G58: Yankees 8, Red Sox 0

Red Sox - 000 000 000 - 0  5  2
Yankees - 001 400 12x - 8 12  0

CC Sabathia (8-5-0-0-5, 95) dominated the Red Sox with ease, allowing one hit in each of the first five innings and then retiring the last 12 batters he faced. Chris Carter drove in four runs, three of them coming on a long home run to left in the fourth inning.

Rick Porcello (6.1-8-6-2-5, 103) set down the first six batters on only 16 pitches before hitting two innings of rough road. Didi Gregorius homered to start the bottom of the third. Porcello gave up singles to Chase Headley and Carter, and a throwing error by third baseman Deven Marrero (on a play that should have had Carter tagged out between first and second) put runners at second and third with no outs. Porcello struck out Brett Gardner and got Aaron Hicks to pop to short, but fell behind Aaron Judge 3-0 before giving him first base. The Yankees left the bases loaded when Matt Holliday flied to right.

Porcello laboured through eight batters and 32 pitches in the fourth. Starlin Castro tripled to center and Gary Sanchez singled him in. Gregorius flied to left, but Headley singled and Carter hit a big shot to left that seemed to travel much more than the announced distance of 404 feet. Porcello walked a man later in the inning, but did not allow any more runs.

Gardner led off the seventh by reaching on a fielding error by Josh Rutledge at second. Gardner stole second and, after Blaine Boyer had taken over on the mound, scored on Holliday's single. Two more runs scored in the eighth as the bottom of the order again did most of the work. (Headley and Carter, the #8 and #9 hitters, were on base six out of eight plate appearances, collecting five hits and scoring three runs. The top four batters, including Hall of Famer Aaron Judge (he was voted in this afternoon, maybe you missed it), went 2-for-17.)

The Red Sox offense was nearly non-existent. Rutledge doubled with two outs in the second and watched as Jackie Bradley struck out. Rutledge tripled to lead off the fifth and was left at third. That's bad, but those were also the only times a Boston baserunner advanced past first base. Sabathia was economical with his pitches too, never throwing more than 15 in an inning: 10-15-12 14-11-8 11-14. He certainly could have finished the game, but that task was given to Jonathan Holder, who got three easy groundouts.

Also: Mookie Betts made a leaping catch at the right field wall, robbing Carter of a second home run, to end the sixth inning. However, when viewers saw the replay, they saw that the ball had actually very obviously hit off a fan's hands before falling into Betts's glove. (It was hard to tell whether the fan reached over the wall into the field of play or whether everything happened beyond the fence.) MLBTV did not cut the commercial break short, so I'm not sure how the discussion started, but the umpires discussed the play while Yankees manager Joe Girardi stood on the field nearby. In the end, the umpires decided to not review the play or to alter the original call.

Rick Porcello / CC Sabathia

Betts, RF
Young, LF
Bogaerts, SS
Ramirez, DH
Travis, 1B
Leon, C
Rutledge, 2B
Bradley, CF
Marrero, 3B