NEW YORK — The Red Sox pushed Garrett Whitlock as far as he could go, but the usually stellar right-hander ran out of gas.
With Game 2 of the AL Wild Card series tied 3-3, Whitlock entered in the bottom of the seventh and posted a scoreless frame against the heart of the Yankees order. But with his team needing three more outs to bridge the gap to the ninth, Whitlock returned for the eighth but came up one out short, walking Jazz Chisholm with two outs before allowing the go-ahead and eventual game-winning single to Austin Wells.
The end result was a 4-3 Yankees win, and today the rivals will face off one more time for all the marbles.
Whitlock threw 47 pitches, which was the most he’s thrown in a game this season and the first time he’s topped 30 since June. With starting pitcher Brayan Bello making it only 2.1 innings manager Alex Cora leaned hard on his bullpen all night, and the plan unraveled just before the finish line.
“We were all in,” Cora said. “He is one of our best pitchers. He just got up there, but we were doing everything possible to get to, you know, the best of the ninth with a tie game.”
Much like Tuesday’s series opener, Game 2 had all the twists and turns you’d expect out of a classic Red Sox-Yankees playoff game.
One of the more divisive decisions Yankees manager Aaron Boone made in Game 1 on Tuesday was not playing Ben Rice. With a lefty on the mound the Cohasset native did not start and was not used as a pinch hitter despite hitting 26 home runs over the course of the season.
With a right-hander on the mound Rice not only was back in the lineup, but batting clean-up.
That move quickly paid off.
In his first at bat of the postseason, Rice took Bello deep for a two-run home run, giving the Yankees a quick 2-0 lead. The homer wasn’t quite a Yankee Stadium short-porch special, but at 364 feet it would have been a home run at only 13 of 30 MLB parks. Fenway Park would not have been among them.
Unlike on Tuesday, when it took until the late innings before the Red Sox offense could mount a response, the bats came alive much more quickly in Game 2.
After Yankees starter Carlos Rodon sent down the first six batters he faced, the Red Sox had their first three men reach safely to start the best of the third. Nick Sogard was the third of those, laying down a perfect bunt and forcing a bad throw from Rodon, and with the bases loaded Story came through with a two-run single to tie the game.
Then, in the bottom of the third, the Red Sox faced a pivotal moment.
Bello clearly did not have his best stuff. The Red Sox right-hander has been shaky for most of the past month and on Wednesday it was evident he was grinding once again. He drew a double play to keep things steady in the second, but in the third he gave up a single, a fielder’s choice and another single by Aaron Judge to put two men on with one out again.
In the regular season Cora may have given Bello a chance to keep pushing, but prior to the game the manager explained how in the postseason things are different.
So after recording only seven outs, Bello got the hook.
“It doesn’t feel good, you know, because you want the kid to go out there and get his experience and pitch deep into the game,” Cora said. “I felt like that moment we needed to.”
Bello’s 2.1 innings was tied for the shortest start of his career, but the move paid off. Left-hander Justin Wilson was summoned and he drew a flyout and a lineout to strand both Yankee batters, keeping it a 2-2 game.
The Yankees retook the lead in the fifth, capitalizing on some sloppy baseball by the Red Sox. With two outs righty Justin Slaten walked Trent Grisham to bring up Judge, and then allowed him to advance to second on a wild pitch.
Judge then banger a sinking liner to left field, which Jarren Duran dropped while making a diving attempt, allowing Grisham to score.
“As I was coming in I thought it was banger a little harder than it was and I gained more ground than I thought, I didn’t have to go into a full dive and kind of pushed the ball on myself a little more and it got really up on me,” Duran said. “It’s on me.”
Once again, the Red Sox had an immediate response.
Leading off the sixth Story lined an 0-2 fastball 381 feet to the left field stands for a solo shot, tying the game at 3-3.
To that point Story had driven in all of Boston’s runs.
The Red Sox bullpen continued to pull its weight. Steven Matz followed Slaten with a scoreless frame split across the fifth and sixth innings, and with two on and two out Zack Kelly came on to face Volpe. He fell behind in the count 3-0 but fought back to strike the Yankees shortstop out, ending the threat.
Rodon came back out for the seventh but completely lost his command. The Yankees starter threw eight straight balls to open the frame, walking Nate Eaton and hitting Duran with what would have been ball four anyway.
He was pulled after six-plus innings, but Yankees right-hander Fernando Cruz kept the Red Sox from pulling ahead. Masataka Yoshida delivered a pinch banger infield single to load the bases with two outs, but Cruz drew a deep flyout from Story that died at the warning track and missed being a grand slam by about 15 feet.
That, plus Boston’s other missed opportunities throughout the game, proved costly.
After his scoreless seventh Whitlock came back out for the eighth and recorded two quick outs on Rice and Giancarlo Stanton. But things unraveled once he walked Chisholm, and Wells’ two-out single proved the difference.
Whitlock acknowledged after the game that the pitch count began taking its toll as the inning went on.
“I felt good, I got tired towards the end but I thought I made some good pitches and they did a good job,” Whitlock said.
Whitlock ultimately loaded the bases, but left-hander Payton Tolle came on and drew a groundout to keep it a one-run game. Once in the best of the ninth the Red Sox went quietly against Yankees closer David Bednar, though Ceddanne Rafaela gave the final pitch of the ballgame a ride to the warning track before it fell harmlessly into Judge’s glove to end the game.
today, the storied rivals will face off one more time Thursday night in the fourth-ever winner-take-all meeting between the rivals. Connelly Early will be lined up against fellow rookie Cam Schlittler in the decisive Game 3.
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