Hour 2: Yankees Lineup Questions

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This is The Michael Kay Show Podcast.

Michael Kay (0:03)

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Michael Kay (0:11)

Yankees are playing the Red Sox tonight in the first game of a wild card series. And the Yankees are probably as responsible for the Red Sox being here as anybody else. Now you might say, well, yeah, do you mind, Michael? Well, yeah, I am out of my mind, but I do have receipts. It was June 24th. Boston had just come off an embarrassing series in Colorado, and they were flying to Boston to play the Yankees in a four-game set. They had all of these mechanical difficulties on the plane. They didn't take off from Colorado, I think, until 7 a.m. They got into Boston early the next morning, and they had to go to Fenway Park and play that night. Their record at that time was 32 and 46 They had already replaced their manager, Alex Cora, with Chad Tracy, and it wasn't working out. And Boston was out for blood. Not the Red Sox, the town. They despised the GM of the team, Craig Breslau. Despised them. He was teetering on getting fired. They had turned against the owner, John Henry, whose ownership had actually given them four championships. After all those years of 1918, he gave them four championships, but they didn't like the way he didn't spend, as if the other big money team spent. And they would go to Fenway Park, and they would chant, sell the team. This was a very unhappy fan base. And all the Red Sox did in that four-game set was sweep the Yankees.

And everything turned from that point on.

Starting with the first game against the Yankees, in their next 37 games, they were 32 and 5, and they turned their season around, and they got themselves into postseason play, and here they are in the wild card. And the Yankees, if they had won two of those games, would have crippled the Red Sox. This comeback wouldn't have happened. The heat was too much in Boston. It was too much.

It was too much, and I remember that I came under a lot of fire in that one game, the crowds chanting, Yankees suck. And I remarked on the Yes Broadcast, strange that they would say that. I guess they don't have a view of the scoreboard, at which point the Red Sox were last place, again, at 32 and 46

So I became public enemy number one.

And the Red Sox turned things around. And they went off on that 15 game winning streak, and the Yankees could have crippled them. Who knows? Presley could have been fired at the end of that series, if the Yankees took three out of four.

And the Heat would have been on John Henry. And if they continued to lose, then they would have had to sell at the trade deadline. They wouldn't have picked up Adlai Rushman or Eric Miller. There wouldn't have been any reason to because they would not have been in the playoff race. But the Yankees getting swept by the Red Sox allowed the Red Sox to recalibrate and make their season salvageable. All of it happening after the Red Sox, on no sleep, beat them on Thursday, on Friday, on Saturday, and on Sunday.

Awful. That was when the Yankees were in the throes of a bad streak.

Now, the Yankees in the four-game set at Yankee Stadium took three out of four, which is what they needed to do to hold off the Red Sox, so that the series is not at Fenway Park tonight. But I'll tell you what, they wouldn't be facing the Red Sox if they didn't get swept in that June series, in my opinion. Because the heat would have intensified and the Red Sox would have crumbled. The way they approached the trade deadline would have crumbled. Breslau might have been fired. John Henry is not selling the team, but you know what I mean. Chad Tracy would not be the manager for the next three years. And they rightfully gave him an extension. Took a while, but the Red Sox became one of baseball's great stories. They're scrappy. They play in a way that, you know, other Red Sox teams didn't. At the beginning of the year, they hit many home runs. Then they started their home runs. Caleb Durbin at third base was a complete flop when they got off to that bad start, but he's turned it around. He's a really good third baseman, and he's a really good player.

Contreras had a great season. He's on the postseason roster, so that was important because you thought with his wrist injury that it was going to be a problem, that he might not be able to play while he's playing. And that's a big part of the Red Sox offense. But one thing you have to watch for in this series, their struggles in September to score runs will extend to this series.