Visits: 3
BOSTON — Narratives, when they are weighted with history, are not easily rewritten.
So even though the Boston Red Sox have won three World Series titles to the Yankees’ one in the last 14 seasons and even though they sprinted past everyone else in baseball with a franchise-record 108 victories this year, an uneasy feeling had settled in here as the visitors from the Bronx arrived this week.
The Yankees, after all, were looking like the dream-wreckers of old, after their cartoon-size sluggers, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, clubbed home runs while a frothy crowd urged them on to a wild-card playoff romp over Oakland on Wednesday.
And with Red Sox ace Chris Sale nursing a sore shoulder the last two months, and his velocity dipping, and with the Boston bullpen in a perpetually shaky state, the threads for a Boston unraveling were in plain sight as the two teams began their American League division series on Friday night.
But the Red Sox fought off any concerns and prevailed in Game 1, riding an early three-run homer from J.D. Martinez, plus a stout performance by Sale, and then surviving their usual bullpen jitters for a 5-4 victory.
“I thought we did a really good job of pecking away, a good job of giving ourselves opportunities and just ran out of time,” Yankees Manager Aaron Boone said. “We just couldn’t get that back-breaking hit.”
This is the first time these historic rivals have met in the playoffs since their back-to-back American League Championship Series classics in 2003 and 2004: Boone, then a Yankees player, hit a walk-off Game 7 homer in the first of those showdowns, and the Red Sox rallied from a three-games-to-none deficit the following year, on the way to their first World Series title in 86 years.
Friday’s loss in this best-of-five series should do little to rattle the Yankees, who rallied from a 5-0 deficit to make the contest close and will now send Masahiro Tanaka to the mound for Game 2 on Saturday against the Red Sox left-hander David Price. The Yankees, it should be remembered, lost the first two games of their 2017 division series, in Cleveland, before rebounding to win the next three.
Of more immediate concern for New York may be the condition of center fielder Aaron Hicks, who left in the fourth inning on Friday with right hamstring tightness. A similar injury on the left side sidelined him for three games last week; he is expected to undergo a magnetic resonance imaging exam on Saturday.
Hicks, an athletic switch-hitter with a keen eye and blossoming power, was in the No. 3 spot, between Judge and Stanton, in the Game 1 lineup.
When Hicks departed, the Yankees were already down by five runs. But they had their chances once Sale left in the sixth inning. Hurting their comeback efforts were: a strikeout by Gleyber Torres with the bases loaded to end the top of the sixth, a groundout by Gregorius with two runners aboard to end the top of the seventh and a harmless fly ball by Andrew McCutchen — who represented the tying run — to end the top of the eighth.
Judge homered to lead off the ninth against Red Sox closer Craig Kimbrel, but Kimbrel fired a fastball past Brett Gardner for one strikeout, buckled Stanton’s knees with a curve for another and then blew a fastball past Luke Voit for the final out.
In all, the Yankees went 1 for 7 with runners in scoring position and stranded 10 runners. A comeback that seemed within their grasp fell short.
The need for a comeback arose right when the game started. When Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman acquired left-hander J.A. Happ from the Toronto Blue Jays in late July, it was simply to fortify a shaky rotation. Yet it was hard to miss a sweetener in the deal — Happ had a career 2.98 earned run average at Fenway Park.
But that track record didn’t amount to much on Friday night.
Happ struck out Mookie Betts to begin the bottom of the first, but the inning unraveled quickly. Andrew Benintendi lashed a single to left-center, and Steve Pearce was treated as if he were David Ortiz — which he may as well be against Happ, with six career home runs in 32 at-bats, including a grand slam here last week.
“If I don’t start Pearce,” Manager Alex Cora said. “I might get fired.”
So, even with imposing Martinez on deck, Happ walked Pearce on four pitches to put two runners aboard. Martinez dug in and looked at a pair of fastballs in off the plate. Then he saw another one to his liking and ripped a line drive down the line that just cleared the Green Monster to put Boston up by 3-0.
When Betts doubled off the wall in center to begin the third, and Benintendi followed with a bunt single, that was all for Happ. Of his 263 career starts, including the playoffs, only three have been shorter.
“Execution wasn’t as sharp as it’s been,” Happ said. “That’s the reason I always stress trying to get strike one, and there were times I wasn’t very good at that tonight. The big hit cost me.”
Chad Green replaced Happ, and Pearce hit his first pitch — a fastball — into left field to bring home Betts. Martinez followed with a deep drive to right that Judge retrieved on the warning track, allowing Benintendi to advance to third, from where he scored on Xander Bogaerts’s fly ball to right.
The contrast between the two starting pitchers was striking.
Sale, with his fastball riding around 95 miles per hour, a few ticks off his peak form, had struck a defiant tone on Thursday, saying it did not matter how hard he was throwing, he would still figure out a way to pitch effectively.
“If I take the mound I expect to win,” Sale said. “I don’t care what I have on a given day, I should be able to find a way with whatever I have.”
He was true to his word. The Yankees worked counts, troubled him for five singles and two walks, but also struck out eight times in his five and one-third innings.
Sale walked off the field after Stanton singled with one out in the sixth to put runners at first and second, but few leads — even a 5-0 advantage — are comfortable with the Red Sox bullpen at work.
And so the Yankees crept within range when Voit singled in a run and Didi Gregorius brought in another with a groundout off reliever Ryan Brasier. The Yankees had a chance to do far more damage, but Brandon Workman — with the Fenway crowd on its feet — struck out Torres on a full-count breaking ball.
Torres slammed his bat down, knowing that he had swung at ball four.
The Yankees added a run in the seventh, but they regretted not making more of loading the bases with no outs. Matt Barnes struck out Stanton, nearly got Voit to ground into a double play — only a hard slide at second by Gardner prevented it — and then retired Gregorius.
The 5-3 score became 5-4 in the ninth, and Red Sox fans were squirming. But ultimately, they rejoiced.