THE BEST RED SOX TEAM EVAH! ... The Sox pummel the Yankees
#9
April 10, 2018
... The Red Sox came into today's game riding an eight-game win streak
while also fighting the silly narrative that what they’ve done to
start the season didn’t matter because of their opponents. This
should put that talk to rest. Going up against the Yankees ace and
one of the best pitchers in the American League, the top of the Red
Sox lineup completely owned Luis Severino this game out of reach in
a painful manner. All together, the top three of Mookie Betts, Andrew
Benintendi and Hanley Ramirez went 8-9 with eight runs scored and
nine runs batted in. The offense was incredible and the obvious
focus, but Chris Sale also went out there and did some Chris
Sale things, too. It was exactly the kind of game this team was
looking for against the preseason division favorites in Boston’s
first game without Xander Bogaerts.
One of the
focuses for Alex Cora and the Red Sox this year has been to jump on opponents
early and get out to early leads. It’s why he has Betts and Benintendi at the
top of his lineup, and that paid off in a big way. The Red Sox got to Severino right away, and Betts got things started by taking an early pitch and
smacking it off the Monster for a leadoff double.
After Benintendi drew a walk, Hanley Ramirez put a single through the middle and just
like that the Red Sox had a 1-0 lead before recording an out. It seemed like a
chance to put forth a big rally, but they couldn’t get anything else. J.D.
Martinez continued his tough stretch with an ugly strikeout, and after Rafael Devers walked to load the bases the Sox got two straight outs to end the rally.
They came right back in the second inning
and got going again, with Christian Vazquez and Betts each reaching on singles
to bring Benintendi up with two on and one out. The outfielder got a pitch to
hit and he smoked it into the right field corner for a two-run triple, and then
he’d come in when Ramirez reached on a broken-bat, bloop single. After two, the
Red Sox had an early 4-0 lead and it was hard not to feel good about the lineup
against the Yankees ace. The top of the lineup just wouldn’t let up from there.
In the fourth, Betts drew a walk, Benintendi moved him to third with a double
off the Monster and Ramirez knocked in a run with a sacrifice fly to open up a
5-0 lead.
Fast-forward to the sixth, with Severino freshly out of the game and Tommy
Kahnle heading to the mound, and the Red Sox decided to stop playing nice. Of
course, it started with the top of the order. This time around, Betts doubled
before Benintendi and Ramirez each drew walks, bringing Martinez up for a chance
to blow the game open with one swing. He just missed
a grand slam where the Monster meets the center field wall, but the two-run
double was a nice consolation prize for the struggling slugger. The Red Sox
ended the inning with 14 runs on the night and the outburst included a nice
little Mookie Betts grand slam.
While all of this was
happening, Sale was doing his thing against this vaunted Yankees lineup. The
first inning was a little scary even though he allowed only one single and
struck out two Giancarlo Stanton. With his first few pitches his slider just
wasn’t working, and he went with his fastball exclusively through that first
inning and almost entirely through a quick second inning as well.
From there, however, the slider came back and Sale was as
dominant as ever. There was still a little bit of spotty command here and there. The fact is, Sale was incredible. He made one rough pitch in
the fifth when Aaron Judge took a fastball belt-high and crushed it over the
center field wall. Other than that, Sale mostly breezed through the Yankees
lineup. The ace ended up being taken out of the game after six innings and just
87 pitches, but it seems almost certain that he would have come back in for the
seventh had the Red Sox not been extremely rude to the Yankees in the bottom of
the sixth when they poured nine runs on. Over his six innings, Sale allowed just
the one run on eight hits (a misleadingly high number as a lot of these hits
came on bloops or just general weak contact) no walks and eight strikeouts.
That left it up to the bullpen to not squander a
13-run lead, which is just about as impossible as it sounds. No worries, they
didn’t even come close to doing it. Joe Kelly did allow a runner but eventually
got an inning-ending double play and Brian Johnson fought a bloody nose to throw
a couple of shutout innings to finish this one off.
GAME RECAP
F E N
W A Y
P A R
K
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
R
H
E
NEW YORK YANKEES
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
10
2
BOSTON RED SOX
1
3
0
1
0
9
0
0
x
14
11
0
W-Chris Sale (1-0)
L-Luis Severino (2-1)
Attendance - 32,357
