During the Yankees’ recent struggles, it generally seems like whenever they do something good, that gets counteracted by some other aspect of the team crapping the bed. It appeared like that was going to be the case in their rumble with the Red Sox at Fenway — as was the case several times this Saturday night.
The Yankees’ offense would score, and the pitching would immediately give it back. In the five innings in which the Yankees scored in this game, the Red Sox scored themselves in bottom of the inning on four different occasions. Then in arguably the game’s crucial moment in the eighth, one of the team’s few regular good performers made a genuinely horrendous baserunning mistake to cost them a potential game-tying run.
However, for once in what’s been an unbelievably frustrating run, the Yankees took the punches and responded with counterpunches and a knockout blow. Down to their last strike, Trent Grisham helped New York rally in the ninth before a big 10th inning helped the Yankees pull off an improbable win, and arguably their best of the season. A roller coaster of a game finished in an 11-8 Yankees victory, as they won a thriller in Boston.
After last night’s frustration, the Yankees showed the kind of fight you would hope for to start the game. Alex Verdugo began the game with a long single, and Juan Soto homered to get the Yankees on the board. Aaron Judge followed that by taking a pitch clear over the Green Monster to go back-to-back with his MLB-leading 37th bomb:
In putting up three runs before recording an out, the Yankees had matched their combined run total from their previous two outings against Kutter Crawford this season.
Despite getting the ideal start, Marcus Stroman couldn’t capitalize and let Boston right back into the game. After getting one quick out, Stroman allowed a homer himself as Wilyer Abreu went to dead center for a solo shot. Masataka Yoshida, Rafael Devers, and Tyler O’Neill followed that up with hits of their own, with O’Neill’s knock evening things up.
The Yankees grabbed the lead right back in the second, courtesy of a strange home run. Oswaldo Cabrera took a Crawford pitch to deep right field, where Abreu seemingly made a leaping catch at the wall to rob him of a home run. However, Abreu was right at the point where the Fenway Park right-field wall gets short, and he fell over it. In the process, he dropped the ball, giving Cabrera a homer.
However once again, Stroman couldn’t hang onto the lead. After an Anthony Volpe error to start the inning, Ceddanne Rafaela singled. Following a double steal, Jarren Duran poked through a single to tie things again. The Yankees then found a bit of fortune when an Abreu fly out turned into a double play thanks to Rafaela simply standing around, away from third base. An out away from escaping the jam, Stroman was unable to do so, as Yoshida singled to give Boston the lead.
Stroman’s day ended in the fourth inning after Gleyber Torres and Volpe combined to miscue and allowed a 173-foot double to Jarren Duran. In his 3.1 innings, Stroman allowed five runs (three earned) on nine hits and a walk, striking out no one.
The Yankees’ offense continued the see-saw nature of the game in the fifth. To start things off, Verdugo picked up his second hit of the day when he led the inning off with a double. While Soto could only ground out, that moved Verdugo over to third, where he was able to score as Judge dropped in a single.
Alas, the Red Sox immediately answered (again). Facing Jake Cousins, O’Neill demolished a pitch over the Monster to put Boston right back in front.
In the top of the seventh, Judge drew a leadoff walk to set up the next opportunity. Following an Austin Wells walk, Torres hit a groundball that was nearly a double play, but Torres beat out the throw to first to keep it to just one out, with Judge moving to third. Gleyber beating that out ended up being quite helpful as Ben Rice hit a fly ball that was deep enough for Judge to tag up and score to bring the score back to even.
However, the Yankees’ allergy to the ol’ “shutdown inning” reared its head again. After Tim Hill got the first out of the seventh, the Yankees brought in Michael Tonkin to face O’Neill. For the second time on the night, O’Neill went deep, as he just cleared the top of the Green Monster wall to give the Red Sox the lead right back. Tonkin allowed a double to Dominic Smith, a hit-by-pitch to Connor Wong, and another double to David Hamilton, scoring another run.
In the eighth, Verdugo continued his nice night with a single and Soto drew a walk to set the Yankees up with two on and one out. Judge then delivered once again doubling off the wall to score Verdugo. However on the same play, Soto also tried to score, running through Luis Rojas’ stop sign. That proved to be a very poor decision, as Soto was out by a mile at home. To make matters worse, the next at-bat ended in a fly ball that might’ve been enough to score him.
In the ninth with Kenley Jansen in, the Yankees got a lifeline with a one-out Ben Rice double. After the second out moved a pinch-running Jahmai Jones to third, the game was left in the hands of Grisham. While he quickly fell behind 0-2, he fouled off some pitches and worked the count. Eventually he took one to left field that evaded O’Neill and hit off the Monster. Jones scored and the Yankees suddenly had new life.
Unlike on Friday, Clay Holmes did a good job with that new life, throwing a clean ninth to send the game to extra innings.
With one out in the 10th, Soto somewhat made up for his earlier blunder with a single. Auto-runner Cabrera didn’t ignore a stop sign of his own and held up at third to put runners on the corners. Not surprisingly, Judge didn’t get much to hit and ended up drawing a five-pitch walk to load the bases. It was Judge’s sixth time on base in the game, which marked a career-high for him. Wells then hit one in the air to left field. O’Neill seemingly took a slightly wrong first step and ended up needed a diving catch to make the out. That allowed Cabrera to tag up and score without too much issue.
Next up was Torres, who delivered one of his biggest hits in the season:
Gleyber’s double off the wall in center snapped an 0-for-5 in decisive fashion, plating two runs and giving the Yankees some breathing room for the bottom of the 10th.
Holmes stayed on for the 10th and got two quick outs before providing some drama with a two-out walk to Abreu. For once though, there wasn’t going to be more drama as with the tying run at the plate, he then induced a game-ending grounder from Yoshida.
If the Yankees figure things out and start to play better baseball, maybe we’ll look back at this game as the one that turned things around. If they don’t, it’ll just be a bright spot amid a continual bad run. Nonetheless, this feels like one that should be a good jumping-off point.
The Yankees and Red Sox will wrap up this wild series tomorrow at 7:10 pm ET, potentially featuring the Yankees’ debut of Jazz Chisholm Jr. Carlos Rodón will take the mound for the Yankees, looking to build on his recent solid outings, while Tanner Houck will go for Boston.
