The Boston Red Sox are likely to want to forget what happened to them Friday night, as they were thoroughly dismantled by the New York Yankees at Fenway Park.
What they won’t be able to forget, however, is just how banged up the team has gotten over the last month, with Rafael Devers and Connor Seabold’s injuries from Friday night serving as a reminder of where the team is at on the injury front.
Above all else — including the teams struggles since the start of July — manager Alex Cora is focused on helping the team stay as healthy as possible. If that means holding slugger Rafael Devers out of a few games in July, then he’ll do it.
“(Devers) has actually been dealing with this since Toronto, you know with the turf and all that. So, he took a swing and I decided to take him out, you know, give him a breather,” Cora said, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “He’ll be down tomorrow, and then you know, we’ll see how he feels. He’s feeling better, but we’ve got to make sure we stop this. We can’t play that game of ‘he feels good, let’s send him out there.’ We’ll be smart about it over the weekend.”
As for Seabold, the Red Sox were certainly looking for more than 2 2/3 innings, but Cora knew that he had no choice but to pull the rookie with multiple members of the team noticing something was off.
“I noticed it on the last pitch,” Cora said. “Before I went out there, he kind of started stretching his forearm on his side. Christian (Vázquez) noticed it too, we went out there and that’s how he felt… We’ll check tomorrow how he feels and we’ll go from that.”
Seabold himself seemed optimistic that the injury wasn’t as serious as the one he faced in 2021.
“It’s tight, sore. Threw that slider and everything just kind of tightened up on me,” Seabold told reporters following the game, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “It’s something different… I don’t think it’s as serious.”
Here are more notes from Friday’s Red Sox-Yankees game:
— The Red Sox are winless in their last four series, after going 11-1-2 over their previous 14 series from May 10 to June 26, per Red Sox public relations’ Devin Benson.
— Michael Feliz tied his 2nd-longest career outing by going 3 1/3 innings where he allowed only one earned run on one hit. Feliz retired each of his final 8 batters faced.
— The Yankees stole four bases off the Red Sox on Friday, a season high in bases allowed for Boston.
— Jackie Bradley Jr. made his first career pitching appearance in the ninth inning. His command was off, as he walked in three including one with the bases loaded, but he struck out former American League batting champion DJ LeMahieu in a win for all position players.
— The Red Sox will play the third of a four-game set against the Yankees on Saturday at Fenway Park. First pitch is scheduled for 7:15 p.m. ET on FOX.
