Yankees Bomb Red Sox Out of the Bronx, Postseason

NEW YORK — Lefty? Righty? The platoon-heavy Yankees will beat your frontline starter regardless of handedness, and their frontline starter will shut your offense down. That was the case, at least, in this year’s Wild Card Series between the Yankees and the Red Sox. After fireballing righty Cam Schlittler overwhelmed Boston in Tuesday night’s opener, lefty Max Fried stifled the Sox for six innings on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a lineup stacked with eight lefty hitters — and again, no Aaron Judge — pressed Red Sox manager Chad Tracy to pull starter Sonny Gray after just 70 pitches, trailing 1-0. As on Tuesday night, the Yankees broke the game open against Boston’s lefty relievers. New York cruised to a 9-2 victory and a series sweep.

As he did in Game 1 of the 2025 Wild Card Series against the Red Sox, Fried pitched brilliantly. He held Boston scoreless through the first five innings on just two hits before allowing a solo home run to Willson Contreras with two outs in the sixth. It wasn’t just Boston’s first home run of the series, it was the team’s first run in a playoff game since the sixth inning of Game 2 of last year’s series, a span of 26 2/3 innings. Fried struck out six while walking one; though he got just nine whiffs (18.8%) and a 23.5% called strike and whiff rate, he allowed just three hard-hit balls and an average exit velocity of 85.3 mph. He threw 98 pitches, and when the Yankees broke through for six runs in the bottom of the sixth inning, it was an easy call for manager Aaron Boone to go to his bullpen.

With Judge sidelined by a right calf strain, the Yankees opted to carry 16 position players and just 10 pitchers for the best-of-three series. Particularly given Boston’s lefty-heavy pitching staff, this roster construction allowed the Yankees to counter by platooning at four positions. Against lefty Payton Tolle, the only lefties in the New York lineup were Ben Rice, Cody Bellinger,Spencer Jones, and Austin Wells, but against Gray, Boone plugged in Luis Garcia Jr. for Paul Goldschmidt at first base, Jazz Chisholm Jr. for Anthony Volpe at second base, Trent Grisham in center for Heliot Ramos in right (with Jones shifting from center to right), and Ryan McMahon for Amed Rosario at third base. All four contributed to the Yankees’ 14-hit attack, with García going 3-for-5, including a solo homer off Gray; Chisholm 2-for-3 with a walk, two stolen bases, and two runs scored; Grisham 2-for-3 with a pivotal bunt single, a walk, and a run scored; and McMahon 1-for-3 with an RBI groundout. Bellinger went 2-for-4 with an RBI single, against a lefty, and a three-run homer off righty Garrett Whitlock, and Wells drove in a pair of runs on a single and sacrifice fly.

The Yankees didn’t make Gray labor quite as hard as they did Tolle from a pitch-count standpoint; Gray registered more than 14 pitches in an inning only in the third, when he threw 18. Through the first three innings, the 36-year-old righty yielded just two singles, to Chisholm and McMahon, but in the fourth, he threw a 1-2 sweeper to García that was just below the bottom of the strike zone. Gray got fantastic results with his sweeper this year, particularly against lefties, who hit .106 and slugged .213 against the pitch with a 38.8% whiff rate and just two homers in 94 plate appearances. García, however, went 7-for-13 with two doubles and two homers (1.154 SLG) against sweepers from righties. He launched this one 387 feet to right field for a towering solo shot that brought the crowd of 49,004 to life and gave the Yankees the lead.

Jones followed by chasing a curve below the zone, blooping a broken-bat single to left-center. The Boston bullpen began stirring, but George Lombard Jr. struck out swinging at a sweeper in the dirt, and Chisholm followed on the next pitch by bouncing into a 3-6-3 double play. Still, the Yankees had suddenly put the Red Sox on the clock, with 15 outs remaining in their season if they couldn’t muster a comeback.

When Grisham singled to start the fifth, Tracy got lefty Erik Miller — who had served up a solo homer to Rice upon replacing Tolle in Game 1 — up in the bullpen. A fielder’s choice off the bat of Wells erased Grisham, and then Gray struck out McMahon. Rice singled to right field, with Wells taking third, at which point Tracy pulled his starter. It felt too early, even with Gray starting his third time through the order. Bellinger, the next batter, hardly has a platoon deficit against lefties. In fact, over the past four seasons, he’s been on par with some of the top lefty hitters in the game:

To be fair, while Bellinger had gone 0-for-2 against Gray, it was on sizzling groundouts of 99.8 mph and 101.1 mph. Miller limited lefties to a .244 wOBA this year, and his slider was excellent against them, producing a 51.9% whiff rate while holding them to a .200 batting average and .300 slugging percentage. But Bellinger did a fine job of handling sliders from lefties this season, batting .282 and slugging .538 with three homers in 45 plate appearances. Miller threw a low slider to Bellinger, who chased it… and slapped it into center field for an RBI single and a 2-0 lead.

“No secret sauce for me,” Bellinger said after the game when asked about his success against lefties. “Just take it as another at-bat. I felt like when I was playing baseball coming up, I didn’t hear too much about the matchups. I was just playing baseball. So for me, it’s just another at-bat, another at-bat to execute my plan.”

García followed Bellinger with a single to left field; third base coach Luis Rojas sent Rice home, a bad decision, as Nate Eaton made an accurate peg and threw him out easily.

Understandably, Gray wasn’t happy with the hook. “I would have liked to be trusted in that moment,” he said. But Tracy saw it as a back-to-the-wall moment for the Red Sox. “When you get in spots where you’re struggling to score runs, and you’re already trailing, you feel like you got to be aggressive… So they’re getting back to the top part of the lineup, they get a couple hits against [Gray]. see if you can put [the rally] out… [But] we couldn’t stop the bleeding there.”

