Yanks hold all the cards
Sweep Sox yet again
Step 1 of the Red Sox nightmare scenario has begun.
The New York Yankees rode into Fenway Park needing a sweep to unseat the Sox for the rights to host an American League Wild Card Game and get a leg up in what is sure to be a nutty race to the finish line this coming week.
A sweep, it was.
Both teams revealed their flaws in Sunday nights’ series finale, exchanging dropped fly balls and silly mistakes until the Yankees emerged victorious with a 6-3 win that won’t be forgotten anytime soon.
By wiping the Fenway floors with their rivals this weekend, the Yankees jumped one game up in the Wild Card race. The Sox are still in position to make the playoffs, one game behind the Yanks and one game up on the Blue Jays.
“It’s not what we wanted coming into this series,” manager Alex Cora said. “We wanted to win the series and keep the first Wild Card spot. It didn’t happen. But we’re still in position to make the playoffs, so it’s not the worstcase scenario.”
The Jays and Yankees have three games against one another this week, while the Sox finished their home portion of the 2021 schedule with a 49-32 record (.605) and now fly to Baltimore for three against the worst team in baseball.
It would take a collapse of epic proportions for the Sox to end up missing the playoffs. But after watching this weekend, it’s hard to imagine either team making a deep playoff run no matter who makes it.
Friday’s game was an easy win for the Yanks when Nathan Eovaldi said he couldn’t grip the ball well enough to throw his curveball and got ripped to shreds in an 8-3 loss.
Saturday provided a much tighter contest as the Red Sox took a 2-1 lead into the eighth until Darwinzon Hernandez served up a grand slam to Giancarlo Stanton in an eventual 5-3 loss.
Sunday’s game was a show, and not a particularly flattering one for either side.
The Yankees took a 2-1 lead into the seventh, then the baseball started looking funny in the Boston sky.
The inning started with a hard-hit single by Jose Iglesias that rolled to the leftfield wall. Iglesias thought about heading to second, but smartly stopped halfway there and turned back around, a veteran decision and one that is often made incorrectly by players not used to the Fenway dimensions.
Alex Verdugo then dropped a beautifully placed drag bunt down the line to reach on an infield hit and put two on with nobody out.
One runner scored on a sacrifice fly by Christian Vazquez, then Kiké Hernandez struck out to bring Kyle Schwarber to the plate as a pinch-hitter.
Schwarber popped up to foul territory on the thirdbase side, but Gold Glove winner DJ LeMahieu made a rare mistake, drifting away from the ball and failing to make the catch. With second life, Schwarber lifted another weak pop-up to the left side, this time in shallow ground in left-center, and once again a Gold Glover dropped it. Joey Gallo overan the fly and maybe took his eye off it as it fell off his glove, allowing the Sox’ goahead runner to score from second.
Gifted a 3-2 lead, the Red Sox couldn’t hang onto it.
Garrett Richards got wild and walked two — one was thrown out trying to steal second by Christian Vazquez — then allowed a double to Anthony Rizzo that prompted a pitching change. Adam Ottavino replaced him to face Aaron Judge and should’ve retired him, but Bobby Dalbec shied away from the fence on the first-base side and dropped a relatively-routine fly ball to give Judge second life.
Then Judge appeared to strike out swinging on a foul tip, but Vazquez dropped the ball — it appeared to be on the transfer — giving Judge yet another chance.
“I caught the ball and dropped it on the transfer,” Vazquez said. “They should have gotten together and made a better call there. I was trying to get the ball out of my hand. It was in the top of my glove and I was trying to get it to the middle of the glove . ... I’ve never done that before.”
This time he used it to hit a laser towards the centerfield wall for an RBI double that scored two and put the Yankees back in front. Stanton hit a majestic home run behind him and the Sox were cooked.
Despite a few baserunning mistakes by the Yankees that kept the Red Sox within striking distance, the Sox couldn’t get anything done off Aroldis Chapman in the ninth.