Postgame, Red Sox 5-4: The Red Sox got a great pitching performance from Clay Buchholz and two big home runs. Still, it was a base hit by Dustin Pedroia that got plenty of attention after the game.
Pedroia hit a sharp single to right directly where second baseman Robinson Cano had vacated, the culmination of a perfectly executed hit and run in the top of the seventh.
Jacoby Ellsbury got to third on the play and scored on Adrian Gonzalez’s sacrifice fly. It gave Boston a lead it would never lose.
“That’s what he does. That’s why he’s our leader,” Adrian Gonzalez said of Pedroia.
Kevin Youkilis, who hit a two-run homer later in the inning to provide the Red Sox with all the runs they would need, also wanted to point out the play by Pedroia.
“Can’t just rely on the long ball,” he said. “You’ve got to play the game the right way. Pedey put the ball in play, that was huge. Set us up to score those five runs.”
And five runs was just enough to get the Red Sox a much-needed (aren’t they all?) victory.
Saturday night will feature a fantastic pitching matchup between Josh Beckett and CC Sabathia. Game time is 7:10 p.m. and we will be here in The Bronx to bring you all the action once again. Thanks for following along tonight.
Final, Red Sox 5-4: We talked a lot today about both of these teams wanting to use this series to seize momentum in some way. Boston has a chance to do so after taking the opener.
A lot of stuff happened in the eighth and ninth to get a rise out of this crowd, but Clay Buchholz was the star. He looked good all night and downright dominant during some portions of the game.
Jonathan Papelbon got Mark Teixeira to pop to third on a first-pitch, 97-mph heater to end it.
The Sox are now 18-20. The Yankees fall to 20-16.
Heading downstairs to what figures to be a pretty happy clubhouse. See you soon.
10:41 p.m.: Jonathan Papelbon got the first two outs, but a single, defensive indifference and a single gets the Yanks within a run. Mark Teixeira up with a chance to win the game with one swing.
Mid 9th, Red Sox 5-3: Jacoby Ellsbury made it to third after his leadoff hit, but not without some obstacles.
Ellsbury stole second on a pitch out and began to break for third when the throw got into center field. He had to put on the breaks, however, and awkwardly twisted his lower left leg.
After a visit from the trainer, Ellsbury remained in the game and he is out in center for the bottom of the inning.
Also on in the ninth is Jonathan Papelbon, looking to secure his sixth save. Papelbon is 0-6 with a 4.10 ERA in his career vs. New York.
10:17 p.m.: Boone Logan allows a single to Jacoby Ellsbury to begin the ninth. He has been removed in favor of Rafael Soriano, who has been dealing with elbow inflamation.
By the way, the sound system has gone out here. It’s like a breath of fresh air. If you’ve experienced the relentless manufactured noise at this place, you know what I mean.
End 8th, Red Sox 5-3: A massive sigh of relief in living rooms throughout New England, and a whole mess of groans down here as Daniel Bard gets Jorge Posada to ground out to finish the eighth.
Daniel Bard has thrown nine innings in 11 games here. In that span, the Yankees have scored eight runs — seven earned — on nine hits (five of them homers) and six walks.
Still, he limits the damage and will give Jonathan Papelbon some margin for error in the ninth.
10:07 p.m.: Daniel Bard has all kinds of problems in this stadium. We will update his numbers here once his outing is complete, but for now you should know that he gave up a leadoff triple and uncorked a wild pitch to cut the Sox lead to 5-3.
A walk, hit batter and a double steal have the tying runs in scoring position with only one out.
Mid 8th, Red Sox 5-2: Indeed, Daniel Bard is jogging on to protect a three-run advantage. Not to scare anyone, but Bard has a 6.75 ERA in 10 career games in this park, and is 0-3 with a 6.48 mark on the road this year.
End 7th, Red Sox 5-2: Clay Buchholz is one flat cutter away from having an outside chance at a shutout. I saw outside simply because he has thrown 110 pitches. In fact, he won’t throw another, as Daniel Bard is getting ready.
But you catch my drift, and Buchholz is only getting stronger, it seems. The righty had a strikeout and two weak groundouts in the seventh. He is settling into a streak very much like the one he got on about this time last year.
Mid 7th, Red Sox 5-2: The Red Sox should put the top of the seventh in a vault and take it out whenever anyone wants an example of a well-executed inning.
