Yankees 11, Red Sox 6: Yankees Clinch Home-Field Advantage for the Wild-Card Playoff Game

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BOSTON — The Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox, 11-6, on Friday to clinch home-field advantage for the American League wild-card playoff game against the Oakland Athletics. The game will be held Wednesday at 8 p.m. at Yankee Stadium.

The winner will play the Boston Red Sox in the best-of-five division series beginning Friday. This will be the second consecutive year the Yankees have hosted the single-game playoff.

The Yankees beat the Minnesota Twins, 8-4, last year in the Bronx, coming back after the Twins took a 3-0 lead in the first inning against Luis Severino.

The Yankees went on to beat the Cleveland Indians in a division series and then lost to the Houston Astros in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series.

Friday’s victory was the Yankees’ 99th of the season, their highest total since they won 103 in 2009, the year of their last World Series championship.

The A’s went into their road game against the Los Angeles Angels with 96 wins, still having a chance to match the Yankees’ record. But the tiebreaker criteria favor the Yankees and guarantees that the wild-card game will be in the Bronx.

In Friday’s win, Aaron Hicks, Gary Sanchez, Luke Voit and Aaron Judge hit home runs to give the Yankees 264 this season, tying the 1997 Seattle Mariners for the most by one team.

The Yankees had an encouraging moment well before the start of Friday’s game. On their charter flight from Tampa, Fla., to Boston on Thursday night, Manager Aaron Boone spoke to the team trainer Steve Donohue, who informed Boone that Didi Gregorius, the starting shortstop, had recovered from the torn cartilage in his right wrist.

Donohue also told Boone that Aaron Hicks, who had missed three games with a strained left hamstring, was ready to go. Almost immediately, Boone began writing out the next game’s lineup with those two players included.

“It was nice to write all those names down,” Boone said Friday, adding, “I think there’s that sigh of relief and excitement that sets in.”

Gregorius injured his wrist sliding home headfirst with the winning run in last Saturday’s 3-2 win over the Baltimore Orioles. It was feared that Gregorius could miss the rest of the season. But he responded well to a cortisone shot and was in the lineup at shortstop for Friday’s game, the first in a three-game series against the Red Sox.

With the regular season ending on Sunday, Boone was relieved that Gregorius could play in at least a handful of games before Wednesday’s showdown with the A’s.

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Gregorius took regular batting practice and infield practice on Friday afternoon and afterward said he felt no limitations or soreness.

“It feels fine,” he said. “I wouldn’t be playing if it didn’t feel right.”

Besides being pleased by the return of two vital players, Boone was happy to have some balance back in a righty-centric batting order. Gregorius bats left-handed; Hicks is a switch hitter.

“Those two players are so important to us and such quality two-way players,” Boone said.

Boone said that even if the Yankees clinched on Friday night, he still intended to put Gregorius and Hicks into the next two games to help them regain their timing, in case that was needed. But he said they might play only parts of those games. The same would go for many of the other starters.

Soon after Gregorius was hurt, he expressed optimism that he would be able to come back before the end of the regular season and be ready for the playoffs. But for a day or two, that was uncertain, at least for the manager.

“We felt from the start that it was very much up in the air, the original diagnosis,” Boone said. “Once we got the cortisone shot, he knew it wasn’t a certainty. To see how he responded right away the first day, the second day, I knew it was going well. But we didn’t want to get ahead of ourselves.”

Boone added that the return of Gregorius and Hicks helped the depth of the Yankees’ bench, which will have players like Brett Gardner, Luke Voit, Neil Walker and Adeiny Hechavarria, who filled in for Gregorius, ready to contribute.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: Yanks Get Gregorius Back and Gain Wild-Card Edge. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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