Connelly Early, whose fastball topped out in the mid-80s when he arrived at UVA three falls ago, was sitting 94-95 on the gun in his start in the do-or-die Game 3 between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees on Thursday night in Yankee Stadium.
The 6’3” lefty from Midlothian didn’t get his first weekend start in his lone season with the ‘Hoos, in 2023, after he spent his first two seasons at Army, until April, and that one didn’t go what you’d call well – Virginia Tech touched up Early for six runs in two innings of work in a 12-10 UVA loss.
Brian O’Connor didn’t get Early back into the weekend rotation until mid-May, and Early was solid down the stretch, as Virginia played its way to Omaha – Early was 3-2 with a 3.51 ERA in his final six starts, including taking the L in the season-ending 4-3 College World Series loss to TCU, in which he was charged for two runs on six hits in five innings of work.
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Before last night, that game, with an official attendance of 24,449, was the largest road-game crowd that Early had pitched in front of.
“I think just getting this under my belt is huge,” said Early, who kept the Yankees off the board in his first three innings, striking out five and allowing two hits, before the Red Sox defense betrayed him in a four-run fourth.
A leadoff 234-foot fly ball, exit velocity: 77.1 mph, off the bat of Cody Bellinger fell in between outfielders Wilyer Abreu and Ceddane Rafaela and second baseman Romy Gonzalez.
Bellinger got all the way to second for what went into the scorebook as a double, and though we didn’t know it at the time, the floodgates were open.
Early missed inside on a 3-2 pitch to Giancarlo Stanton to put two on with nobody out.
Ben Rice went down swinging on three pitches, bringing up Amed Rosario, who started the season with the Washington Nationals, and was moved at the trade deadline.
Rosario singled just past the outstretched glove of shortstop Trevor Story to bring in Bellinger with the game’s first run.
Jazz Chisholm followed with a sharp line-drive single to right to load the bases.
Anthony Volpe scored Stanton with a single to right that made it 2-0, and then Austin Wells hit what should have been at least a groundball out to first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, another guy who started the season in Washington, who DFA’d Lowe in August to allow him to find a roster spot with a contender.
Lowe, a former Gold Glover, misplayed the ball into a two-run error, and the damage was done.
Early got one more out – a fly ball off the bat of Trent Grisham – before Alex Cora went to the bullpen.
Early’s final statline: 3.2 IP, four runs, three earned, on six hits, with six Ks and one base on balls.
It doesn’t take much to figure – if that fly ball off the bat of Bellinger falls into a glove, as it should have, Early likely gets out of the fourth completely unscathed, and it’s anybody’s guess how things play out from there.
“We didn’t play defense,” Cora told reporters in the postmortem after the 4-0 Sox loss, which ended Boston’s 2025 season.
“The popup drops, there’s a double, and there’s a walk. They didn’t hit the ball hard, but they found holes. It just happened fast,” Cora said.
“The kid did a good job. He threw the ball well and induced them to weak contact,” Cora said.
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Early, a fifth-round pick in the 2023 MLB Draft, worked his way to the bigs rather quickly – his 3-9 win-loss record in 2024 was deceiving; he had a 3.99 ERA and a 1.19 WHIP, and averaged 12.0 Ks/9 across the High-A and Double-A levels.
Early started 2025 at Double-A Portland, where he was 7-2 with a 2.51 ERA and 1.13 WHIP in 15 games, 12 starts, and 3-1 with a 2.83 ERA and 1.05 WHIP in six starts at Triple-A Worcester before getting called up last month.
In his first start, Early struck out 11 A’s in five scoreless innings in a 6-0 Red Sox win on Sept. 9.
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In four starts, he had a 2.33 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, and struck out 29 in 19.1 innings.
His work to date – and particularly last night – has caught folks’ attention, including Alex Bregman, the All-Star third baseman.
“I thought Connelly was awesome tonight,” Bregman said after the game. “I thought that he attacked the zone. He’s gonna have an extremely bright future. He’s gonna be a really, really great pitcher in this game.
“There was a blooper that started the inning, and some kind of seeing-eye ground balls after that, but other than that, he threw really, really well. I’m super proud of him, and the moment was definitely not too big for him.”
The confidence that Cora and the front office put in Early is something that will be a benefit to him going forward.
“Obviously, the Red Sox trusting me to go out there with the ball in a winner-take-all game means a ton to me,” he said.
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Chris Graham
