On Sunday night, all MLB teams played their 162nd game of the regular season, marking an end to an eventful 2025 campaign for 18 teams in the entire league. For 12 teams, their journey in October is only about to begin, and one of the teams that qualified for the postseason, the Boston Red Sox, will be facing their sworn rival New York Yankees in the AL Wild Card series, with Game 1 of that matchup being on Tuesday, September 31.
The current MLB playoff format might be unfair in that a division winner is guaranteed a top-three seed in the playoffs, which means that the best Wild Card team, even if they have a better record than the worst division winner, can only top out at fourth. This seeding quirk set up the series between the Red Sox and Yankees.
But thankfully for the former, they had already clinched a playoff spot heading into the weekend, and this allowed them to rest ace Garrett Crochet for their big opening game against the Yankees. As expected, their southpaw ace, whom they acquired from the Chicago White Sox in a blockbuster trade this past offseason, will be starting Game 1, as announced in their official account on X (formerly Twitter).
Game 1 will be seeing a battle of two southpaws, as Crochet will be lining up opposite the Yankees' big pitching acquisition in the offseason in Max Fried. This is going to be a bit of a revenge matchup for the Red Sox, as Fried ended up shunning them in favor of the Yankees this past offseason, signing an eight-year, $218 million deal with the team in pinstripes. With Fried having turned down the Red Sox, that's when Boston pivoted to acquire Crochet for a big prospect package.
Crochet will definitely be raring to prove the Red Sox right about their decision to trade for him.
Red Sox look to start AL Wild Card series off strong vs. Yankees
The Yankees are a legitimate powerhouse team that finished with the best offense in MLB (they scored an MLB-leading 849 runs), so the Red Sox are going to have their hands full against them. Nonetheless, Boston won all four games that Crochet started against New York in the regular season and even took home the win in three of those games, finishing with a 3.29 ERA to go along with 39 strikeouts in 27.1 innings.
The Red Sox ace, however, is going to have to get through some fierce right-handed hitters in the Yankees lineup, namely Aaron Judge. But Crochet definitely has the talent to power this upstart Boston team to victory on the road.