Gray allowed six hits in his 4 2/3 innings, striking out five. He got 12 whiffs (31.6%), including six with the sinker and three with the sweeper, but he did allow a lot of hard contact; the 14 balls the Yankees put into play against him averaged 92.6 mph, 3.4 mph above his season average, and eight were hard-hit, though only the García homer was barreled.

After the Yankees ran themselves out of the fifth inning, the Red Sox showed a flicker of life in the sixth. To that point, they had collected just two hits, a first-inning single by Contreras, and a fourth-inning hustle double by Eaton, who started in left field in place of Jarren Duran. Fried hadn’t exactly cruised; as on Tuesday night against Schlittler, Adley Rutschman worked a 10-pitch at-bat in the first inning, helping to push the Yankee starter’s pitch count to 21, but a seven-pitch second inning got it back in line. Fried threw 21 pitches in the fourth, starting with a leadoff walk of Contreras, the first time all series the Red Sox put the leadoff batter on; by the time they got their second (Contreras again, in the ninth against David Bednar), it was all over but the “Boston sucks!” shouting from the Bronx leatherlungs.

Anyway, Fried retired the first two batters in the sixth. He went to a full count against Contreras, then threw him a 96-mph four-seamer just above the strike zone. Contreras, who led the Red Sox with 27 homers this season, clubbed it for a 375-foot solo shot to right-center, trimming the lead to 2-1. The umpires decided to look it over to make sure a fan hadn’t interfered, but the home run stood. Fried completed the inning by retiring lefty Wilyer Abreu on a fly ball. Given that his 98 pitches represented his highest count since May 3, before either of his two stints on the injured list for a bone bruise in his left elbow, it was pretty clear his night was done.

For Boston, the bleeding really started in the sixth, when Tracy called upon lefty Garrett Crochet, who hadn’t appeared in a competitive game since April 25 due to shoulder capsule inflammation and a subsequent lat strain; he did not have time to rebuild to a starter’s pitch count, or to go on a rehab assignment, hence the bullpen role. Crochet, who was last year’s AL Cy Young runner-up and who baffled the Yankees in Game 1 of the 2025 Wild Card Series, began by striking out Jones swinging at a sweeper in the dirt, but the ball bounced away from Rutschman — a wild pitch — and Jones was able to beat out the throw (the umpire called him out, but a review overturned the call). When Crochet fell behind the next matter, Lombard, 2-1, Jones got a great jump and stole second, with Rutschman throwing wide to the right of the bag and into right-center for an error that sent Jones to third. Lombard brought him home on a single to right-center, Chisholm singled to right, and then Grisham beat out a slow bunt to load the bases.

Crochet had faced four batters but failed to retire any of them despite the strikeout. Tracy was forced to go to his bullpen again, this time for the righty Whitlock. Wells greeted him with a fly ball to left, deep enough to score Lombard, and then McMahon brought home Chisholm with a soft grounder to third base. After an intentional walk of Rice — who absolutely destroyed the Red Sox on Tuesday night, going 4-for-5 with a double, a pair of homers, and six RBI — Bellinger followed with a towering three-run bomb to right-center, giving the Yankees an 8-1 lead and basically sealing the series.

The two teams traded runs in the seventh, with Nick Sogard homering off Will Warren, and Chisholm working a six-pitch walk against Whitlock, stealing second and then third on a double-steal after Grisham also walked. Wells brought Chisholm home with a single. Brent Headrick and Bednar closed things out for the Yankees.

All told, it was a crushing end to a Red Sox season that saw the team skid to a 10-17 start before firing manager Alex Cora and replacing him with Tracy. They were still just 35-46 at the halfway point before climbing above .500 during a franchise-record-tying 15-game winning streak from July 3–22 and finishing 87-75.

And it was an emphatic series victory for the Yankees, with dominant starting pitching and offensive contributions up and down the lineup to compensate for the loss of their captain and top slugger. Yankees lefties hit .500 and slugged .682 in 22 plate appearances against Red Sox lefties.

“We have some guys that are good left on left,” said Boone, when asked about the Yankees’ success in such matchups. “Some of their guys aren’t necessarily lefty specialists. There are a couple that were really tough that we had some success against.”

During the regular season, the Yankees led the majors in left-on-left plate appearances with 991. They hit .241/.307/.398 for a 97 wRC+ in that context, eight points above the major league average.

“I think the experience of playing against that so much this year — they faced so many guys for months there where we were very left-handed, where in the fifth inning every day it was one lefty and then another one because that’s how they attack us,” continued Boone. “So I’d like to think some of that familiarity and reps and all that prepared us well.”

For the series, the Yankees hit .382/.436/.574 with a 17.8% strikeout rate as a team, the Red Sox just .117/.159/.250 with a 30.2% strikeout rate. Regardless of handedness, New York just flat-out hit the ball harder than Boston in this series, with an 88.7 to 84.4 advantage in average exit velocity and a 43.9% to 25.6% edge in hard-hit rate.

Coming in, there was plenty of concern about Boston’s lack of offensive production in September; they hit just .219/.295/.356 (81 wRC+) and scored 2.96 runs per game. Still, at least at the start of the series, their lineup was as whole as it had been all year, with Trevor Story and Roman Anthony back from lengthy absences due to injuries, and Rutschman finally swinging the bat as well as he had post-trade. But the loss of Anthony to a right hand injury in the middle of Game 1, and the continued struggles of the lineup against two top-flight starters who brought their A-games, forced Tracy to pull his starters early. Those moves backfired, as the Yankees absolutely pounced. Now they’ll move on to face the Rays in the Division Series, starting on Saturday.

Source