BOSTON — Back and forth. Back and forth. The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees traded blows like two heavyweight fighters Saturday night.
The score was tied five times. Boston came within one strike of winning in the bottom of the ninth but saw the game end in a brutal 10th-inning, 11-8 loss in front of a sellout crowd of 36,711.
On a day when the Red Sox acquired catcher Danny Jansen to lengthen the lineup, the deflating defeat further highlighted an even more glaring need in Boston’s bullpen, one that’s in tatters without injured late-inning relievers Justin Slaten and Chris Martin.
For the eighth time in the past eight games since the All-Star break, the Red Sox blew a lead in the seventh inning or later. Saturday marked the third time they’d done so twice in the same game.
The Red Sox’s bullpen is short-handed, but manager Alex Cora wouldn’t make excuses.
“The only thing we’re waiting for is for tomorrow to show up and then play the game,” he said when asked about needing reinforcements. “Like I said before, we’re not gonna get caught up on the talk of this and that. Our job is to go out there and play hard every day and let the front office do their job, and we’re gonna do our job and keep winning games. We’ve got two more days of this. Wherever we’re at, we have a good baseball team.”
The offense undoubtedly did its part, battling back from a 3-0 deficit in the first inning to tie the score, then jumping ahead 5-4 by the end of the second, 6-5 by the end of the fifth and 8-6 by the end of the seventh. But the Yankees kept punching back.
Starter Kutter Crawford lasted just 4 2/3 innings, allowing five runs, forcing Cora to turn to his beleaguered bullpen early.
“It’s what’s going to keep me up at night, not being able to give my team a full five or even six,” Crawford said. “I was trying to be very focused on eating some of those innings up, and just frustrating not being able to do that.”
After the Red Sox pulled ahead 8-6 in the seventh on Tyler O’Neill’s second homer of the game and a David Hamilton RBI double, the Yankees tacked on a run in the eighth before Cora turned to closer Kenley Jansen in the ninth to try to secure a one-run lead. With two outs and a runner on third, Trent Grisham smacked a ball to left-center. O’Neill in left drifted back and appeared to lose the ball, with it hitting the wall and scoring the tying run.
“It hit high off the wall, unfortunately,” O’Neill said. “It was just out of my reach. I don’t know.”
Down to his final strike, Trent Grisham ties it for the @Yankees! pic.twitter.com/az1bZqUteo
— MLB (@MLB) July 28, 2024
The Red Sox couldn’t muster anything in the bottom of the ninth. In another example of the state of their taxed bullpen, Cora turned to Chase Anderson in the 10th. After trading James Paxton on Friday, the Red Sox moved Cooper Criswell to the bullpen, but Cora said he chose Anderson over Criswell in the 10th to keep Criswell ready for Sunday.
“Where we’re at in the bullpen, we need Criswell tomorrow to go probably more than two innings,” Cora said. “(Greg) Weissert, too. Like I always say, we have to manage today, tomorrow, the series, the week, the month and where we’re at right now. It didn’t make sense to use him in a short stint so we’ll be ready tomorrow.”
Anderson nearly escaped the 10th inning before it fell apart. He allowed a one-out single before walking Aaron Judge to load the bases. Austin Wells hit a sinking liner that O’Neill dove for and caught, but his throw to the plate was late, allowing the go-ahead run to score. The game remained within reach until Gleyber Torres crushed a two-run double off Anderson for the three-run lead.
The offense did its part most of the night but still stranded 11 runners. In a wasted opportunity in the second, Ceddanne Rafaela was caught idling off third base talking with coach Kyle Hudson as the ball came into the infield, and he was tagged out. In the next at-bat, Masataka Yoshida hit a single to drive in Jarren Duran from second base. Rafaela would have scored too, giving the Red Sox a much-needed extra run.
With 59 games remaining, there are no guarantees of a postseason berth for the Red Sox. They sit 5 1/2 games back of first place in the American League East and one game back of the third wild-card spot. Time and again they’ve shown they can compete, but they’ve also made too many careless and costly mistakes in the field and on the mound.
Two days remain before the trade deadline to bolster a club in need of reinforcements.
(Photo of Juan Soto scoring on Gleyber Torres’ double in the 10th as Chase Anderson looks on: Gregory Fisher / USA Today)
