Following tonight’s loss to the Yankees, Red Sox manager Alex Cora announced that rookie Connelly Early would start Game 3 tomorrow night in New York. I’m not sure this even counts as news.

What other option did the Red Sox have? It’s a cliche to say that the starting staff has been held together by duct tape, and in the case of the 2025 Red Sox, it’s not even true: that duct tape frayed and snapped weeks ago, splattering tendons all over the dugout floor with the sunflower seeds.

And Alex Cora knew this more than anyone. His shocking, go-for-it-now call to pull Brayan Bello before he’d even thrown his thirtieth pitch tonight was a gutsy move, but one he felt he had to make given the state of the Red Sox rotation behind him. Cora saw a pitcher struggling to keep the ball in the zone and

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