BRONX, NY — With Garrett Crochet out of the game, the Yankees finally saw an opening within the Red Sox’s defense.
Down two in the bottom of the ninth, former friend Aroldis Chapman yielded three straight singles to Paul Goldschmidt, Aaron Judge, and Cody Bellinger to lead off New York’s last licks.
But Chapman, the 37-year-old fireballing southpaw who spent seven years in the Bronx, got the last laugh. He struck out Giancarlo Stanton, got Jazz Chisholm Jr. to fly out to right — too shallow for the slow-footed Goldschmidt to attempt to tag up — and downed Trent Grisham swinging on high heat to preserve a 3-1 victory for the Red Sox in Game 1 of the American League Wild Card Series.
“We had a lot of really good at-bats against him,” manager Aaron Boone said. “… A lot of just-misses, and they got us tonight.”
“I felt confident the whole way,” Crochet added as he watched his closer close out his gem. “He’s the best reliever in the American League, and that’s not too big a stretch tos way.”
With it, the Yankees’ backs are immediately up against the wall in the best-of-three set, meaning a loss on Wednesday night ends their season.
Luke Weaver’s regular-season struggles followed him into the playoffs, and now the Yankees’ backs are immediately up against the wall. The reliever squandered Max Fried’s gem in the three batters he faced, allowing a two-run single in the seventh inning to Masataka Yoshida that proved to be the game-winner.
The pitching duel between two likely AL Cy Young candidates in Fried and Crochet lived up to its billing, with the Yankees’ ace departing with a lead. Fried went 6.1 shutout innings, allowing four hits and walking three while striking out six. But it wasn’t as flashy or overwhelmingly dominant as Crochet’s night became, as he struck out 11 with no walks while allowing just one run on four hits in 7.2 innings on a career-high 117 pitches.
“I feel like in this environment, it’s really hard to feel any sort of fatigue except mental,” Crochet said. “I felt locked in… there was a lot at stake.”
Anthony Volpe provided the lone run for the game’s first six frames, as his solo shot with two outs in the second was the only blemish on Crochet’s otherwise superb night.
The Boston ace completely missed on a 1-2 sinker that was originally set up inside on the Yankees’ shortstop. Instead, it wandered over the outside corner of the plate, which Volpe was able to go the other way with 382 feet into the right-field seats.
Crochet didn’t just settle in; he mowed the Yankees down, retiring the next 17 men he faced until yielding a single to none other than Volpe with one out in the eighth. He struck out the side in the fifth, got Judge to whiff on a high cutter to win the seven-pitch battle to end the sixth, and then just needed six pitches to get through the seventh, coaxing groundouts from Bellinger, Stanton, and Amed Rosario.
Fried didn’t yield anything, though. The Yankees’ southpaw was disposing Red Sox with efficiency, needing just 37 pitches to get through the first three innings, buoyed by a changeup that generated four of his six strikeouts on the night.
“I just wanted to keep the team in the game,” Fried said. “It was going to be a tough one, obviously [going against Crochet]… I just wanted to come out and try and match him.”
But he ran into trouble in the fourth with two outs when a fastball on a full count to Boston catcher Carlos Narvaez appeared to tick the top of the strike zone, but was deemed ball four by home-plate umpire Junior Valentine.
Nate Eaton followed with a double to put two men in scoring position, but Fried rebounded to get Jaren Duran swinging on an 82 mph sweeper after a mound visit from catcher Austin Wells, though the frame took 24 pitches to get through.
Fried’s next meeting with Narvaez in the sixth was equally as controversial, as a 2-2 curveball again appeared to catch the top of the zone, to which Valentine again deemed too high. Narvaez walked again, and by the time Fried coaxed an inning-ending double play from Eaton, he was at 99 pitches.
He had enough to get the lefty Duran to ground out to first to lead off the seventh, ending his night on 102 pitches while turning it over to Weaver.
“They pressured him pretty good in the fourth, fifth, sixth,” Boone said of his decision to pull Fried. “I felt like he cruised through the first few, and obviously, he ends up pitching great, but I felt like he had to work pretty hard.”
That’s when it all went wrong.
Weaver walked Cedanne Rafaela on 11 pitches and gave up a double to Nick Sogard to put runners on second and third. With a righty in, Alex Cora pinch hit Rob Refsnyder for the lefty Yoshida, who ripped a first-pitch, high fastball into center to score a pair and put the Red Sox in front 2-1.
“He gets ahead 0-2 on Rafaela there and then he lost the strike zone,” Boone said. “They placed a couple hits on him. Maybe he was a little up with a couple of the pitches, but getting ahead 0-2 to Rafaela and losing him, that’s the one that stings a little bit.”
Fernando Cruz narrowly escaped the seventh when, with two men on and two outs, Judge made a leaping catch on a scorching Nathaniel Lowe liner to right.
After Chapman recorded the last out of the eighth, the Red Sox extended their lead in the top of the ninth off David Bednar when Alex Bregman’s RBI double scored Trevor Story, who singled and stole second with two outs.