With Jacoby Ellsbury on first and one out, Boston sent the runner and had Dustin Pedroia smack a single to the now-vacated right side of the infield. The ball went right to where second baseman Robinson Cano would normally be standing, putting runners at the corners.
Adrian Gonzalez then lofted a flyball to the track in left to score Ellsbury from third. Gonzalez builds upon his AL-leading RBI total. He now has 31.
After that beautiful example of creating one run, Kevin Youkilis creates two with an opposite-field shot off nemesis Joba Chamberlain. It is Youk’s sixth of the year.
People in New England love the fact that Chamberlain just got knocked around, but he really didn’t. Ellsbury reached on a grounder that could’ve been a double play. Pedroia’s grounder was just that, a grounder to second, but it worked because of the play the Red Sox put on. Chamberlain probably feels he should’ve been out of the inning long before Youkilis even showed his face.
9:19 p.m.: A leadoff single by Jarrod Saltalamacchia ends the night for Bartolo Colon. Pretty solid effort by the pudgy righty, who yields to another in Joba Chamberlain.
End 6th, 2-2: A two-out double from Nick Swisher gets a sellout crowd at Yankee Stadium going, and a 3-1 count on Jorge Posada only amplifies it.
Then, when Clay Buchholz had Posada’s slow roller up the line go under his glove, everyone shrieked like a girl scout troupe at a Clay Aiken concert. Alas, Posada was barely halfway up the line, the ball settled into the glove of Adrian Gonzalez and he flipped to Buchholz for the last out.
Anyone other than Posada and that might’ve been a bit more interesting.
Bartolo Colon starts the seventh. Joba Chamberlain is up and throwing in the bullpen for the Yankees.
Mid 6th, 2-2: Some frustrating moments for the Red Sox in the past couple of half-innings.
First, the Russell Martin home run to tie it, then the almost force out at second base, which didn’t really do any damage, but still got under the skin of Dustin Pedroia and Terry Francona.
Finally, a pair of two-out singles gets Carl Crawford up with a chance to do some damage. He pops to left. Bartolo Colon escapes. And now Clay Buchholz heads out there to face Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano and Nick Swisher.
End 5th, 2-2: OK, some things changed in the fifth. Clay Buchholz, absolutely cruising, gave up a hard single to Jorge Posada and then a harder home run to Russell Martin.
Brett Gardner followed with a hit of his own and got to second on a screwy play that had the Sox arging that an out was made at second. It was not, but Buchholz eventually escaped. He did run his pitch count up to 81, however.
Mid 5th, Red Sox 2-0: A rather sedate crowd got into a tiny bit in the fifth, but the Yankees have not given them much to cheer about in recent days.
New York lost in extra innings two nights ago, looked like garbage yesterday and have little to show for their efforts in this one. Clay Buchholz is the primary cause.
End 4th, Red Sox 2-0: Clay Buchholz gave up his first hit of the game, a sharp single to left by Alex Rodriguez, but he is absolutely dealing right now.
Buchholz finished the inning with his fifth strikeout, and it came on a darting cutter that broke in on Nick Swisher’s feet at 92. Impressive stuff that actually dropped a jaw or two here in the press box.
Mid 4th, Red Sox 2-0: The home run for Adrian Gonzalez reached the second deck in right. It was a fastball that Bartolo Colon grooved a bit too much, and anything grooved, hung or poorly placed, Gonzalez is crushing.
Pretty impressive display. Don’t take it for granted.
Kevin Youkilis followed the homer by striking out, but the ball got past catcher Russell Martin and Youkilis reached. A walk to David Ortiz and another to Jed Lowrie one out later set up Carl Crawford’s RBI groundout to first.
One of the runs was earned. I’ll let you determine on your own which one.
8:06 p.m.: That noise you just heard was Adrian Gonzalez connecting on his seventh home run in 10 games, a bomb to right.
If you are interested in learning more about the power binges he has had in his career, click here.
End 3rd, 0-0: Red Sox fans probably don’t want to see Clay Buchholz laying out for balls all that often, but the play he made on Brett Gardner in the third was pretty fun to watch.
Gardner hit a grounder to the right of the mound. Buchholz, falling that way and also knowing that Gardner can absolutely fly and might have an infield hit if it gets by the mound, dove and made the stop before flipping to first for the out.
