The Red Sox caught a big break against the Rays on Sunday night, but they don’t feel like they stole one from their American League East rival.
Boston benefitted from a very fortunate bounce in Game 3 of its AL Division Series against Tampa Bay at Fenway Park. An unusual Kevin Kiermaier ground-rule double gave the Red Sox an opportunity to win it in the 13th inning with only one run, but Boston ended up landing two on Christian Vázquez’s walk-off home run.
Vázquez, along with Sox teammate Kiké Hernández, were asked after the game if they considered themselves “lucky” to take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five series.
“No, we’re not lucky,” Vázquez told reporters, as transcribed by ASAP Sports. “I think we did everything. We pitch, we bunt. Everybody put something on the table to win this game, and we won. So, yeah.”
Hernández added: ” … We played a good game. I mean, play a good game and play the elements, we took care of home-field advantage, came our way. We did what we had to do to win the game. Got big hits, got big homers.”
Was there an element of luck in the Red Sox’s latest playoff win? Absolutely. Virtually every MLB team that has ever made a deep postseason run experienced good fortune a time or two at some point along the way.
But as Vázquez and Hernández explained, Boston put itself in position to come out on top Sunday night and largely took advantage of the golden opportunities that came its way. Now, the Sox will try to finish off their division foe Monday night and punch their tickets to the AL Championship Series.
