It sometimes feels like the Tampa Bay Rays are reinventing baseball, but it was Boston that upended conventional wisdom by using good hitting to beat good pitching in October.
So this was how it ended for the Tampa Bay Rays, the team that pushes and pokes conventional thinking and usually gets away with it. The Rays set a franchise record with 100 victories this season, eight more than the Boston Red Sox. But when it mattered most, in their American League division series, the Red Sox upended the hoariest axiom of all. Sometimes, good hitting really does stop good pitching. A sacrifice fly to left field by Kiké Hernandez vaulted the Red Sox into the American League Championship Series on Monday night, capping a 6-5 victory and a three-games-to-one series win. The Red Sox will face the Chicago White Sox or the Houston Astros in the next round, which starts on Friday, as they seek their fifth championship in the last 18 seasons. “We always said we had a good baseball team that had some holes, and we still have some holes,” Manager Alex Cora said. “But at the end, for as bad as it looked sometimes, we’re still here. We’re still in the dance.” It was a day for dancing in the Hub. In the morning, the locals lined the streets to toast the return of the Boston Marathon; at night, they packed old Fenway to celebrate a playoff clincher. It was hard to envision this just a few days ago, when the Rays’ sorcerers spun a shutout in the series opener. Who knew then that they’d cast their last spell? The Red Sox hitters spent the next three days thrashing the Rays. They batted.341 for the series, striking out only 26 times. In the last three games, Tampa Bay starters never made it through the third inning — and even when the bullpen pitched well, Boston’s hitters were not fooled.
