This has been a difficult season for the Red Sox, but you might not know it if you only saw them play on the road.<\/p>\n
Back at Yankee Stadium for the first time since last October\u2019s American League Wild Card series, the Red Sox played like the playoff hopeful the club always expected to be. The club got some big home runs, a strong performance by starting pitcher Sonny Gray and some big outs from the bullpen to pull out a big 5-3 win over the Yankees.<\/p>\n
In doing so the Red Sox improved to 17-14 on the road, a striking difference from the club\u2019s ugly 10-21 mark at Fenway Park.<\/p>\n
Though the Yankees jumped in front early on a first-inning solo home run by Cohasset\u2019s Ben Rice, the Red Sox fought back and took a 2-1 lead in the third. Connor Wong and Jarren Duran singled and Ceddanne Rafaela walked to load the bases with one out, and the Red Sox scored on a groundout by Wilyer Abreu and an RBI single by Willson Contreras.<\/p>\n
Boston extended the lead in the top of the fourth on a towering solo home run by Andruw Monasterio, and after the Yankees pulled within one on an RBI double by Spencer Jones in the bottom of the frame, the Red Sox landed another big blow when Contreras crushed a two-run home run for his 13 homer of the season.<\/p>\n
The Yankees scored again in the fifth on a two-out solo shot by Trent Grisham, but for the most part Gray kept the Yankees at bay, holding New York to three runs over 6 1\/3 innings with eight hits, two walks and three strikeouts. Two of New York\u2019s runs came on solo homers, and otherwise Gray was able to work around traffic, benefitting from a pair of inning-ending double plays in the third and fourth.<\/p>\n
A potential turning point in the game came in the bottom of the seventh shortly after Gray came out.<\/p>\n
With the tying run on base and Rice at the plate with two outs, Red Sox left-hander Danny Coulombe got ahead 1-2 in the count and drew a high pop up playable in foul territory right by the first base bag. Contreras and Monasterio both had a play on the ball, but neither called the other off and the two wound up colliding, allowing the ball to harmlessly fall in.<\/p>\n
That gave Rice, who has 18 home runs and is New York\u2019s most dangerous hitter with Aaron Judge out injured, a second chance. Yet while Coulombe wound up letting the count go full, he recovered and struck out the Yankee slugger to end the threat.<\/p>\n
The Red Sox couldn\u2019t extend the lead any further, but a two-run cushion was enough for the bullpen. Justin Slaten recorded a 1-2-3 eighth on only four pitches, and Aroldis Chapman came on in the ninth and worked around a pair of four-pitch walks to pick up his 13th save of the season, and his first since May 20.<\/p>\n
It was also the 380th save of Chapman\u2019s career, putting him 10 behind former Red Sox great Dennis Eckersley (390) for ninth all-time.<\/p>\n
The Red Sox (27-35) will look to make it two in a row against the Yankees (37-26) on Saturday. Ranger Suarez (2-3, 3.38) is expected to face off against Yankees right-hander Will Warren (7-1, 3.22) with first pitch scheduled for 7:35 p.m.<\/p>\n
Sandoval update<\/p>\n
Left-hander Patrick Sandoval (Tommy John rehab) made his first rehab start since suffering a setback in April, throwing 1 1\/3 scoreless innings for the WooSox in Worcester. He did not allow a hit, gave up one walk and had no strikeouts while throwing 11 of his 16 pitches for strikes.<\/p>\n
Future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer also appeared in the game, making a rehab start for Toronto\u2019s Triple-A affiliate. He allowed three runs over 3 2\/3 innings with five hits, a walk and five strikeouts. He also gave up a solo home run to WooSox first baseman Matt Lloyd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This has been a difficult season for the Red Sox, but you might not know it if you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2375],"tags":[7583,5,731,141,48,2542,4,62,89,2543,1587,409,142],"class_list":["post-718443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boston-red-sox","tag-andruw-monasterio","tag-baseball","tag-ben-rice","tag-boston","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-bostonredsox","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-red-sox","tag-redsox","tag-sonny-gray","tag-willson-contreras","tag-yankees"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116700614733516596","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}