Red Sox 2, Mets 0: Walker Buehler’s night off leads to an unexpectedly delightful call to the bullpen

Sometimes, wonderful things are stumbled upon by accident. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin when he noticed mold growing in a petri dish. Percy Spencer got the idea for the microwave when he realized a candy bar melted in his pocket while working with radar equipment – And the character of Cliff Clavin was invented on the spot when John Ratzenberger realized his audition for the part of Norm wasn’t going very well. (George Wendt, who famously played Norm on Cheers, told that story on a podcast just last year. Sadly, George also passed away early today on the 32 year anniversary of the show’s finale. – RIP George!)

On Tuesday night at Fenway Park, a silly baseball version of one of these happy accidents occurred for the Red Sox when home plate umpire Mike Estabrook, who was running about as hot as the Hindenburg, escalated a situation that started with his own blown call, and ended with him tossing both Walker Buehler and Alex Cora from the game.

The Mets broadcast over on SNY picked up some of the audio as it happened, which Red Sox Stats then grabbed and retweeted:

Perhaps the wildest part of this whole exchange is Estabrook telling Buehler to get back on the mound when he’s very clearly still on the mound (or at least the dirt circle). Estabrook feels like the kind of guy who would bring a flamethrower to a peace negotiation.

In any case, here’s what the entire exchange looked and sounded like on NESN:

After the game, crew chief Laz Diaz had this explanation defending Estabrook.

But before we dive too far down this rabbit hole, it’s important to note what transpired after the fireworks. The story of this game isn’t just about the confrontation between Estabrook and Buehler. The story of this game is also about how the events of the third inning may have helped galvanize a pulse into this pitching staff.

We can pick it up right from the point where Alex Cora broke off the door to the phone to the bullpen before he was ejected himself.

The reason for his frustration was obvious. The long man Sean Newcomb wasn’t available having already mopped up Brayan Bello’s mess on Sunday, and now the club had to navigate through another 20 outs to get through this game with no off days on the schedule in sight until the middle of the next road trip on the 29th of the month.

But there’s two things Cora probably didn’t realize in that heated moment:

One is that Mother Nature is almost certainly going to throw the Sox bullpen a bone on Thursday. She’s cooking up a nasty nor’easter with heavy rain and strong winds that are likely going to wash out the first game of the series with the Orioles. As I noted on Monday, a bullpen reset is probably much closer than most people realize.

But second and more immediately, none of us knew how good the bullpen was about to be for the rest of this game.

Walker Buehler’s ejection didn’t open the flood gates for the Mets’ bats, but instead stimulated the Sox’ pen to its most sensational sequence of the year. They didn’t allow a run all night as Brennan Bernardino, Garrett Whitlock, Justin Wilson, Greg Weissert, Justin Slaten, and Aroldis Chapman all combined to keep a zero on the board to the finish line. A happy accident indeed!

And that bullpen phone door Alex Cora broke off? Well, it too was put to good use.

It’s only been a few hours and people are already having plenty of fun with this:

In addition to this just being a fun way to win, it also stands in stark contrast to what we’ve seen all year. One especially disappointing characteristic of the Sox early this season is how easily they’ve folded when faced with adversity. But for the third time in four games, they’ve now pushed back on adverse circumstances and managed to win games they easily could have, and maybe even should have lost. They’ve still got a long way to go to balance the scales here, but hey, it’s a start.

Now, with Garrett Crochet going tomorrow and assuming we get the rainout on Thursday, this team is one win away from entering the weekend with a chance to build momentum. For Crochet, this is a specific spot where you need him to act like an ace and deliver a win for the entire staff. If he does, it’s not just a sweep of the Mets, but also a chance to reset. All of a sudden, the Sox could enter Friday on a bit of a hot streak with a fully rested bullpen a mere 72 hours after it looked like things were headed towards disaster.

But this is baseball, and as much as any other sport, it lends itself to happy accidents.

Three studs

The entire bullpen: A beautiful donut shop performance from all of them. Dunkin’ for everybody!

Carlos Narvaez: He hit the solo home run that got the Sox on the board.

Rafael Devers: Just two pitches later, Devers hit another solo home run to almost the exact same spot, just two seats over. Imagine being the guy who was sitting in-between where those two home run balls landed?

Three Duds

Mike Estabrook: The ornery, cue ball headed fool made himself way too big of a story in this game. Also, the fact I knew how to spell his name before this game started isn’t a good sign for his anger management skills in general (or mine for that matter).

Kristian Campbell: Another hitless night at the plate. His OPS is down to .695.

MLB Blackout Rules: I would’ve liked to listen to Don Orsillo call this game on TBS, but the national feed was blacked out locally to draw more eyeballs to NESN’s coverage.

Play Story of the game:

After Estabrook ejected Buehler and Cora, the rest of the game came down to one word: