Just as New York Yankees were once Pedro Martinez’s Daddy, Rafael Devers has been Gerrit Cole’s for the past several years.
Devers’ continued dominance over the reigning American League Cy Young was just about the only positive takeaway from Saturday afternoon’s game. The Red Sox fell to the Yankees 14-4 in a long, humid mess of a contest, which wasn’t much of a contest after Boston went from leading 4-3 to trailing 10-4 in the span of the fifth inning.
The Red Sox knocked Cole out of the game after 4 ⅓ innings. Most of the damage – four earned runs on seven hits, two walks, and eight strikeouts – done by Devers, who went 2-for-4 with two runs and a pair of RBI. Cole got his nemesis swinging on three pitches in their first face-off of the year – but when round two rolled around in the third, the slugger was ready. With two outs and David Hamilton on second with a double, Devers singled to right hard enough to bring the speedy rookie around to score the tying run, then stole second and scored the go-ahead run on Masataka Yoshida’s single.
The single was Devers’ 1,000th career regular-season hit. He’s the 33rd player to reach quadruple digits for the Red Sox, and joined Xander Bogaerts and Hall of Famers Bobby Doerr, Jim Rice, Tris Speaker, and Carl Yastrzemski as the only players to reach the mark before turning 28.
“The evolution of the hitter throughout the years… he didn’t play against lefties, we would pinch-hit for him against relievers – shoot, we pinch-hit for him in the World Series! And little by little, he became a complete hitter,” Cora lauded. “He’s becoming, well, he is the face of the franchise, and we’re very proud of him.”
Cole had just completed his fifth consecutive swinging strikeout when the face of the franchise decided the Yankees starter’s day was over. Career hit No. 1,001 was no mere bomb, it was atomic. New York out-homered Boston 4-1 on Saturday, but none came close to Devers’ eighth career homer off Cole, blasted 441 feet at 110.2 mph.
“Special hitter, special,” Alex Cora told reporters. “When I saw him in the playoffs (with the Astros) in ‘17, that inside-the-park homer against (Ken) Giles. Just hitting the ball hard everywhere and kind of like, killing you softly with that smile.”
Devers didn’t exactly smile, but he stood and admired his work for a moment before flipping his bat, and yelling to his dugout. As he began his home-run trot, Cole stared him down. Since donning the pinstripes in 2020, he’s allowed 19 homers over 13 regular-season starts against the Red Sox, the most he’s given up to any team. Devers has taken him deep eight times – at least five more than any other pitch he’s faced – in 34 at-bats.
Unfortunately, Devers’ milestone and ongoing ownership of Cole quickly fell into the footnotes of an ugly loss. The bullpen was on “fumes” after back-to-back extra-inning games, Cora said before the game. “We were walking a tightrope today, pitching-wise,” he reiterated after the loss.
The Red Sox badly needed a long start from Josh Winckowski, but he lasted just 3 ⅔ innings, and allowed three earned runs on five hits – including a pair of homers – walked two, and struck out four. Cohasset, Mass. native Ben Rice got the Yankees on the board immediately with a leadoff homer. By game’s end, he was the first rookie in Yankees history to have a three-homer game.
Both starters suffered from poor umpiring, which prolonged early innings and shortened their outings. With two outs in the second, a sinker undoubtedly in the zone was ruled Ball 4 to Jose Trevino, and the inning continued. Oswaldo Cabrera singled to advance Trevino to third, and DJ LeMahieu walked to load the bases. Winckowski was able to strike Rice out to strand a full diamond, but the elevated pitch count made a lasting impact.
“We felt we were out of it, with Trevino,” Cora said carefully, so as not to incur a fine. “After that, (Winckowski) makes like 20 pitches, so it put him in a bad spot.”
The Red Sox held two leads in the game, neither of which lasted past the bottom of the inning. After Devers, Yoshida, and Reese McGuire gave Boston a 3-1 lead on a trio of RBI singles in the top of the third, Winckowski gave up a single to Aaron Judge and a game-tying homer to Alex Verdugo. The former Red Sox outfielder jogged slowly around the bases, savoring the moment for a full 32 seconds. It was his longest home-run trot of the season (his average is 27.6 seconds); four of the Yankees’ five longest home-run trots this season belong to him.
“I’ve seen that slow trot for us, and we didn’t care, right? We let him do it, so if we were OK with it on our team, we should be OK with it on another,” Cora said, though he made a point of adding, “They should be OK, too, with Raffy doing what he did,” alluding to Cole’s reaction to Devers’ blast.
“I’m not that kind of hitter, but obviously it was a big hit for us,” Devers told reporters through translator Carlos Villoria Benítez, adding, “They did it to us before. Nobody can get mad for those reactions, it’s just baseball.”
The tug-o-war ended in the bottom of the fifth when Brennan Bernardino, Greg Weissert, and Chase Anderson gave up seven runs. It was all downhill after Juan Soto’s first-pitch groundout. Judge and Verdugo got on with a pair of singles – Verdugo’s via bunt – and Cora brought in Weissert. The rookie right-hander, acquired from the Yankees in the Verdugo trade last December, gave up a ground-rule double to Anthony Volpe to score Judge and after falling behind in the count against Trent Grisham, intentionally walked him to load the bases.
“Bases-loaded, one bullet, get a ground-ball double-play,” Cora explained of the free pass strategy. “We didn’t get it, we got the walk.”
Weissert unintentionally walked pinch-hitter Austin Wells, which brought Verdugo home to score. Cabrera’s sacrifice fly and LeMahieu’s RBI single plated two more. In his last four appearances (3.1 IP), Weissert has allowed 10 runs on nine hits with a 3/2 BB/K ratio, compared to one run over six and a 3/9 over his previous seven outings (7.1 IP).
“I think it’s more about strike-throwing,” Cora assessed. “We’ve been talking about getting ahead, staying ahead, and if you look at the number, first-pitch strikes percentage is low. He gets back in the count, but he has to work for it.”
Weissert had faced five batters, given away the lead, and only recorded one out when Cora conceded defeat and called for Anderson. With two on and two out, Rice turned the veteran righty’s second pitch into a three-run homer. Anderson pitched the rest of the game; Rice took him deep again in the seventh.
There would be no comeback this time. Stunned by the seven-run barrage, the Red Sox went 1-2-3 in the sixth, stranded their lone baserunner – Jarren Duran reached on an error by the shortstop – in the seventh, struck out swinging 1-2-3 in the eighth, then wasted Smith’s leadoff single in the ninth to go quietly into the evening. Yankees relievers Tim Hill and Josh Maciejewski combined for the remaining 4 ⅔ innings, struck out five, and held Boston to one hit. A walk in the park, albeit without issuing a single walk.
The MLB-leading five-game winning streak is over. Rubber match on Sunday.