Yankees manager Aaron Boone rushed to get to his bullpen, which is not New York’s strength. Red Sox manager Alex Cora was in no hurry to get to his pen. Therein lies the story of how Game 1 of the wild-card series at Yankee Stadium was decided.

Boone removed a dominant Max Fried with one out in the seventh inning to put a 1–0 lead in the hands of Luke Weaver.

There was nobody on base. The 8–9 hitters were due up. Fried had just fanned Jarren Duran. He had thrown 102 pitches. Fried threw more than 102 pitches eight times this year, including his most recent start against the last-place White Sox.

The batter due up was Ceddanne Rafaela, who was 0-for-2 against Fried in this game and 2-for-12 in his career. He had two homers in six at-bats against Weaver.

Wait, there is more. Rafaela, a right-handed batter, is a reverse-split hitter. He hit .260 vs. right-handed pitchers and .220 against lefties. He was the third worst right-handed hitter in MLB at getting on base against left-handed pitchers (.265 OBP). Boone pulled a lefty, his best pitcher, to have a righty pitch to Rafaela.

It blew up. Weaver walked Rafaela, a guy with a walk rate almost half as low as the major league average. The fire was lit. Nick Sogard dumped what for most people would have been a single into right center. But knowing Aaron Judge cannot throw with authority due to an elbow injury suffered earlier this year, Sogard never wavered in turning the hit into a hustle double. That’s great game prep by the Boston staff.

Cora sent lefty Masataka Yoshida to bat for Rob Refsnyder. Boone could not counter. Weaver needed to face a third hitter. (Not a big deal; Weaver has been better against lefties.) Yoshida ripped a first-pitch fastball for a two-run single, which proved to be the winning hit.

Asked why he pulled his best pitcher so quickly, Boone said, “They pressured him pretty good in the fourth, fifth, sixth. Had a couple base runners each inning. Felt like he kind of cruised through the first few and obviously ends up pitching great. Had to work pretty hard. I was going to have the sixth be the end. After we finished with the double play [in the sixth], I wanted him to go out and get Duran and felt like we were lined up.”

The questions did not stop. Did Boone think Fried was tiring?

“Maybe a little bit I felt that way,” he said. “I felt like his command was not as good those final few [innings]. He was making so many big pitches and his stuff was good. Look, he gave us what we needed and felt really good about the outing he put forth. But I felt pretty convicted, like, especially we got the double play. Let’s go get one more hitter and be good.”

It was not a good answer, this stuff about “gave us what we needed,” especially when it is your ace in Game 1 and juxtaposed against how Cora handled Garrett Crochet, his ace. Cora let Crochet throw 117 pitches—the most by any of the 434 starting pitchers in the past six postseasons. It was old-school baseball. So was handing the ball from Crochet straight to his closer, Aroldis Chapman, with one out in the eighth.

Red Sox manager Alex Cora, left, let starting pitcher Garrett Crochet pitch into the eighth inning in Game 1. / Brad Penner-Imagn Images

Cora got every big platoon matchup he wanted. All 141 pitches thrown by Boston were by lefthanders, which kept Ben Rice on the bench and allowed Chapman to get the final two outs against lefthanders Jazz Chisholm Jr. (whom Boone oddly put into the game on defense while trailing with Chapman looming) and Trent Grisham.

Cora won the platoon matchups in the three key at-bats in the seventh (Rafaela vs. a righthander and two lefties vs. a righthander) and he won the matchups at the finish.

Boone’s bullpen faltered again when David Bednar allowed a two-strike, two-out dagger of a double to Alex Bregman in the ninth to push the Boston lead to 3–1.

Give the Red Sox credit for building quality at-bats while trailing on the road. The best of their at-bats came against the Yankees’ bullpen. It was Boone who had to answer for them.

Tarik Skubal is too good. After his Tigers teammates handed him a 2–1 lead in the top of the seventh, Skubal hit 101 mph three times in the bottom of the inning. He had thrown a pitch 101 mph five times all year.

And yet somehow throwing 101 mph that deep into a game and 202 innings into his season wasn’t even the most impressive part of Skubal’s day. Nor was it his 14 strikeouts.

It was this: a guy who throws that hard flummoxed the Guardians with his changeup. Cleveland tried 16 times to hit Skubal’s changeup. They whiffed 12 times. That is ridiculous.

Okay, so the Guardians started a lineup with five hitters batting under .225. Their offense was worth 9.4 WAR—and 9.5 of that was accumulated by Steven Kwan and Jose Ramirez. Didn’t matter on this day. Skubal was that good. He cemented himself as the best pitcher in baseball and a huge looming postseason force if Detroit advances. His career postseason numbers in four starts: 26 ⅓ innings, 1 earned run (0.34 ERA), five walks, 34 strikeouts.

Skubal’s changeup in Game 1 only underscored how nasty that pitch is. It had the highest run value of any pitch in baseball this year.

But Blake Snell’s changeup in the Dodgers’ win in Game 1? Wow. With the Dodgers under pitching coaches Mark Prior and Connor McGuiness, it has improved from a nice complementary pitch to an absolute weapon.

In Game 1 against the Reds, Snell threw the highest percentage of changeups in any of his 228 career games: 37%. And it was Skubal-esque. Cincinnati swung 20 times at his change and whiffed 15 times. He joined Cristopher Sanchez (twice) and Skubal (twice) as the only pitchers this year to get 15 swings and misses on a changeup.

Check out his improvement on the change—every 2025 statistic in the table below is a career best.

Game 1s around the league were mostly about aces, as such games used to be and should be. The Dodgers may have bullpen issues that still linger, but nobody else in the tournament has an ace for every game the way the Dodgers do.

Truman beat Dewey. The Cubs out-penned the Padres.

It was Chicago, not San Diego, that dominated their wild-card Game 1 with perfect relief work from four pitchers: 14 outs with no baserunners. Here’s the crazy part: three of them were added in the past nine months.

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