A Game-Winning Home Run By JD Martinez Salvages The Series, As The Red Sox Get The Fuck Out Of The Bronx With A First Place Tie
Rally cigs, baby. The Red Sox weren’t leaving the Bronx without getting the last one. They weren’t leaving without a share of first place. They weren’t leaving without sending a little reminder as to who in the hell have been the top dogs in the American League East since the start of the 2016 season. That would be the Boston Red Sox.
Things hadn’t gone Boston’s way at all in the first two games of this series. They got a strong pitching performance from Drew Pomeranz in game one of the three-game set, but weren’t able to do much damage against Luis Severino or the Yankees bullpen. In game two, Rick Porcello had his worst outing of the year. The offense bailed him out and got the ball to Craig Kimbrel with a one-run lead in the 8th inning with one out, and he got his doors blown off.
In game three, Eduardo Rodriguez turned in his best start of the season. The left-hander went five innings, allowed one hit, zero runs, walked three, and struck out eight batters to follow up a season-high ten strikeouts his last time out against Texas. Opposing him was CC Sabathia, who has pitched really well this season and has been quite successful against Boston, carrying a 5-1 record with a 2.47 ERA against the Red Sox in seven starts over the last three years.
Hanley Ramirez didn’t give a fuck about all that. He drove in a run in the first, drove in another run in the third, and then hit a line shot into the bullpen to put Boston up 4-0 in the fifth, his second home run in as many nights. After slumping a little bit to start the month of May, he’s now hit safely in five straight games with 7 RBI.
The Red Sox bullpen has been a mess lately. On Tuesday night, Heath Hembree gave up a double and a couple of walks with a balk mixed in there to set up Joe Kelly for a bases loaded, one out situation in which he was unable to stop Aaron Judge from driving in the game-winning run. As I mentioned earlier, Kimbrel had a meltdown on Wednesday night, but it was Matt Barnes who allowed a double and a walk, which eventually became the game-tying and game-winning runs for New York.
Then on Thursday night, ahead in the game 4-0, Hembree struck again, allowing a pair of base hits and a walk to load the bases. Kelly returned to the mound for the second time this series and he walked in a run, gave up an RBI base knock to Judge, another run came in on a Didi Gregorius ground out, and then the Yankees tied the game on a wild pitch. Beautiful.
But that set the stage for the bad man. Is JD Martinez the sneakiest .350 hitter ever? I think he is. In the top of the 8th, just minutes after the Yankees had staged yet another epic comeback, JD stroked a solo homer to right field to give Boston their lead right back. He’s now hitting .348 with a 1.018 OPS on the season, and he’s one of only eight players in all of Major League Baseball with an OPS over a thousand. For what it’s worth, the Red Sox are the only team in the majors with more than one player who has an OPS north of a thousand. Mookie Betts still leads the majors with a 1.244 OPS after a three-hit night on Thursday.
In the ninth inning, it was redemption time for Kimbrel, as he faced the top of the Yankees’ order. He punched out Brett Gardner on 97 MPH heat, got Judge to fly out to center, and then Didi hit a dinky ass ground ball to first to end it. By the way, after all that Didi is better than Xander Bogaerts talk, the Yankee shortstop is hitting .111 with a .322 OPS over his last 11 games and is 2-for-23 against the Red Sox this year. He went from hitting .372 with a 1.303 OPS on April 25 to where he’s at now, which is .280 with a .967 OPS. Don’t get me wrong — those are great numbers — but Bogaerts is hitting .330 with a .912 OPS and hasn’t dipped lower than a .316 batting average and a .902 OPS all season. Don’t @ me.
By the way, one quick note before we move on from the Yankees — just how evenly matched are these two teams? We’re 37 games in, which is roughly 23% of the season, and they have identical records with nearly identical run differentials. It’s +65 for New York and +64 for Boston. The Yankees have scored eight more runs than the Red Sox, and Red Sox pitching has allowed seven fewer runs than the Yankees pitching. We’re just getting started in the battle for first place in the AL East.
The Red Sox leave the Bronx with a big win and head up to Toronto where Chris Sale will get the ball against former American League ERA champ Aaron Sanchez. I’m gonna be honest here — I don’t think Sanchez is winning an ERA title this year. He’s got an ERA over four through his first seven starts, and he was unable to make it out of the fourth inning his last time out. Control has been a huge issue for him this year. He’s already walked 22 batters in 41.1 innings compared to just 28 strikeouts, so the strikeout numbers are far from impressive, too.
Sale is good. Feel like you already know that, but I can continue if you want. His last time out, he struck out a season high 12 batters in Texas. He’s made eight starts this year and given up one earned run or fewer in six of them. However, one of the two starts in which he allowed more than one earned run was against the Blue Jays. Sale allowed three earned runs and gave up a pair of homers in a game that the Red Sox went on to win by a score of 5-4.
Final score: Red Sox 5, Yankees 4
PS — Hubbs struck out swinging in slow pitch softball. The Yankees haven’t won a game since this happened.