HOUSTON – Between a rock and a hard place, sometimes through their own fault, these Red Sox put up more of a fight than many expected.
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Houston finally finished them off on Friday.
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The Boston bats were silent for the third consecutive game and the Red Sox succumbed in the American League Championship Series, suffering a 5-0 loss to the Astros in the sixth game.
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Boston had just two hits on Friday. He was tied up by Venezuelan starter Luis García and by a quartet of relievers.
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Combined, the Red Sox scored just three runs and had 10 hits in the final three series games.
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Boston, which advanced to the playoffs with the wild card passage, arrived in Houston forced to spin victories to avoid elimination and continue to seek another World Series title, in which it was last crowned in 2018.
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“We do not resign,” Puerto Rican catcher Christian Vázquez had promised.
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Perhaps it was not a surrender, but it was a clear defeat, in which the Red Sox did not even put their hands. It was something unusual for a team that knew how to exceed expectations – even when they themselves were in charge of lowering them.
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When the year began, few predicted that Boston would continue playing in October.
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Manager Alex Cora was fired heading into the 2020 season for his role in the Houston signal theft scandal in 2017. Mookie Betts was sent to the Dodgers a month after Cora’s departure, in an attempt to cut back. costs.
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No one was surprised in 2020, when Boston finished bottom of the East Division.
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Cora was rehired in November, but that didn’t raise much hope either.
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It turned out that Boston seemed rejuvenated and ready to hunt for a postseason ticket. He led the division for much of the first half of the season, supported by the resurgence of players like Xander Bogaerts and Rafael Devers.
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Puerto Rican Kiké Hernández, acquired as a free agent, made valuable contributions.
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Nathan Eovaldi was revealed as a candidate for the Cy Young trophy. Venezuelan Eduardo Rodríguez recovered from a heart condition related to COVID-19 that marginalized him from the entire 2020 campaign, and ace Chris Sale returned in the second half, after two years out for Tommy John surgery.
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“Nobody expected us to be here,” Eovaldi said. “We showed that a lot of people were wrong.”
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