AL WILD CARD SERIES: RED SOX VS YANKEES

September 30, 2026

Chad Tracy

Yankee Stadium

Boston Red Sox

Postgame Press Conference

Yankees - 9, Red Sox - 2

Q. How do you categorize these two games? Obviously not what you guys expected or how you played over the course of the season?

CHAD TRACY: No, I mean, obviously there was games that were close late that kind of got away. But I think you're thinking we're going to play closer games. They swung the bats extremely well. You've got to give them credit. It was frustrating.

Q. Did you speak to the team after the game?

CHAD TRACY: Briefly, yeah.

Q. What was the general sentiment?

CHAD TRACY: Keep it between us. Obviously in a nutshell, everybody is disappointed. So I'll keep it between us. But love the group, love the group of players, and I'll leave it at that.

Q. How do you hope to remember this year down the line?

CHAD TRACY: I mean, right now it's, regardless of all the special things that happened this summer, and there was quite a few, the goal is to win the World Series, and that ended for us tonight. So it's frustrating.

And there's a lot of things you can say, but in the moment, right now, I think the guys only care that we lost. And it's going to take some time to get over that.

Q. Can I ask your thinking on when you pulled Sonny early again for the second straight night?

CHAD TRACY: Well, pulled him --

Q. At the same point in the game.

CHAD TRACY: Just the same thing, we're trailing. We're struggling to score runs. And when you get in spots where struggling to score runs and you're already trailing, you feel like you've got to be aggressive and go.

So they're getting back to the top part of the lineup. They get a couple of hits against them. See if you can put it out. And if you can put it out, you know, kind of lined up to where we want it to go. And that just didn't work. And with Crochet, Whit and Chap towards the back end there, and they were able to string a bunch of hits and we couldn't stop the bleeding there.

Q. To that idea, Tolle was so great during the year and Sonny was so great during the year. Did you think about extended them a little more to try to capitalize on two pretty good pitchers, really?

CHAD TRACY: No, they're good, yeah. Our bullpen's been great all year. It's a case sometimes of depending on what the score is and how much wiggle room you have, if we were able to put up some runs and maybe have some more breathing room, we might be able to do that. But trying to be aggressive and create tough match-ups, and it just didn't work out.

Q. With the way you brought in the lefty there with Bellinger, just any thoughts on the way he's been hitting lefties the last year or two versus righty-lefty matches or was it just a fresh arm?

CHAD TRACY: I think with where we were at in today's game, we pretty clearly knew who we were going to throw. Those are the best ones we have to offer. So it was pretty obvious that we were going to be aggressive in using that group. Like I said, they swung the bats. Didn't work out.

Q. Through this journey from when you got here in late April, the streak in the summer, just personal growth for you, how would you describe that -- I know the season just ended -- but in your first season being a manager?

CHAD TRACY: Honest answer in the moment right now, I'm not thinking about it. It's obviously been an eventful year. In the moment right now you can't think much more other than anything but the fact that we just lost a playoff series.

As far as my own personal growth, I can assess that later, but right now, it's just not on my mind.

Q. What was your assessment of the Yankees in the series? What did you see from them?

CHAD TRACY: I thought they swung the bats great. I think coming in with some lefties and things that we had, I thought -- I just thought they swung the bats extremely, extremely well. Both nights it kind of started to accumulate late in the game. But they swung the bats great.

Q. We had asked you a bunch of questions kind of before the series started if you expected it to be different or how it would be different. Anything even in the immediate aftermath that was unexpected about the intensity level, or just how different really did you find it being that it was a postseason and an elimination game?

CHAD TRACY: No, I think it was as expected. Going into it knowing it was going to be intense, I think it was as expected.

Q. With injuries and other things you guys didn't hit well in September. Do you think any of that dragged into the postseason?

CHAD TRACY: I mean, it obviously did over the course of these two games. We talk a lot about the pitching. We just didn't hit much. We ran into two good pitchers that threw the ball very well. But we didn't hit.

That's part of it. And obviously we wanted to. You're trying to. Your mindset is can you get a lead? Can you get a two or three-run lead and play from a lead and milk the game along that way? And we just weren't able to do that these two days.

Q. With Crochet, given how long it had been since he pitched a tough spot to put him into, or did you just feel like you wanted to get him into the game?

CHAD TRACY: I think clean inning was as about as good as we could make it. He was throwing hard. So finding a lane to put the previous inning down, and then give him a clean inning to operate with. And, like I said, obviously it just didn't go our way.

Q. Did Max Fried do anything to catch you guys off guard tonight, or it was just a matter of a good pitcher executing his pitches?

CHAD TRACY: No, not necessarily. He executed pitches. I thought similar to yesterday, I think we did a decent job of dragging some at-bats out. We took some walks. Obviously, we got the home run from Willson and got the game to 2-1 and we were right in it.

And once we got there, we actually had the ball turned over to the part of the bullpen for the latter part that we wanted to. And obviously that didn't go our way.

But we were able to get pitch count up. We did drag some at-bats. But we didn't get enough hits and didn't put enough traffic out there.