Sonny Gray will not start tonight for the Red Sox. He’s not hurt, he’s just getting a little break. “I feel fine,” Gray said. “I think it’s just taking a few days, getting my body recovered, fully recovered, and that was it. Physically, I feel really good. About a month ago, we just talked about it and said, ‘Let’s re-evaluate when we get to [this point].’ So that’s what we did.” The Red Sox have not yet announced who will take the mound tonight, in what will likely be a bullpen game. Reminder: the owners have made September baseball essentially meaningless now. (Ian Browne, MLB.com)
Willson Contreras seems to be in a similar situation with his hamstring. Nothing has happened to it recently and he hasn’t had anything that’s being labeled a setback. Rather, he’s simply been dealing with the balky hamstring for several weeks and is now taking some time to let it recover before the playoffs. “I don’t want to paint the picture that it’s like something way worse happened. Just a recurrence of the same thing,” Chad Tracy said. “The triple, doubleheader, a hard run there. It creeps up again. And he played [Sunday], and just with some irritation again. It’s just to the point where if we need to give him another few days to let it calm down, we’re getting to a point where it’s tough to be short bodies.” (Chris Cotillo, MassLive)
Luckily, Mickey Gasper was able to step right in for Contreras and pick up where he left off. Gasper was disappointed but understanding of the initial decision to send him back to Worcester. “GM is a tough job. Guys are coming back, and decisions had to be made,” he said, “so I understood why I was the man out.” But, in light of the fact that he was literally the best hitter in baseball during his time with the big league club, he did ask Craig Breslow what he needed to do to stay up. (Julian Benbow, Boston Globe)
It’s good that Gray and Contreras are getting some rest before the postseason. But you know what’s really restful? A nice, warm hug. Maybe that’s why Payton Tolle was giving them out on the field last night, even to people he’d never met. “It just kind of happened,” Tolle said about his hug with Dominic Canzone. “I was right there in front of him, like, ‘Bring it in for the big one.” (Jen McCaffrey, The Athletic)
The opposite of a hug is wishing physical violence on someone, which is what WEEI play-by-play man Will Flemming did during Sunday’s game against the Yankees, when he urged Red Sox players to throw at Jazz Chisolm and fight Austin Wells. Needless to say, Flemming has apologized for being a giant ass. Naturally, though, he couldn’t apologize without also taking other people to task for their behavior: “Since I have been receiving nonstop calls and threats,” he wrote on Twitter, “I felt like it was important to hop back on here and say: My comments during yesterday’s broadcast crossed a line. I’m emotional and a fan at heart and that bled into the broadcast.” (Chad Finn, Boston.com)
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