Sanchez, Judge power Yankees past Red Sox
BOSTON – Gary Sanchez homered twice, Aaron Judge also hit a tape-measure shot and Masahiro Tanaka pitched the New York Yankees past the Boston Red Sox 6-2 on Saturday night to tie their AL Division Series at one game apiece.
Home runs by Judge and Sanchez helped chase David Price after only five outs. Sanchez’s second homer, a threerun shot in the seventh that made it 6-1, was projected at 479 feet.
One night after Chris Sale earned his first career playoff victory, Price failed in his 10th try to win a postseason start and was booed off the field by a soldout Fenway Park crowd hoping to see the AL East champions protect the home-field advantage they earned with a franchise-record 108 regular-season wins.
Instead, the wild-card Yankees will have a chance to advance to the AL Championship Series with victories at home, where they are 7-0 over the past two postseasons, in Games 3 and 4 on Monday and Tuesday nights.
Game 5 would be back in Boston on Thursday, if necessary.
Judge’s homer, estimated at 445 feet, landed in the back row of the seats above the Green Monster, high above the 379-foot marker and about 10 feet to the left of the pole flying an American flag blowing straight out. Sanchez’s second homer was in same direction but sailed clean out of the park, onto Lansdowne Street.
Just a few feet away from that spot is a plaque noting that only the six home runs in the 106-year history of Fenway Park have cleared the back wall on the other side of the flagpole. The last was by Jim Rice in 1975.
Sanchez, whose batting average didn’t top .200 after June 8, also had a solo shot in the second inning to give New York a 2-0 lead. Price then walked back-to-back batters with two outs and gave up an Andrew McCutchen’s RBI single.
In all, Price was charged with three runs on three hits and two walks in 1 2/3 innings – the shortest playoff start of his career.