How big was the Red Sox' 6-5, 10-inning win over the Yankees Saturday night? Evidently, Alex Verdugo thought it was about as big as an early July tilt can offer.
"It was very satisfying. It was a game that we felt was a must-win," said Verdugo, who claimed the walk-off single with two outs in the 10th. "You don’t want to lose any series, obviously we don’t want to get swept. To be in that game as long as we were, had a good pitching performance, kept the offense of the Yankees down to a few runs was big. To keep fighting back and forth man, it was one of those games where it felt like it needed to be us."
Must-win?
A bit later in his get-together with the media after the Sox' fifth straight extra-inning win, Verdugo scaled back on the hyperbole and put it all in a bit better perspective.
"It’s not necessarily a must-win, but for me personally, it felt like that," he said. "When we play these guys, it’s high-intensity, the rivalry is there, we want to win and being in our house, this is our stadium, this is our home. You can kind of hear it, even today, Yankees fans chanting and chanting. It was really loud for the Yankees. It felt like Boston was getting over-powered vocally by Yankees fans. It was one of those things where, for me, it was like, man we have to get this back. This is our house. This is where we play. This ain’t their field. It felt like we needed to keep going. A win right now was huge."
Fair.
All things considered, this was a big one.
The payoff didn't so much come in any seismic change in the standings, with the Red Sox still sitting 15 games back of the Yankees, but atop of the Wild Card standings.
This was more about showing the Yankees that, even with an injury-riddled roster, they could find a way to get the upper-hand.
And how the Red Sox did it was with a bunch of players who were not part of any 2022 blueprint the previous time the teams' met back in April.
Starter Kutter Crawford allowed just on run over his five innings. The rookie has now thrown five or more innings while giving up one or fewer run and four or fewer hits in three of his last four outings. Crawford has given up one run over his last 10 1/3 innings. That will work.
Reliever John Schreiber once again proved to be one of the most effective bullpen arms in the game, getting yet another 1-2-3 frame in a pivotal seventh-inning appearance. He has surrendered no more than one ht in each of his last 18 appearances, the longest such streak for the Red Sox since Koji Uehara in 2014.
Rob Refsnyder also continued to contribute, this time getting the Red Sox on the board with a 436-foot homer, before going on to contribute to the 10th-inning rally with a hit.
And Jeter Downs, the infielder who arrived at Fenway about 30 minutes before first pitch, not only scored the game-tying run after pinch-running for J.D. Martinez in the eighth inning, but collected his first big league hit in the 10th before ultimately plating the game-winner.
“Like we all have dreams, we all have wishes but I don’t think you can make something like this up to be honest," he said. "I dream a lot. I envision. But this is something you can’t really put into words.”
But what was perhaps the most notable development in the Red Sox' win was that they were able to accomplish it against the seemingly impenetrable New York bullpen.
The Sox' first win of the season when trailing after seven innings (they had been 0-29) came courtesy a rally against perhaps the best reliever in the game right now, Clay Holmes. The Yankees hadn't lost in any of their 48 gams in which they carried a lead after seven innings.
The Yankees had been 38-2 in games Holmes pitched, with the righty now having allowed just three runs the entire season.
It was just one game, but looking down the road, its one both teams probably won't be forgetting.
"Hopefully, that’s the carry over at 7:05 (Sunday) that’s the most important thing," said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. "We’ve got Nick (Pivetta) on the mound. They’ve got a good one going. That’s a good baseball team. If you look at the games against them, the one that got away was the one yesterday. It was a one-run game the first one over there, two close games, then we won the one on Sunday. We’ve been playing good -- I mean, good, we’re losing games in the division, we know that. But we’re close, but we’ve got to finish games. We’re one pitch away from finishing games and we havent done that throughout the season and hopefully today will get us going against a tough opponent."
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