Before Game 1, random Twitter user did what random Twitter user always does: Burst the ol’ balloon.
It’s a valid point, of course. The plucky 2017 Astros and 2015 Royals were actually both below the league-average payroll when they won their most recent championships. That’s a far cry from these Red Sox, who outspent even the No. 2 Giants by $20-something million and the league average by more than Oakland spent on a playoff-worthy roster.
The Red Sox No. 1 expense, David Price, will try to pitch them to a world championship on Sunday night in Los Angeles. Their No. 2, J.D. Martinez, looks a hobbled mess at the plate, but still had a 1.031 OPS in the regular season and a 1.016 in the playoffs before slipping on second base in Game 1 against L.A. Rick Porcello, Craig Kimbrel, Chris Sale and Mookie Betts all made eight figures this season and earned every one.
And yet there we watched on Saturday night, when the big hits not delivered by 22-year-old third baseman Rafael Devers were delivered by a couple of guys who wouldn’t be here if Dave Dombrowski had just opened his wallet for Eric Hosmer.
“With our mindset,” Mitch Moreland told reporters, “we can change a game quick.”
“He feels the moment,” said Brock Holt about Steve Pearce. “He knows when we need to get something going and he’s come through so much for us. He’s just a great teammate. He’s always team-first and we love him.”
Down 4-0 after six innings, a situation that will win you an MLB game about 95 percent of the time, the Red Sox scored nine runs to get within nine innings of a ninth world championship. A night after Betts, Martinez and Xander Bogaerts went a combined 0-for-18 and stranded 10 runners just in extra innings, that trio mustered a ninth-inning RBI single and two intentional walks between them. It was enough.
It was enough because of Pearce, getting $1.5 million as a late-season addition from Toronto at the cost of Santiago Espinal, who reached Double-A for the first time after the trade. Because of Moreland, a relative banner headline guy given the two-year contract he received this winter. Because of Holt, a longtime candidate to be non-tendered who’s reminding why he was an All-Star before concussions waylaid him. The previous night, Nathan Eovaldi had us remembering Jalen Beeks and that July quote from Alex Cora after the trade with Tampa: “He’s going to help us.”
There’s a tradition of this, here and elsewhere. Henri Stanley was a Red Sox property for 11 weeks, time enough for just 164 Triple-A at-bats, but he turned into Dave Roberts. Bobby Kielty was a minor-league pickup straight released from Oakland — a week after Eric Gagne’s acquisition grabbed all the headlines — and ended up slugging the only World Series pitch he’ll ever see for a title clinching homer. The 2013 Red Sox were no bargain-basement collective to be clear, but Koji Uehara and Daniel Nava and David Ross weren’t exactly headline grabbers when the year began.
To say nothing of what money bought in 2012, but I digress.
Titles take something extra, here and everywhere. Some teams are less than their parts. The teams we really remember are more.
“We’re talented, and we don’t only rely on two guys. Brock did a good job. Steve, he was amazing, Mitch with a big swing. We kept putting up good at-bats,” Cora said on Saturday night. “That’s what it takes. To win this whole thing, it’s not easy. It’s not easy.”
It is, however, one win away.