The Red Sox look to rebound from a Laz Díaz-aided Game 4 ninth-inning meltdown loss behind Chris Sale, who can erase a wobbly quarter season’s worth of innings with a strong start in Game 5 this afternoon against the Houston Astros (5:08 p.m., FS1).
Well, that was a bummer. For as good as Alex Cora has occasionally been this year and this postseason, his bullpen choices at the end of games has been... lacking. This isn’t just about the consistent bad results—those happen—but that the choices are bad before the results reveal themselves. Martín Pérez’s blowup was foreordained by Twitter because Pérez was a bad choice in that situation, not necessarily because Pérez got blown up.