BRONX SALE
As usual, Yankees’ bats go cold against Red Sox’s left-handed ace
IF THEY so choose, Yankees fans can look at the upside from their team’s 11-0 bludgeoning by the Red Sox on Saturday night at Yankee Stadium.
The Yankees never hit Chris Sale, and the Red Sox always hit Sonny Gray. Might as well knock out both guarantees in one fell swoop, right?
The Yankees’ need for another frontline starting pitcher became more clear with the beating that Gray took from the guys in the road grays, and so, too, did this:
If we get the Yankees-Red Sox postseason series we desire and deserve, Boston will have the top starting pitcher in that heavyweight bout.
“He looks like the best pitcher in the big leagues right now,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said after Sale limited the Yankees to one hit over seven innings, walking one, hitting one and striking out 11 to avenge the Sawx’s 8-1 defeat on Friday night.
Sure, Luis Severino is a stud, and the Yankees’ ace will pitch Sunday night’s series finale in the hopes of winning this weekend set and reclaiming the AL East penthouse (the Yankees, at 53-27, trail the 56-28 Red Sox by a game in the standings, but lead by one game in the loss column). However, Sale’s sublime track record against the Yankees gives him — and his team — a significant edge.
With this masterpiece, Sale lowered his ERA to 1.61 in 16 appearances, 14 of them starts, against the Yankees. That’s the finest such showing among pitchers with 10-
plus starts against the Yankees in the Live Ball Era (since 1920). Among pitchers with five-plus starts at the new Stadium (this was his seventh), his 1.86 ERA ranks second to Mariners icon Felix Hernandez (1.44).
Asked how he can explain his tremendous success in this imposing ballpark, against the Yankees’ generally strong offense, Sale smiled and responded: “I’m not, because if I do, it won’t be like that for long. At the end of the day, you just go out there and compete.”
He countered such stoicism when he acknowledged his desire to make up for what went on Friday night, and to do so in this setting, where the Stadium fans booed him as he walked in from the bullpen at the start of the game.
“Coming here, pitching in Yankee Stadium, probably one of the most iconic ballparks in the world,” Sale said. “So same division, obviously we’re both playing hard. We’re both kind of at the top right now. So we got punched in the face last night. You obviously want to respond well.”
“It was kind of cool to see him walking from the bullpen and getting booed by the fans,” Cora said.
On this note, Sale again pivoted toward apathy, real or otherwise.
“I didn’t even hear them,” he said. “They can say what they want.”
In any case, when Gray gave Sale a 4-0 edge in the first inning (“Before I even threw my first competitive pitch of the night,” as Sale put it.) that put the Yankees in a Dellin Betances-sized hole. The Yankees’ one rally came in the first, when they put men on first and second with one out. Rookie Gleyber Torres, making his first major league start in the cleanup spot, struck out on three pitches, Didi Gregorius flied out to Jackie Bradley Jr. in center field and that proved to be the first and last time the Yankees put multiple runners on base in the same inning.
With Sale’s four-seam fastball averaging 97.8 mph and his slider getting seven whiffs on 14 swings (thanks, Brooks Baseball), the Yankees didn’t have much of a chance. Their best hitter, Aaron Judge, went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts.
“I do feel that the harder he throws, the more off-speed pitches he’s using, which is great because you’ve got to keep them off-balance,” Cora said of Sale. “Take one or the other. Sit soft or look for the fastball. But 99 is not easy to hit.”
Is there anyone in the game the Yankees would rather not face than this guy, especially in October? It’s a question the Yankees wish they didn’t have to contemplate at all.