Yankees cruise to 9-2 win in Game 2, send Red Sox home for second straight season

· Yahoo Sports

For the second year in a row, the New York Yankees ended the season of their rivals. While 2025 was a dramatic three-game series that saw them come back after a Game 1 loss, this season was a lot more emphatic, with the Yankees winning 9-2 on Wednesday to send the Boston Red Sox home for the season.

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Game 2 in the Bronx unfolded a lot like Game 1 did on Tuesday. The first few innings were a masterful pitching duel between Max Fried for the Yankees and Sonny Gray for the Red Sox. Through the first three and a half innings, there were only four total hits, seven strikeouts, and neither team had pushed a run across.

Then, just as they did in Game 1 of the AL Wild Card series, the Yankees drew first blood in Game 2 when Luis Garcia Jr., who the Yankees acquired from the Nationals at the trade deadline, took a sweeper from Sonny Gray and deposited it into the right field bleachers to give New York a 1-0 lead.

Gray would recover to retire the next three batters, and then two of the first three batters in the fifth inning before Ben Rice singled to right field, advancing Austin Wells to third. From there, it was deja vu in the Bronx.

After Red Sox manager Chad Tracy pulled starting pitcher Payton Tolle in Game 1 after 4.2 innings and went to left-hander Erik Miller out of the pen, the Red Sox manager decided to pull Gray at 4.2 innings and go to Miller again. On Tuesday, Ben Rice crushed a solo home run off Miller. On Wednesday, Cody Bellinger laced a single off of him to score a run.

The damage could have been worse too. The next batter, Garcia Jr., singled into left field, but the Yankees gifted the Red Sox an out with a poor send from the third base coach Luis Rojas. Rice, who hadn’t even touched third base when left fielder Nate Eaton fielded the ball, was easily thrown out at home, and the Red Sox were somehow down just 2-0.

Then, in the top of the sixth inning, Willson Contreras put the Red Sox on the board with a home run to right-center field that barely scraped its way over the fence. For the first time in the entire series, it felt like the Red Sox may have had a fighting chance to pull out a win.

That moment was short-lived.

While the Yankees trade deadline acquisition hit a major home run, the Red Sox deadline acquisition cost his team a run. In the bottom of the sixth inning, Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet came in for his first appearance since April 25th. The left-hander has been battling a lat injury all season, but has been throwing simulated games in the hopes of returning for the postseason.

His first pitch was a 97 mph sinker to Spencer Jones, and he quickly worked the count in his favor and struck out Jones on a sweeper in the dirt, but catcher Adley Rutschman, who the Red Sox acquired from the Orioles for a huge price at the deadline, was slow to corral the ball and throw to first, which allowed Jones to beat the throw. Two pitches later, Jones stole second base, and Rutschman threw the ball into center field. One pitch later, George Lombard laced a single to center, and the Yankees had a 3-1 lead.

Yankee Stadium came to life again, and Crochet went from rehabbing on a quiet spring training complex field in Florida to standing on the mound in the Bronx in front of a rabid crowd. After another single to Jazz Chisholm and then a bunt single by Trent Grisham, Crochet was removed from the game with the bases loaded and no outs.

Another bullpen decision by Chad Tracy gone horribly awry, but it wouldn’t be the last one of the series.

Tracy immediately went to Garrett Whitlock, a key member of the back end of the Red Sox bullpen, which has been really good this season. On the surface, the move made sense. The Red Sox were down 3-1 and needed big outs to remain in the game. In practice, things did not go as planned.

Austin Wells hit a sacrifice fly, and then a slow groundball from Ryan McMahon plated the fifth run of the day for the Yankees. With a base open, Tracy opted to intentionally walk Rice to bring up Cody Bellinger, who crushed a home run to right field on a hanging chanegup, and another huge home run for the Yankees broke the game wide open.

Bellinger finished 2-for-5 with four RBI, while Garcia Jr. went 3-for-5 with the home run in his first playoff game for the Yankees. The only player on the Red Sox who had two hits in the entire series was Contreras, who went 2-for-2 with two walks and the home run tonight.

Despite the 18 runs the Yankees scored in the two-game series, the Red Sox had two pretty solid outings from their starting pitchers. Gray ended his day allowing two runs on six hits in 4.2 innings, while throwing 71% of his pitches for strikes and registering a 17% swinging strike rate. It was a solid outing, but it didn’t match up to Fried, who finished the day allowing one run on three hits in six innings while striking out six and walking one. He didn’t throw as many strikes as Gray or produce as many whiffs, but he made the big pitches when it counted.

In six games as a member of the Yankees, since New York outbid Boston for Fried’s services two years ago, the left-hander has a 1.24 ERA against Boston, allowing just five runs in 36.1 innings while posting a 41/13 K/BB ratio.

For the Yankees, there is certainly great satisfaction in dispatching their bitter rival for the second straight postseason. However, there may be even more cause for celebration in knowing that their captain, Aaron Judge, will likely be able to re-join them for the Divisional Series against the Tampa Bay Rays.

For the Red Sox, their season will be defined by extremes. They had a disastrous start to the season that led to the firing of almost half their coaching staff, including manager Alex Cora, and saw them fall to 14 games under .500. They then put together a franchise-record 15-game winning streak and went on a 27-3 stretch that turned around their entire season. Unfortunately, their bats went ice cold in September and never woke up for the playoffs, while rookie manager Chad Tracy did a tremendous job in getting his team to the postseason but couldn’t pull the right strings once they got there.

The Red Sox will now begin to think about adding an impact hitter and determining the health of star outfielder Roman Anthony, who didn't play in this game due to an ongoing hand injury, while the Yankees will think about how to get past the Rays, who bested them for the AL East crown this weekend.

That series will begin on Saturday at Tropicana Field at 6:30 pm ET on TBS and HBO Max.

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