The Red Sox know it all comes down to Friday.
After dropping Games 4 and 5 to the Houston Astros in the last week, Boston must win Game 6 to keep its season alive. At that point, it would all come down to Game 7.
The Red Sox have been playing with their backs against the wall for some time now, though, and manager Alex Cora and shortstop Xander Bogaerts both expressed there probably is no team more prepared for this situation than they are.
And despite the last two games, Nathan Eovaldi is more than confident the offense will bounce back from its flat line the last two games.
“I’m extremely confident,” Eovaldi told reporters, via ASAP Sports. “Everybody is a little frustrated with the way we’ve been playing lately. We know it’s not the way we are capable of playing, and we know where we’re at in the standings, and everything that’s on the line for this game. It’s do or die. You either win or you go home. Nobody is ready to go home right now, and we’re going to be ready to go tomorrow.”
Eovaldi will take the mound in Game 6 and ideally get more run support than Nick Pivetta and Chris Sale in their last two matchups, respectively.
It’s hard to know what to expect against the Astros, whose bats have popped off for nine runs per night in Games 4 and 5.
As for the Red Sox, Bogaerts isn’t yet willing to call their recent struggles a slump.
“It is the postseason, and it does get magnified,” Bogaerts said of the two-game stretch, via ASAP Sports. “It’s really bad timing for something like that to happen, to be honest with you, but it’s one of the things I learned about this game, man. As you said, for six, seven days we were one of the best offensive teams ever, and then you go two games cold. It’s just like hitting.”
Bogearts went on to emphasize how much it would have meant to get two wins out of the stretch at home, at minimum. But as the Red Sox have showed all year, they can rise to the occasion.
“There’s just something about when everything is on the line,” Eovaldi said. “And I think it brings the best out of us.”
