Flashback to Sweet ’16
Porcello continues torrid start
Three starts into this 2018 season, Rick Porcello looks like he’s back.
In a grey and wet game against the New York Yankees last night, Porcello was as sharp as he’s been since 2016. His sinker frustrated and his slider was biting as he took a nohitter into a rain delay after five innings, then surrendered two hits but no runs through seven in the Red Sox’ 6-3 win to clinch the series.
After losing 11-of-19 to the Yankees last season, the Sox got a quick leg up against their rivals and improved to 10-2 overall.
Chris Sale was nasty in Game 1 of the series. David Price couldn’t get warm and the bullpen was hit hard in Game 2. Porcello overpowered in Game 3.
The 2016 Cy Young Award winner effectively utilized his slider from the get-go and the Yankees could hardly touch it. He threw 32 sliders, his second-highest game total since 2011.
Six of them induced outs. Five were swung at and missed. And only one was a mistake — a belthigh offering to Aaron Judge in the seventh inning that snapped his no-hitter and dropped into the triangle for a double.
Porcello was nearly perfect through five. His only blemish was plunking Giancarlo Stanton on an inside fastball in the fourth inning.
The rain started to come down hard in the fourth but the Red Sox already had jumped out to a 6-0 lead off Yankees starter Sonny Gray.
The first four Sox batters reached safely to put a run on the board in the second. Mookie Betts hit a long fly to score a second run. Andrew Benintendi reached on an error to score a third. And Mitch Moreland, who replaced Hanley Ramirez after Ramirez was hit by a Gray pitch and bruised his hand, poked an RBI single to make it 4-0.
A gaffe by Stanton led to another run in the third inning. Eduardo Nunez doubled to start the frame and when Jackie Bradley Jr. lifted a shallow fly to left, Stanton overran the ball and let it fall. It bounced over his head and over the side-wall for a groundrule double and RBI. Bradley later scored to wrap up the Red Sox’ offense in this one.
Porcello was through five innings on just 60 pitches when there was a 45-minute rain delay. He came back out in the sixth and struck out two, but finally allowed a pair of hits in the seventh.
He finished with 99 pitches and his first scoreless outing since July 19, 2016, against the San Francisco Giants.
Through three starts this year, Porcello has allowed just four runs on 14 hits in 192⁄3 innings, striking out 17 with just one walk.
The Yankees had little going until Marcus Walden, called up from Triple-A Pawtucket earlier in the day, gave up a three-run double to Gary Sanchez in the ninth inning.
Craig Kimbrel entered with Sanchez on second and retired the next three in order for his fourth save.