Red Sox -
Yankees -
Jones, DH
Rutschman, C
Contreras, 1B
Abreu, RF
Rafaela, CF
Durbin, 3B
Sogard, 2B
Story, SS
Eaton, LF
Sonny Gray / Max Fried
Sonny Gray waived a no-trade clause last December, agreeing to a trade to the Red Sox, because
it feels good to me to go to a place now where it's easy to hate the Yankees. It's easy to go out and have that rivalry and go into it with full force, full steam ahead. I like the challenge.
Gray, 36, will meet his biggest challenge of the season tonight. He was the Red Sox's best starting pitcher in 2026, leading the staff with a 2.72 ERA (8th in MLB) and 150 ERA+ (tied for 10th in MLB). He also tied for the most wins (18), for whatever that's worth. More importantly, he pitched at least six innings in 22 of his 29 starts.
Gray also pitched for the Yankees in 2017 and 2018. He was traded to New York at the 2017 deadline and admits he "never wanted to go there in the first place" and the move was not good for his family.
Jacob Roy, Over The Monster, September 30, 2026:
Let's think about it in innings. The Red Sox used five relievers on Tuesday night . . . That leaves Ranger Suarez, Garrett Crochet, Garrett Whitlock, Aroldis Chapman, and Jake Bennett as the unused [bullpen] pitchers . . .
Ranger Suarez is set to start game three. Garrett Crochet is a complete unknown. . . . Garrett Whitlock has been one of the best relievers in baseball, but his longest outing of the season is 1.1 innings. . . . Chapman, like Whitlock, has been fantastic, but hasn't got more than three outs in a game this season. If you put those three arms together and assign two innings to Crochet, that's four innings. . . .
The offense was, at least in terms of scoring, the worst in baseball in September. Roman Anthony was lost in the middle of game one, and the rest of the lineup couldn't touch Schlittler. . . .
For the Red Sox to win today, they need Sonny Gray to turn in one of the best postseason performances of his career.
Roman Anthony was taken off the Red Sox roster and replaced with Curtis Mead. Manager Chad Tracy said:
He was sent back last night after leaving the game. Sent him back to Boston for extra, additional imaging, which actually revealed some new strains to different muscles in his wrist, in addition to exacerbating the old [finger] injury [a partially torn tendon in a joint that connects his right ring finger to his wrist back on May 4].
The roster change means that if the Red Sox win this series, Anthony would be forced to miss the ALDS.
Max Ralph (mlb.com) reports:
[T]eams taking a 1-0 lead in a three-game Wild Card series have gone on to win the series 21 of 24 times (88%), including 17 two-game sweeps. Home teams have won all nine series in which they have gone ahead 1-0, including eight sweeps.
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