Well, the second game of this three-game series was not as fun as the first. The Yankees lost 5-3 to the Red Sox on Saturday night — it was a FOX game in Fenway Park, so no surprise they lost! — but did come mighty close to tying things up in the ninth. This was one of those “sometimes you just get beat during the course of a 162-game season” games. It happens.
Deja Boo
For the second straight night, Alex Rodriguez cut through the Fenway Park boos with a first inning home run to give the Yankees a quick 1-0 lead. Friday night’s dinger was a moonshot that nearly literally left the building. The homer on Saturday night was more of a line drive right into the Green Monster seats. I thought it was going to clank off the top of the wall at first, but nope, over it went. First inning runs on the road are just dandy.
The Yankees had opportunities to score again in the second and third, but they ran themselves out of the inning each time. Chase Headley (batter) and Chris Young (runner) teamed up for a strike ’em out, throw ’em out double play in the second, then Jacoby Ellsbury got picked off first to end the third. Suboptimal! They didn’t score again until Ellsbury took Eduardo Rodriguez deep for a solo homer in the sixth inning. A lot happened between the two solo homers.
Comfy Swings
For the second straight start, there were an awful lot of comfy swings against Ivan Nova. And why not? He can’t miss any bats right now. He got five swings and misses out of 86 pitches in this game after getting just four swings and misses out of 81 pitches last time out. That’s nine whiffs in his last 167 pitches (5.4%). Not good! The league average is 9.7%. Nova doesn’t have an out-pitch right now, four starts back from Tommy John surgery.
The Red Sox scored their first run thanks to a John Ryan Murphy error — he threw a ball into center field, allowing Alejandro De Aza to take third on the steal attempt and then score on Ryan Hanigan’s ground out — but the next two runs were all Nova. David Ortiz hit a hanger to left field for a double then Hanley Ramirez hammered a high fastball into the home bullpen for a two-run homer. Nova doesn’t have much margin for error right now and neither was a good pitch.
The fourth run scored after Nova had been removed from the game. He struck out Mike Napoli to start the seventh, gave up another single to De Aza, then got Hanigan to hit into a fielder’s choice. Mookie Betts lifted a catchable fly ball to right field that Young turned into a triple with a, uh, circuitous route. The Statcast route efficiency was negative, probably. Adam Warren was on the mound for that one. Nova was out of the game after getting Hanigan because Joe Girardi didn’t want him facing Betts a fourth time.
Nova was charged with four runs on eight hits in 6.2 innings. He struck out three and, for the second time in his four starts, got more ground ball outs (eleven) than fly ball outs (six). Could have been better, could have been worse. I didn’t love the decision to send Nova back out for the seventh — two of his three outs in the sixth were rockets Brett Gardner ran down — but what can you do. Nova’s touch and go for now. Coming back from elbow reconstruction is a bumpy road.
The Late Innings
I wouldn’t say the game got out of hand in the seventh, but it got just far enough out of reach. It all happened with two outs too. Young misplayed the Betts fly ball into a triple to give Boston an insurance run, then the shift burned the Yankees (surprise!) when Xander Bogaerts poked Warren’s slider to the right side of the infield for an RBI infield single. Everyone in the park knew a down-and-away slider was coming, yet for some reason the Yankees had the second baseman playing up the middle. No chance to turn the routine soft grounder into an out. Blargh.
That gave the Red Sox a more comfortable 5-2 lead and it could have been more too. Warren faced three batters and didn’t retire any of them, though, to be fair, a catchable fly ball and a weak grounder were not turned into outs behind him. Chasen Shreve came in, walked Ortiz to load the bases, then threw gas by Hanley to end the inning. That was a tough at-bat. Nine pitches, Shreve showed him everything he had, then caught him looking for a splitter with a fastball. The score remained 5-2.
The Yankees got a run back in the eighth because Ellsbury and Gardner are awesome. Ellsbury singled with two outs and Gardner drove him in with a double off the Green Monster. Love those two. Young managed to double off Koji Uehara in the ninth to bring the tying run to the plate, and, after Headley struck out, Brian McCann crushed a ball about 400 feet … to the triangle in dead center for the 27th out. Definitely the wrong part of the park. So it goes.
Leftovers
Bullpen Bryan Mitchell is pretty awesome. Shreve started the eighth, gave up a single to Pablo Sandoval, then Mitchell escaped the jam with a grounder, a fly ball, and a strikeout. PitchFX says he averaged 97.0 mph with his four-seamer. Golly. I say let Mitchell continue to do that the rest of the season then put him back in the rotation next year. He’ll be mighty useful if the sub-100 pitch count thing continues in the second half.
Gardner (double), A-Rod (homer), Headley (single), and Didi Gregorius (single) each had one hit while Ellsbury (single, homer) and Young (single, double) each had two. Teixeira drew a walk while the catching tandem of Murphy and McCann each went 0-for-2 with a strikeout. McCann came close to tying the game though! Alas, it was not meant to be. Those dopey base-running mistakes in the second and third innings hurt.
And finally, Rob Refsnyder went 0-for-3 with a double play, a fly out, and a ground out in his MLB debut. He made a nice but fairly routine double play pivot in the second, and wasn’t really tested with any tough plays the rest of the game. The shift screwed up the Bogaerts infield single in the seventh and Sandoval slid in hard to spoil a potential 1-4-3 double play in the eighth. Nothing Refsnyder could do there.
Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
Here are the box score and video highlights for your perusal. Also check out the updated standings and our fun Bullpen Workload and Announcer Standings pages. Now here’s the loss probability graph:
Source: FanGraphs
Up Next
It’s the final game of the first half and, believe it or not, the Yankees and Red Sox are not playing the ESPN Sunday Night Game. All hail the baseball broadcasting gods for that. Nathan Eovaldi and Wade Miley will be the pitching matchup.
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