep to left, it is not Grady Little leaving Pedro Martinez in the game for too long, it is not a third baseman named Boone going deep into the night in Game 7 of 2003, and it is not overcoming/blowing a 3-0 edge in the ALCS a year later.
But it was kind of something.
Cora made his admission matter-of-factly, when asked whether there’d be a carryover from Saturday, when he accused Cole of intentionally hitting Devers in the first inning. Indeed, Cole hit three batters in his 4 ¹/₃ innings of work.
“It was closed yesterday around the sixth inning,” the manager said, making a statement that might be considered an excited utterance by the guys on “Law & Order” except for the fact it was uttered casually. “We had our chance. Didn’t happen. We have to move on.”
In the sixth inning, Boston starter Brayan Bello’s first pitch darted behind Judge’s legs before No. 99 lined out to deep center. Bello was then replaced by Bailey Horn.
“That’s baseball,” an unperturbed Judge said, sounding like a John Sterling impersonator. “He missed. Nothing I could do.”
Cora also unwittingly volunteered that he had met with Judge after the game, when he thought he was being asked about a postgame conversation with Boone. When Judge was asked about it, he called it “a good convo, let’s leave it at that.”
What Judge did was carry his bat about two-thirds up the line after giving the Yanks a 4-0 lead with the drive that banked off the facing off the restaurant above Monument Park. If it was a statement, Judge would not say. He’s no Cora.
“I thought I did that all the time,” he said. “No?”
The Yankees took three out of four and finished the homestand with a three-game division lead over the Orioles after going 5-2 in The Bronx. Gleyber Torres continued to rake from the leadoff spot. Carlos Rodon was excellent. The remade bullpen did the job. It was a good day for Boone’s team.
Maybe Saturday and Cole’s inexplicable decision to walk Devers intentionally in the fourth inning is going to turn out to be nothing more than a blip and a blemish, mysterious as it all remains. Maybe it was just a 24- or 48-hour story that will long be forgotten by the time the playoffs commence and Cole gets the ball for Game 1.
But I don’t know. And it’s not the granular details that puzzle me. It’s not whether catcher Austin Wells had been in on discussions between Cole and pitching coach Matt Blake the previous inning or had been part of the pre-planning meetings in which this concept was apparently introduced.
It is not about a breakdown of communications, for which Boone took responsibility when quizzed about it Sunday, though confusion in the dugout is not a great sign.
I just don’t understand the mentality of even introducing such a concept to Cole either approaching the game or in the dugout an inning before Devers’ at-bat. It seems the polar opposite of positive thinking.
It is impossible to believe Roger Clemens would have operated this way. Heck, Clemens would have thrown a bat at Devers before giving him a free pass. It is impossible to believe C.C. Sabathia would have been cool with this. Not to mention Catfish Hunter, Tom Seaver, Don Drysdale or Bob Gibson. Can you imagine?
But maybe that’s not fair to Cole, who does fit the definition of a throwback starter much in the mold of Justin Verlander or Max Scherzer. Cole always takes the ball. He is as much a traditional ace as there is. Yet, there he was waving a figurative white flag from the mound while theatrically waving Devers to take his base as if the pitcher were an imperious usher working at the Lincoln Center Philharmonic.
At the same time, this is the era of analytics in which Cole exists. He’s also with a Yankees organization that seems to think it’s the smartest operation around despite a championship drought from 2009.
This is the crew, remember, and that includes Blake, that gave you Deivi Garcia as a Game 2 opener in the 2020 best-of-five against Tampa Bay that the Yanks lost in five after taking a 1-0 series lead.
Cole said no mas. Cora said the Red Sox tried to hit Judge. No. 99 went deep. The Yanks took three out of four.
Footnotes to The Rivalry.