The Red Sox lost 9-0 on Tuesday night, and if you want to blame Cam Schlittler for that, go ahead. He struck out ten over six-plus scoreless innings and needed 117 pitches to do it, and Boston's lineup wasn't beating him regardless. But the 9-0 score belongs to a manager who blinked with the game still very much alive.
Payton Tolle was cruising. One run allowed, five hits, four strikeouts, and he'd just wriggled out of a jam with a double play to end the fifth clean. He was sitting at 83 pitches. That's a pitcher a manager pulls only when he's more scared of the next at-bat than confident in the one he's already winning. Chad Tracy lifted him anyway, to dodge a third look at Ben Rice, and brought in Erik Miller. Miller threw three pitches. The third one left the ballpark off Rice's bat. The game was 2-0 before the Red Sox bullpen had thrown a single competitive pitch, and it never got back to being a game after that.
The manager built the exact matchup he was trying to avoid, on the first batter, with a pitcher who hadn't faced a hitter all night. If you're going to make that move, you'd better be right. Tracy wasn't, and the bullpen behind Miller didn't stop the bleeding either. Boston needed five different arms before the night was over, and a grand slam off Brayan Bello finished the job. Garrett Crochet, Aroldis Chapman and Garrett Whitlock never left the bullpen, because by the time the game called for a stopper, the game was already gone. Boston's best arms sat unused in a game decided in the fifth inning by a manager who didn't trust his best option in that moment either.
Roman Anthony's exit is different. He was pulled for a pinch hitter with his hand bothering him again, the same hand that cost him a big chunk of the regular season, and that's rotten luck for a 22-year-old who's now dealt with a serious injury derailing back-to-back Octobers. Nobody should be piling on him for that.
The lineup's silence against Schlittler is real too: this team, last October, is the only club in the short history of this playoff format to blow a 1-0 series lead, against the same opponent, finished off by the same pitcher. One bad night doesn't have to mean anything by itself. The problem is Boston keeps having this bad night, in the same building, against the same arm, and the response keeps being a manager who overmanages a start that didn't need it. Schlittler threw his own strikes. Tracy decided Tolle couldn't have one more inning. That decision belongs to Chad Tracy alone.
