Sabathia stymies Sox
Porcello roughed up again in blowout
NEW YORK — Red Sox and Yankees, at the Stadium, battling for first place in the AL East, and only four pitchers were used.
It wasn’t your standard Sox-Yanks game last night.
Rick Porcello against CC Sabathia seemed like dream matchup for the Red Sox. Instead it was a nightmare, as Sabathia pitched eight shutout innings and Porcello allowed six runs in 61⁄ 3.
The Yankees steamrolled the Red Sox, 8-0, in a shockingly efficent game that lasted just two hours, 42 minutes.
“In crucial times, when you’ve got to bear down and locate, I haven’t been very consistent with that, and I’ve got to get better,” Porcello said.
Pitching with his hardest fastball since 2012, averaging more than 92 mph this season, Sabathia submitted a vintage performance against a Red Sox lineup that was stacked with righthanded batters.
Josh Rutledge was the only player who provided any kind of offensive threat against the 36-year-old lefthander, hitting a two-out double in the second and leadoff triple in fifth, but the Red Sox couldn’t bring him home him either time. Sabathia made it look easy. “He made quality pitches,” said Jackie Bradley Jr., who was 0-for-3. “To me, he didn’t miss any in the middle of the plate. He was pretty much corners. He had his slider working on the inside corner. I’m not sure about everyone else, but to me, he doesn’t normally throw his slider there.”
For Porcello (3-8), it’s looked awfully difficult.
He entered the game leading the majors in hits allowed (96), then gave up eight more. You couldn’t blame him in the third when Didi Gregorius hit a well-located changeup on the lower-outside corner out of the park.
“I tip my hat on that one,” Porcello said.
The sinker he left up in the zone to Chris Carter in the fourth inning is another story. Carter belted a threerun shot, and as Red Sox pitching coach Carl Willis has said about Porcello’s two-seamer, “Sinkers up in the zone go a long way.”
“Trying to run a twoseamer in off the plate, see if I can get a ground ball there, get a double play,” Porcello said. “It stayed up and kind of flattened out.”
He’s hardly used his signature sinker, which had been smacked around to the tune of a .406 batting average entering the game. He threw 32 of them last night and only once did the Yankees swing and miss.
“It hasn’t been as consistent as I want it to be,” Porcello said. “I used it, actually, a lot more tonight, and it was better in some instances. But when I get out there and I’m on the mound and fighting in the games, I’m going with what I think is my best stuff and what I’m going to be most competitive with. Sometimes that’s my two-seamer, sometimes that’s my four-seamer. But I definitely need to get back to sinking the ball down.”
Last year’s American League Cy Young winner was hoping to submit a matching performance in 2017, noting in spring training he wasn’t going to change anything until he found it necessary.
He’s still submitting innings, but his ERA is 4.46 through 13 starts.
“We have ultimate confidence in him,” Bradley said. “We know what Rick is capable of. We know he’s going to work to get better every single day.”
Blaine Boyer relieved Porcello in the seventh and allowed two more runs.
The Sox could have moved into a tie for first place in the AL East. Instead they fell two back with the series finale tonight.