The Yankees didn’t just beat the Red Sox. They flattened them.
New York closed out a two-game Wild Card Series sweep Wednesday night with a 9-2 win over Boston, stacking it on top of Tuesday’s 9-0 rout. The result was a brutal 18-2 margin across the series, and it sends the Yankees into the ALDS with momentum, confidence and a pitching staff that made Boston look stuck in mud.
For a while Wednesday, it looked like the Red Sox might at least make things interesting. Willson Contreras homered to end a long postseason scoreless streak and cut the Yankees’ lead to 2-1. Boston had a pulse.
Then the sixth inning arrived and took everything away.
New York put up six runs in the frame, with Cody Bellinger delivering the big blow: a three-run homer that turned a manageable game into a runaway. Bellinger finished with four RBIs, exactly the kind of middle-order punch the Yankees needed to finish the job. Luis García Jr. also made his mark in his first postseason start, going 3-for-3 and launching a homer in the fourth inning.
That was the story of the series for New York. The Yankees never needed one bat to carry them.
They kept stacking contributions, one through the order, until Boston ran out of answers. By the time Bellinger connected, the outcome felt all but sealed.
The pitching side was just as suffocating.
After the Yankees blanked Boston in Game 1, Max Fried took over Wednesday and never let the Red Sox get comfortable. He worked six innings and allowed only three hits. Across the two games, Boston managed just seven hits in 60 at-bats and struck out 18 times.
That’s not just a strong series. That’s a shutdown.
Whenever Boston seemed ready to build something, New York shut the door. When the Red Sox finally scratched across a run Wednesday, the Yankees answered with that six-run sixth. When Boston needed its biggest names to spark a rally, Fried and the bullpen kept them quiet.
The Yankees head into the next round looking dangerous, even if it’s only two games into October. They scored 18 runs and gave up two.
They got dominant starting pitching. They got production from multiple spots in the lineup.
And they got the kind of swing from Bellinger that can define a short series.
Now the challenge gets harder, as it always does in October. But for two nights, the Yankees looked like a team that could be a real problem for whoever is left in the bracket.
Boston’s season is done. New York’s is just getting started.
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Grays own reaction underscored the tension behind the decision-making. He said he wanted to keep going and believed he was still effective even as the lineup came around for a third look, while Willson Contreras suggested the call to pull Gray may have leaned too heavily on data instead of experience. For a Red Sox team that could not afford any cracks in the pitching plan, the choice to go to the bullpen ended up looking like the biggest one of all. [Read more 🡒]