Yankees - 202 100 000 - 5 14 0 Red Sox - 001 000 015 - 7 9 0After being kept quiet for seven innings by Masahiro Tanaka (7-4-1-3-0, 93), the Red Sox's bats finally awoke from their days-long slumber in the eighth inning. David Ortiz homered to center for one run. Then Boston pulled off the comeback of the season, getting three straight run-scoring hits off Yankees closer Dellin Betances in the bottom of the ninth, capped off by Hanley Ramirez's three-run bomb into the center field bleachers.
Ortiz's home run was #537 and moved him past Mickey Mantle and into 17th place all-time.
Up 5-2, Yankees manager Joe Girardi stayed away from Betances at first, even though it was a save situation (he had blown Wednesday's game against the Dodgers), calling on lefty Tommy Layne to begin the bottom of the ninth. Layne easily struck out pinch-hitter Aaron Hill on three pitches. Chris Young pinch-hit for Andrew Benintendi and Girardi brought in Blake Parker. Parker's 1-1 pitch glanced off the top of Young's helmet for a HBP. Was this a spark? Finally, Girardi signaled for his closer, who had blown four of 15 save chances this year.
Betances could not find the strike zone and walked Dustin Pedroia on five pitches. On Betances's first offering to Xander Bogaerts, FY and Young advanced to second and third. Bogaerts tapped an 0-2 pitch to the third-base side of the infield and Young was (for some bizarre reason) halfway down the line and was quickly tagged out in a 1-2-5 rundown. Two outs, runners at first and second.
Ortiz, up as the potential tying run, got ahead 3-1 and lined a single to center, scoring Pedroia - and making Young's blunder seem even worse. Now it was Mookie Betts's turn as the potential tying run. Betts grounded a 1-1 pitch into left field, past the dive of shortstop Didi Gregorius. Bogaerts scored, making the score 5-4. Betances's first pitch to Ramirez went for a passed ball and Boston had runners at second and third. Even a single could win the game, but Ramirez was not settling for a measly single. With the count in his favour, 3-1, Ramirez crushed a pitch about 10-12 rows up in dead center field. HOME RUN!
It was a stunning, amazing, hard-to-believe ending on a night when nothing seemed to be going right for the Red Sox. Eduardo Rodriguez (2.1-8-4-0-0, 58) faced 16 batters and nine of them reached base. Rodriguez's last six ineffective pitches were: double, RBI-single, ball, double, ball, RBI-single.
Heath Hembree allowed a run in the fourth, putting New York up by four, but the pen held the Yankees from there. Though not without some hiccups. Junichi Tazawa allowed a leadoff double in the fifth, but then struck out the next three batters. Robby Scott pitched three innings - as it turned out, the most of any Sox pitcher - and ran into trouble in the eighth. The Yankees put runners on first and second with one out. Brett Gardner flied to center and Xander Bogaerts, after fielding Jacoby Ellsbury's infield single, threw out Chase Headley at the plate.
Joe Kelly had a rough top of the ninth. Gary Sanchez and Starlin Castro began the inning with singles and after Brian McCann struck out, Kelly walked Gregorius to load the bases. But Kelly rebounded, striking out Headley on a full-count pitch and then throwing up his glove in self-defense and snaring Mason Williams's line drive right back at him.
Then the Red Sox went to work in what became a magical bottom of the ninth.
Pedroia, 2BMark Feinsand, Daily News: "It's hard to believe, but it's been nine years since the Yankees and Red Sox faced off in a September game with meaningful postseason implications for both teams. That ends Thursday."
Bogaerts, SS
Ortiz, DH
Betts, RF
Ramirez, 1B
Shaw, 3B
Leon, C
Bradley, CF
Benintendi, LF
The Red Sox and Yankees begin a four-game series tonight. They also will play a three-game set in New York on September 27-29.
ESPN: "Ripe For A Renaissance: Is The Yankees-Red Sox Rivalry About To Get Great Again?" Beat writers Andrew Marchand and Scott Lauber discuss the question.
A good showing by Boston could effectively wreck New York's slim chances at the AL East title. The Yankees are two games out of the wild card race.
