The 2021 AL Wild Card Game will be between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.
The 2021 MLB postseason will start out on the right foot, as bitter rivals clash in the 2021 AL Wild Card Game with the Boston Red Sox hosting the New York Yankees.
Boston and New York finished the regular season with identical 92-70 records. The Red Sox won the tiebreaker to host this win-or-go-home Wild Card Game. Toeing the rubber in this game are Gerrit Cole for the Yankees and Nathan Eovaldi for the Red Sox. Tuesday night’s winner will face the top-seeded AL East rival Tampa Bay Rays in a best-of-five American League Division Series.
Here is a prediction for how the latest installment of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry will go down.
Yankees vs. Red Sox: Prediction for 2021 AL Wild Card Game
Despite Cole being the better pitcher of the two this season, he will get in trouble early, as the Red Sox plate three before their first time through the order. New York will get two runs across before Eovaldi exits the game, but the Red Sox will plate an additional run off Cole before he is taken out of the game prematurely by skipper Aaron Boone.
Still up two runs heading into the eighth inning, the Red Sox bullpen will have an inning to forget. A leadoff walk followed three batters later by a two-out single will bring Giancarlo Stanton to the plate. Because he struck out in all of his previous at-bats, Alex Cora makes a boneheaded decision to pitch to him instead of walking the bases loaded. This will trigger memories of Bucky Dent.
Stanton crushes a hanging breaking ball well over the Green Monster to give the Yankees a 5-4 lead heading into the ninth inning. While they do not get an insurance run in the final frame, the Yankees bullpen pitches brilliantly to record the final six outs after Stanton’s moonshot to win the ball game to advance to the ALDS vs. the Tampa Bay Rays.
Yankees win the 2021 AL Wild Card Game with Stanton as the player of the game.
Fans can watch the Yankees vs. Red Sox on ESPN and stream on fubotv.