Gray rips Tracy's early hook as Yankees sweep Red Sox — SkimNews
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- Sonny Gray was pulled after 70 pitches in the fifth inning of a 1-0 game, with the 18-game winner declaring "I think I'm the best pitcher in the American League going through the order a third time" and that he "would have liked to have been trusted in that moment."
- The New York Yankees swept Boston 2-0 in the wild-card series, winning 9-2 on Wednesday after Tuesday's 9-0 victory, outscoring the Red Sox 18-2 overall and eliminating them for the second consecutive postseason.
- Rookie manager Chad Tracy also pulled starter Payton Tolle after 83 pitches in Game 1's 1-0 loss, and his bullpen — which led MLB with a 3.00 ERA in the regular season — collapsed to a 20.25 ERA in the series (15 runs, 15 hits, 7 walks in 6⅔ innings).
- Boston's lineup mustered only seven hits across both games and went 26 consecutive postseason innings without scoring before Willson Contreras' sixth-inning homer Wednesday snapped the drought.
- Tracy, who replaced the fired Alex Cora in April, guided the Red Sox from a 32-46 start to the postseason — making them just the fourth MLB team ever to qualify after falling 14 games under .500 — and was rewarded hours before the loss with a three-year contract through 2029.
- Willson Contreras defended veteran feel over analytics, saying "this is baseball" and that data and computers can't replace "experience and veteran guys" — then zipped his lips with a finger gesture when asked directly about the decision to pull Gray.
Why it matters: Tracy's 70-pitch hook of 18-game winner Sonny Gray in a 1-0 game — followed by a bullpen implosion to a 20.25 ERA — will define the rookie manager's first postseason, signed through that same 2029 deal hours earlier. Gray's public criticism, echoed by veteran Willson Contreras, signals clubhouse friction heading into the offseason for a Red Sox team whose 14-games-under-.500 comeback ended on a debatable in-game call.
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