In order to stay on top of the AL East leaderboard, Josh Beckett and the Red Sox needed to beat Phil Hughes and the Yankees….and that’s exactly what they did. Beckett notched his 12th win of the season and once again received some pretty decent run support from the Sox bats.
The Yankees got on the board first with a run in the 3rd. Nunez got a leadoff double and was knocked in with a Jeter RBI single. The Sox got the lead back in the bottom of the 3rd. Marco started the inning off with a single and was followed by an Ellsbury double. The Sox had two on with no outs. Pedey hit an RBI ground out to score Scutaro to tie the game 1-1. The Yankees intentionally walked David Ortiz to pitch to Jed Lowrie. I believe Papi is batting about .500 against Phil Hughes, so I understand the thought behind it, but it didn’t work out for the Yankees like they hoped it would. Lowrie hit an RBI single to score Ellsbury and the Sox lead 2-1.
In the 5th, David Ortiz was not intentionally walked and he hit a 2 run HR to give the Sox a 4-1 lead. I was watching the game on YES and the commentators were joking that the Yankees should probably intentionally walk David Ortiz every single time he is up in front of Hughes. Josh Beckett had a nice lead in the 6th, however he would run into trouble. He hit Mark Teixeira to start the inning and Teixeira went to 2nd on a wild pitch. Cano hit an RBI double to score Teixeira. Next Nick Swisher walked and Chavez hit an RBI double to tie the game 4-4. Chavez went to third on the play since Reddick fielded the ball very very badly out there in right field. There were still no outs and a man on 3rd base. Nunez hit a sac fly to score Chavez and suddenly the Yanks were leading 5-4. Beckett got the 2 outs he needed and the Sox were off to the bottom of the 6th.
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Phil Hughes took the mound with the lead in the 6th, but he didn’t have it for long. Hughes walked Josh Reddick. It ended up being reported after the game that a moth flew in Hughes eye right before the 3-2 pitch. Hughes then gave up a double to Jason Varitek. Hughes got the 2nd out of the inning and he was replaced with Boone Logan. Logan had to get Ellsbury out to end the inning and preserve the lead for Hughes. Instead, Jacoby Ellsbury hit his 24th HR of the season. This is the first time in his career that Ells has hit a homerun over the Monster and it was against a lefty. Sox lead 7-5. Beckett went back to the mound in the 7th and got one more inning. His pitching line for the night was 111 pitches, 7 IP, 6 H, 5 R, 4 ER, 3 BBs and 8 Ks. It wasn’t his best outing this year and had the one bad inning, but other than that…he looked like the Josh Beckett we’ve seen all year.
Bard came out in relief of Beckett in the 8th. Scutaro and Pedroia both had amazing defensive plays to help Bard get outs one and two. Bard got the 3rd out of the inning all by himself with a dominant K of Eric Chavez. In the bottom of the 8th, the Sox put the game even more out of reach when Jason Varitek hit his 10th homerun of the year. Sox lead 9-5. Even though it was no longer a save situation, Papelbon came in for the 9th. He had another 1-2-3 inning with 2 Ks to end the game.
Sox win, the water is dirty. Let’s do it again tomorrow.
Red Sox 9 Yankees 5 BOXSCORE
WP: Beckett (12-5)
LP: Hughes (4-5)
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