Eight hits. Four walks. Seventeen runners left on base. The New York Yankees had a perfectly capable game going Friday night at Yankee Stadium and still lost 5-3 to the Boston Red Sox to drop Game 1 of this weekend series.
Ben Rice gave them a first-inning lead -- HR #18 on the season, a 377-foot solo shot off Sonny Gray that went the way of right field like he'd been planning it for a week. The Stadium liked that. For a few innings, it felt like the Yankees might actually make something of it. They didn't. Seventeen left on base will do that to a ballgame.
The Fifth Inning Was the Game
Ryan Weathers had been imperfect but functional through four innings, working around a couple of crooked numbers but keeping the Yankees in striking distance. Spencer Jones' RBI in the fourth had cut it to 3-2, and there was a real moment where it felt like the Bombers were going to push through.
Then Willson Contreras stepped up in the top of the fifth with runners on base, and that was that.
Two-run homer. 5-2 Red Sox. Weathers walked off with a loss and a 2-4 record, and the Yankees spent the rest of the night trying to dig back out of a hole they couldn't quite reach the top of.
Trent Grisham answered right back with a solo shot in the bottom of the fifth to make it 5-3. (Credit where it's due -- Grisham didn't give up on the inning.) But Gray steadied himself, Paul Blackburn threw two clean innings of relief, and Aroldis Chapman had himself an interesting ninth. The door closed anyway.
Contreras Earns This One
Three RBI. Two hits. One home run that ended the argument. Contreras went 2-for-4 with an RBI single in the third and the two-run bomb in the fifth, and if you're looking for the guy who beat the Yankees last night, that's him.
The third inning was when this thing turned. Connor Wong singled. Jarren Duran singled. Wilyer Abreu drove in a run, Contreras drove in another, and suddenly Weathers was looking at a 2-1 deficit instead of a lead. Then Andruw Monasterio hit his first home run of the season in the fourth to make it 3-1. (His first. Of the year. At Yankee Stadium. Sure.) Jones' RBI single got one back, and then Contreras finished it.
Sonny Gray wasn't dominant -- 6.1 innings, 8 hits, 3 ER, 2 home runs allowed -- but when you've got a lineup leaving seventeen men on base, you don't have to be dominant. You just have to be good enough. Gray was good enough, picked up his seventh win, and is now 7-1 with a 3.20 ERA. That's a hell of a resume to be building on a Red Sox team sitting 8 games under .500.
Rice Keeps Carrying It
This is the part of the recap where we should be celebrating, and we kind of can't -- but Ben Rice had himself a game.
Three-for-four. A home run, his 18th of the season. He's now the outright team leader in long balls with Judge shelved (rib stress fracture, out since late April), and he's been hitting like someone who doesn't need a lineup around him to be dangerous. The problem Friday was that the lineup around him was simultaneously very active and completely ineffective. Eight hits, four walks, and 17 LOB is a Yankees kind of failure -- you see all the pieces, they just don't connect.
Spencer Jones went 3-for-3 with a double and an RBI in his own right. Two of the best hitters in the lineup combined for six hits and you still lose. That's not a talent problem. That's a situational hitting problem.
Weathers has pitched better this season and he's capable of a bounceback. The 2 HR he surrendered -- to Monasterio and Contreras -- were the difference, and giving up back-to-back big swings while protecting a lead tends to be fatal. It was. Blackburn was good in relief (2.0 IP, nothing), and Chapman closed with his usual drama -- two walks, one strikeout, one save. S (13). Whatever works.
One More Thing About Those 17 Runners
The Red Sox turned two double plays. The Yankees ran into two innings that ended with multiple men on base and no runs to show for it. It's the kind of game that makes you wonder what the lineup looks like when Judge comes back, and then you wonder how much the Yankees need that answer to be soon.
Game 2 is Saturday. Seventeen is a hard number to repeat, even for this team.
Jimmy writes the Bronx Pinstripes game recap after every Yankees game. Beat-reporter pacing, fan's heartbeat. He calls opposing players by last name and has no patience for dead-air innings.
