Major League Baseball

AL wild-card game: Six ways Yankees vs. Red Sox could play out

Updated Oct. 5, 2021 8:46 p.m. ET

By Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writer

The wild-card game is sheer absurdity.

Its existence is pure chaos, the prioritization of entertainment over any semblance of fairness. It's 162 games of baseball made irrelevant by the sporting equivalent of a coin flip. A 50/50 chance that your season was all for naught.

While a playoff series feels like a multi-season television drama, the wild-card game is a well-orchestrated, slightly too long yet undeniably compelling feature-length film. Some characters rise to the occasion; others depart prematurely. The storyline ebbs and flows over the course of the evening as the drama builds and the crescendo of it all sends one team home and the other ... to Tampa Bay.

This year, the baseball gods dealt us quite the American League wild-card draw: Yankees vs. Red Sox. The "greatest rivalry in sports" angle is both overwrought and true, overplayed and legitimate, mythos and fact. For those who are not fans of these two teams, it’s somewhat exhausting to see them in October yet again, somehow, but the heightened stakes of a Yanks-Sox wild-card game is still cool for most of the haters. It’s like "Avengers: Endgame." You’ve seen these characters a trillion times — but never with the stakes this high.

If that’s not enough to convince ye somber Blue Jays fans to tune in, let me direct you to the juicy pitching matchup on tap: Gerrit Cole vs. Nathan Eovaldi. The saying goes: You’re only as good as that day’s starting pitcher, and never is that more true than in a one-game playoff. Let’s just say that if this were Eovaldi vs. Andrew Heaney, the vibes in the Bronx would be quite different.

But Cole-Eovaldi it is, the probable AL Cy Young winner against another potential top-five finisher, two men who chuck hot gas yet succeed in different ways. Cole has a much higher strikeout rate but is prone to the long ball. Eovaldi relies more on his defense but limits hits with weak contact.

Both are very good. One is more famous, probably better and definitely richer, and the other already has an epic World Series journey under his belt. Even if your buddy from college who doesn't watch baseball until the World Series knows all about Cole and couldn’t distinguish Eovaldi from Tom Rinaldi, the gap between these two is closer than you think.

The offenses, too, are comparable. New York has the famous names, the large adult sons and the left-handed, trade-deadline acquisitions, but Boston scored more runs this year. Rafael Devers is probably the best hitter in this series. Aaron Judge is a 6-foot-6 baseball player, and he’s on fire. The Sox will be without J.D. Martinez, who is nursing a bad ankle after slipping on a base in Boston’s final game, and the Yankees are DJ LeMahieu-less until at least the ALCS. It all evens out in the end — until it doesn’t.

Anything can happen in one game. But with the chess pieces pretty much all set up on the board, let’s take a run through six potential scenarios, ranked in no particular order, for the first-ever Yankees vs. Red Sox American League wild-card game.

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1. Eovaldi gets rocked

In his most recent start against the Yanks on Sept. 24, the two-time Tommy John alum got his lunch money snatched to the tune of seven runs on seven hits in just 2 ⅔ innings. The Yankees employ Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, both of whom might be described as "large" and "in charge." The Yankees' offense is such that if you don’t have your good stuff, it can turn into a home run derby in a hurry.

Wild-card precedent: 2019 AL. The Rays blasted four runs off of Sean Manea in two innings. This scenario would be a bummer for a neutral fan.

2. Yankees' offense snoozes; Eovaldi cruises

Despite all the aforementioned tall and famous baseballing gentlemen, there were long stretches of the season when the Yankees' offense completely stunk. Did you know they scored 18 fewer runs this year than the last-place Minnesota Twins?

Before that blah outing last week against the Yankees, Eovaldi had four spectacular starts against New York in which he allowed only seven runs in 31.1 innings. That’s a 2.01 ERA.

Wild-card precedent: 2015 AL. Peak Dallas Keuchel shut out a very good Yankees lineup in the Bronx, and that was that.

3. Gerrit Cole does the thing

The Yankees gave Gerrit Cole all the loose change in the piggy bank in December 2019 — $324 million worth of pennies, to be exact. That type of coin comes with responsibilities. We're talking "dominating a winner-take-all at Fenway on a cold night in October" type of responsibilities. Fair or not, Cole doing the damn thing Tuesday night is the expectation in Yankee World.

Cole was very good in his three postseason starts for the Yankees last year, but he lacked a signature, fan-base-quelling moment. Despite the tribulations and criticisms and sticky stuff gobbledygook and occasional bumps in the road, Cole is a top-five pitcher in the world and likely to win his first Cy Young. The Yankees just hope he pitches like it.

Wild-card precedent: 2015 NL wild-card game. Even though it was just six years ago, Jake Arrieta’s complete-game shutout for the Cubs feels inconceivable nowadays.

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4. Cole crumbles; Sox's offense pounces on Yankees' bullpen

Cole doesn’t really have blow-up starts. He failed to reach five innings only twice in 30 outings this season. But one thing with Cole is pretty much guaranteed: He will give up a tater at some point. In fact, he has given up six homers in his past five starts and five in four games against Boston.

If there are runners on base when Cole gives up that homer, that's kind of the whole shebang for this game. If Kyle Schwarber or Devers hits a three-run shot and Fenway is bumping, it could significantly shorten Cole’s evening and force the Yankees to go to the less desirable bullpen arms in the fifth or sixth to bridge to Jonathan Loáisiga (who, by the way, is absolutely nails) and Aroldis Chapman.

Wild-card precedent: 2013 NL. The Johnny Cueto Game. Established ace gives up some homers early on the road, and the visitors' vibe immediately disintegrates.

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5. Both starters are good; Yankees' bullpen is better

If the game is close in the seventh inning, the Yankees have an edge. Their bullpen crew of Chapman, Loáisiga (still nails), Clay Holmes, Joely Rodríguez (for the lefties) and Chad Green is much more reliable than what the Sox have. Even with rookie monster Garrett Whitlock back from injury, Boston had to rely on Eduardo Rodríguez and Nick Pivetta in relief to close out Game 162 against the Nats. That should make fans a little nervous about where Matt Barnes, Hansel Robles and Adam Ottavino stand.

If things are close when Cole and Eovaldi depart, we could see the Yankees open things up in the later innings. If it’s Judge or Stanton vs. really anyone but Whitlock in the seventh, we could see this again ...

Wild-card precedent: 2012 AL. Somehow, journeyman Joe Saunders kept pace with peak Yu Darvish, and a fantastic Orioles bullpen held down the fort while Texas’ relief corps could not.

6. An epic for the ages

We got a taste of this just over a week ago, when the Yankees took the Sunday night finale Sept. 26 in Boston in a weird, back-and-forth game with some lead changes and a whole lot of chaos. If we got that again Tuesday, it’d be a neutral fan’s dream come true.

We're talking an instant classic with a bunch of unpredictability and dramatic tension and maybe a bizarre play that results in controversy. A clutch home run or two or three. Extra innings! Without the runner on second! Yes, please.

If I’m going to watch Yankees-Red Sox again, please, my dear baseball gods, give me something outlandish.

Wild-card precedent: AL 2015. One of the greatest games of my lifetime: Kansas City’s unforgettable comeback against Oakland. The baseball Upside Down.

Jake Mintz is the louder half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball analyst for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. You can follow him on Twitter @Jake_Mintz.