BOSTON — The Sox’ clinching night followed the story of their season. They struggled to hit, then managed the handoff between a short start by Kyle Harrison and the bullpen to perfection.
But after Boston’s relievers stabilized the game while the Sox’ offense halted, Ceddanne Rafaela woke the team up in the seventh inning with a double that grazed short of the home run line on the monster. He turned to the dugout and started yelling while taking off his batting equipment, and moments later Nathaniel Lowe drove in a run to pull the Sox within 3-2 after trailing 3-0 in the fourth. Rafaela, only weeks prior, showed the opposite emotion as strikeouts racked up. His slump, at its worst, dipped to 4-42 (.095) after Romany Anthony fell.
Jarren Duran knocked home the game-tying run an inning later, engaging a packed Fenway crowd waiting to celebrate a playoff appearance for the first time since 2021. Alex Cora called that they’d do it after a rough loss on Thursday in Toronto that could’ve secured their berth. It set up a special moment at home — albeit it one that took nearly all game to get going. Rafaela, whose recent emergence, a 9-22 stretch on the recent road trip bumped him up to sixth in the lineup, launched a walk-off hit off the center field wall that sent his teammates sprinting after him and into the playoffs next Tuesday with a 4-3 win. Rafaela dropped to his knees and ducked his head before they got there.
“The kid, there’s something about him,” Cora said. “The previous at-bat, he hits the ball off the wall there, we felt it was a really good matchup for him with (Tommy) Kahnle, and he crushed that one … I thought it was a homer when he hit it. I saw Meadows going back and it was a great effort, but I thought he crushed that one.”
Rafaela collapsed to his knees on third base as emotion poured out of him. Cora stayed with Rafaela throughout his hitting downturn that lasted for much of the season’s second half. As one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball, he would stay in the lineup. Though Cora would pinch hit for Rafaela in the Athletics series earlier this month, when Nick Sogard made contact in his place for a 10th-inning walk-off of his own.
On Friday night, Rafaela figured it out, the culmination of a month where Cora and the coaching staff tried to adjust his approach at the plate to getting ahead. Cora told Rafaela a Manny Ramirez story about how the Sox legend always preached starting early at the plate. While his offense, and the team’s, remains a question into October, Rafaela’s trajectory mirrored a team with talent that often stumbled around its shortcomings on the way to prevailing in the most dramatic manner.
Friday’s game-winner marked Boston’s league leading 12th, while they also lead MLB in walk-off losses.
“He’s been missing his pitches,” Cora said earlier this month. “Although yesterday, I thought it was a step in the right direction, the ball he pulled for a hit and then the last one he hit to right field, that was good, 3-2 count, chased a changeup. It feels like he’s been in-between the whole week … talked to him yesterday, I said, ‘hey man, try to be ready early, even if you feel uncomfortable. Give yourself time to see the ball.’ That’s something Manny always talked about. We as hitters, we always talk about our hands and our triggers and all that. One thing Manny always mentioned is like, ‘if you don’t see the ball, you’re not gonna hit it,’ … be early. Give yourself more time to see the ball.”
Ducking from the on-field celebration into the dugout, the formula for the Sox’ current success and their future came into view. A reality that undoubtedly amused Craig Breslow, and John Henry for that matter, who lit a cigar and roamed the clubhouse. Teammates heckled Alex Bregman and poured beer on his head, welcoming him back to October. Trevor Story reflected on four years of trying to stay on the field and fulfill what he came to Boston to do, himself last playing in the postseason in 2021 with Colorado.
The Red Sox suffered the same drought, overhauled their front office and grew slightly more aggressive while maintaining the young core. While Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer sat for much of this run with injuries, and Kristian Campbell remains in Ft. Myers with the Worcester Red Sox as a reserve player, the youth drew experience from this run they hope is only beginning. Rafaela grew, as did Duran, Wilyer Abreu, Brayan Bello, Carlos Narváez and others who rotated through the lineup all season. When the team faltered, losing eight of 14 after Anthony’s injury, Bregman and Breslow both saw the former’s message of not trying to do too much setting in as the key for getting back on track. There was a mental toll to the loss, Bregman acknowledged.
“Just such a resilient group of guys. I was telling Marcelo the entire time we’re standing up, ‘we’re gonna win this game, we’re gonna win this game’ … it’s been amazing. Obviously, it sucks being a spectator,” Anthony said. “But I’m doing everything I can to get back and get back in this lineup and help these boys win. Feeling good. Doing everything I can each and every day.”
For Cora, each game became a near overhaul of the game plan that preceded it, with plenty of adjustments within and none more than his pivot from Harrison and bullpen management through Friday’s comeback. Pinch hitters clicked. Players he trusted re-emerged, and those he didn’t last long on the active roster. Explaining the speech he gave the team after Friday’s clincher, he stretched the truth, saying if you said you thought the Sox would make the playoffs before the year, that’s f***ing bull****.
For Breslow, the team’s lead executive who boldly declared they’d still make the playoffs after trading franchise cornerstone Rafael Devers in June, the night marked small victory. The plan’s moving in the right direction, pitching investments, a reinforced bullpen and prospects finally coming to fruition on a team that’s awkwardly tried to fuse winning with development alongside spending restrictions that have frustrated the big market fans. Still, he acknowledged they have bigger goals than a postseason berth.
In a Fenway Park that only began to fill up consistently again for the first time since 2021, hampered by the shadow of the Mookie Betts trade, the crowd on Friday reflected the great playoff crowds from year’s past. Sox fans cautiously returned, roared as Garrett Whitlock and Aroldis Chapman tore through Tigers hitters late and stayed for the celebration after. There’s no guarantee that they’ll return to Fenway again this year.
Cora alluded to their best hope of doing so on Saturday — that Garrett Crochet is lined up to pitch in the playoff opener on Tuesday on full rest.
And in Bregman, the other major offseason addition last winter, Cora found an extension of his own leadership for the team. The only player on it used to playing in October every year.
“I thought it was a good matchup, obviously he’s got a tough pitcher on the mound,” Bregman said of Rafaela. “He’s born for the moment. He always seems to find a way to come up clutch. Over the last week, you could see the quality of the at-bat, hitting the ball from line to line, hitting the ball hard all over the ballpark and he was big time.”
