The Red Sox had John Lackey on the mound and hoped that his strong pitching would be enough to get them the series win. Lackey didn’t have his best performance, but he did have the Sox offense behind him en route to both a win for him and for the team. This is the kind of hot hitting team we expected to see all season long and hope we continue to see in the coming weeks and months.
The Sox got on the scoreboard first in the 2nd inning when Stephen Drew hit an RBI single to score Napoli from 3rd base. Sox 1-0. In the 3rd inning David Ortiz did what David Ortiz does and hit a 3 run bomb to have the Sox up 4-0. Lackey allowed the Yankees on the scoreboard for the first time in the bottom of the 3rd when Jeter hit an RBI single. Sox 4-1. In the 4th the Yankees made the game too close for comfort when Teixeira and Beltran both hit solo HRs to have the Sox clinging to a 4-3 lead.
The Sox chased Yankee starter Chase Whitley in the 5th when he issued a leadoff walk to Jackie Bradley Jr. However the Yankee reliever Kelley didn’t get the job done when he walked the next two batters and then gave up a 2 RBI single to Pedey to have the Sox up 6-3. The Sox scored their final run of the inning when Nava scored from 3rd when Pedey got caught in a run down, but kept the Yankees infielder distracted long enough for Nava to sneak into home. Sox 7-3.
Lackey wasn’t sharp and continued to struggle some in his outing by giving up the final runs of the game in the 5th. Lackey gave up a triple to Ichiro and then an RBI double to Gardner to bring him home. Ellsbury then scored the final Yankee run when he hit a sac groundout to score Gardner from 3rd base. Sox 7-5. The Sox offense got one of those runs back in the 6th when Pedey hit an RBI sac fly to score Mookie Betts from 3rd base. Speaking of Mookie Betts, he had a pretty decent first major league game last night. Betts went 1 for 3 with a walk and a run scored. Not too shabby. He sure did look comfortable on the big league stage.
Lackey was done after 5 innings and handed the ball over to the bullpen. Lackey’s pitching line for the night was 96 pitches, 5 IP, 6 H, 5 R, 4 ER, 1 BB and 2 Ks. It wasn’t a great outing, but was good enough to win. Burke Badenhop came out and pitched a scoreless 6th inning followed by Miller in the 7th and Tazawa in the 8th. The Red Sox bullpen has continued to look like a huge asset to the ball club. Koji Uehara came out in the 9th and had his usual 1-2-3 shutdown inning to get the save and the win.
Red Sox 8 Yankees 5 BOXSCORE
WP: Lackey (9-5) LP: Whitley (3-2) SV: Uehara (18)
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