BOS --- BAL 1.0 TOR 2.0 MFY 4.0
The Toronto Blue Jays announced the hiring of Ben Cherington as vice-president of baseball operations on Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteCompiled by Alex Speier:
ReplyDeleteRed Sox (81-64)
Division odds: Fangraphs – 61.4%; Baseball Prospectus – 65.8%
Wild card odds: Fangraphs – 29.7%; Baseball Prospectus – 26.8%
Total playoff odds: Fangraphs – 91.1%; Baseball Prospectus – 92.5%
Orioles (80-65)
Division odds: Fangraphs – 20.3%; Baseball Prospectus – 19.0%
Wild card odds: Fangraphs – 45.8%; Baseball Prospectus – 46.9%
Total playoff odds: Fangraphs – 66.1%; Baseball Prospectus – 65.9%
Blue Jays (79-66)
Division odds: Fangraphs – 17.0%; Baseball Prospectus – 12.8%
Wild card odds: Fangraphs – 46.1%; Baseball Prospectus – 46.7%
Total playoff odds: Fangraphs – 63.1%; Baseball Prospectus – 58.5%
Yankees (77-68)
Division odds: Fangraphs – 1.3%; Baseball Prospectus – 2.4%
Wild card odds: Fangraphs – 8.1%; Baseball Prospectus – 7.7%
Total playoff odds: Fangraphs – 9.4%; Baseball Prospectus – 10.1%
Elias:
ReplyDeleteMark Trumbo's solo home run in the second inning stood up as the only run of the game in Baltimore's 1-0 win over the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Wednesday night. Trumbo became the first visiting player to homer in a 1-0 win at Fenway Park in over 25 years, since Cleveland's Brook Jacoby homered in the 13th inning off of Dennis Lamp to account for the game's only run on April 15, 1991.
Jon Lester hurled eight shutout innings and earned the victory in the Cubs' 7-0 win over the Cardinals on Wednesday afternoon. Lester has pitched at least six innings and allowed two or fewer runs in each of his last nine starts. That equals the longest such streak in a single season by a Cubs pitcher in the last 97 years.
I was having this sad sinking feeling all night that we were going to fade and were (at best) destined for the Wild Card game against the MFY. Hanley erased that feeling...
ReplyDeleteHanley waves at 3 straight looking lost vs Britton and then this! I love baseball!
ReplyDeleteElias:
ReplyDeleteHanley Ramirez's three-run homer turned a 5-4 deficit into a 7-5 victory and capped a five-run ninth inning in the Red Sox comeback win over the Yankees. Ramirez is the fourth player in Red Sox history to hit a walkoff homer against the Yankees that turned a deficit into a win. Joe Cronin hit one off Johnny Broaca in the first game of a doubleheader in 1935, Sammy White off Allie Reynolds in 1953 and Bill Mueller off Mariano Rivera in 2004.
The Red Sox trailed the Yankees, 5-2, with two outs in the ninth inning before erupting for five runs and the win. It's only the second time in team history that Red Sox beat the Yankees in a game they trailed by three or more runs with two outs in the ninth inning. The other such game came on June 2, 1908. Boston trailed New York by the same 5-2 score with two outs in the ninth inning in the second game of a doubleheader before scoring four runs for the win. The big blow was delivered by Bob Unglaub whose fly ball with two outs and the bases loaded was dropped for an error by Hall-of-Famer Wee Willie Keeler.
In the immortal words of " Big Kev " .... " I'm Excited "
ReplyDeleteHanely's HR, coming as it did right toward the camera, looked to me at first like a warning-track high fly at best. Couple of Red Sox fans and some Yankee fan friends watched at The Bar with great enjoyment and pain, respectively. The game was so frustrating that I almost didn't watch the ninth.
ReplyDeleteI will admit that I nearly gave up and did not watch the end. The game felt like a lost cause as early as the 3rd and as we went into the 5th and 6th, I was keeping score, but wondering why. The bats were totally dead. I definitely felt like not watching the last few innings, because why bother. But, damn, am I glad I did!
ReplyDeleteSpeier:
ReplyDeleteThe Red Sox veterans recognize the experience gap. They addressed it in the middle of Thursday’s game multiple times.
David Ortiz returned to the dugout from his homer by shouting at his teammates, “Let’s go! Let’s go!” (“We need some motivation out there,” Ortiz explained of his exhortation.)
Hitting coach Chili Davis, recognizing that Betts’ confidence had flagged in recent games, gave what Betts described as a “pep talk” prior to the outfielder’s ninth-inning at-bat. After Dustin Pedroia crossed the plate on Ortiz’s RBI single to narrow the gap to 5-3, he likewise made a point of helping Betts to focus.
“Pedey gave me a little motivation as he scored,” said Betts. “He gave me a good, “Let’s go!” and you could see he really meant it, like let’s go. We can win this game. I felt it and just grinded through an at-bat.”