Derek Jeter then reached on a Kevin Youkilis error, but Curtis granderson was the fourth strikeout victim for Buchholz. Inning over.
As we wait for the first Yankees hit of the game, you should know that Justin Verlander is toying with what would be his second straight no-hitter in Kansas City, and that Fausto Carmona has one going against Seattle. Sounds like something we already talked about.
Mid 3rd, 0-0: Jacoby Ellsbury now has a hit in 20 of his last 21 games, well on his way to eclipsing Joe DiMaggio’s run of a hit in 56 out of 57 games.
Ellsbury singled off the glove of Robinson Cano with two outs in the third. He was erased on a fielder’s choice.
End 2nd, 0-0: Once again, I think the radar readings here are wacky, but a cutter by Clay Buchholz just went up at 94 mph. It also blew away Alex Rodriguez for the first out of the second.
Buchholz matched that pitch and had one at 95 when facing Nick Swisher, who eventually walked, the first and only man to reach for the Yankees so far.
Haven’t talked this much about pitch velocities so early in a game since that time I struck out the side in the first inning of a Little League game, all on 53 mph gas. They never had a chance.
Anyway, both pitchers are pretty amped up tonight. Also, no apparent issues for Buchholz after his awkward rain-interrupted outing on Sunday.
Mid 2nd, 0-0: On his 26th pitch of the night, Bartolo Colon finally threw something other than a fastball. It was a slider that J.D. Drew watched go by for strike one.
Drew then watched another slider for strike two. Colon finished him off by going back to the fastball. Drew stared at that one, too.
It was part of a quick 1-2-3 inning for Colon, who is stem-cell-tastic so far.
End 1st, 0-0: Through his six starts, Clay Buchholz had struck out 17 while walking, an extremely unsettling ratio.
In one start and one inning since, he has eight Ks and just one free pass. Those are updated numbers after Buchholz fanned Derek Jeter (after falling behind 3-0) and Curtis Granderson in the first.
Mid 1st, 0-0: The stem cell jokes are flying fast and furious around the press box as Bartolo Colon throws in a bunch of fastballs clocked in the mid- to upper-90s. Whatever they injected this guy with, it is working, even though I think some of the radar readings on the big board here are a bit generous.
He gets Jacoby Ellsbury on a 96 mph heater. After a walk to Dustin Pedroia, Adrian Gonzalez pops to second and Kevin Youkilis grounds to third.
Colon threw nothing but fastballs, both the two- and four-seam varieties. The highest reading at the park was 97. Again, think that’s a notch or two high, but he is throwing hard and is having very good results early on this year.
7:08 p.m.: Bartolo Colon’s first pitch to Jacoby Ellsbury is a ball, and we are under way.
6:32 p.m.: Some of the pregame talk tonight surrounded the fact that both of these teams seem to need a jolt. We discussed that topic this afternoon before arriving at the park, and then heard much of the same from those involved.
“We’ve been scuffling a little bit, so this will be a good time to get some momentum going,” said Carl Crawford.
Yankees manager Joe Girardi said the same about his team, which just lost three of four to Kansas City in a series that ended with a sloppy 11-5 loss, the team’s sixth in nine games overall. Girardi sees this series as an opportunity to turn things around.
“Sometimes you get in these series, it brings out the best in us,” he said.
Girardi’s counterpart, however, didn’t take the bait, or at least withheld any similar thoughts.
“First of all I hope he’s wrong. I don’t really want to see the best of them,” Francona said. “I don’t think people believe me and I don’t know why, maybe it’s because they haven’t played, I don’t know, but wherever we are, that’s where our most important series is. I don’t care if it’s Toronto, Baltimore. Wherever we’re at, that’s what we try to do.
“We can’t help if there’s more attention or people like the series. I understand why people like the series, it’s fun, but I think that’s how we try to feel every series.”
As mentioned earlier, the Sox will be playing 20 games in 20 days starting tonight. That’s what made the off-day Thursday a huge one, and it seems to have helped. There were a few guys hamming it up on the field and in the clubhouse. Guys seem excited to be here, perhaps aware of the opportunity they have in front of them. We’ll see if it translates to the game.
5:01 p.m.: Prior to Terry Francona addressing the media, many of us were mingling in the Red Sox clubhouse, which had Jay-Z’s New York song (Empire State of Mind?) blaring.
Francona spoke for about 10 minutes down the hall in the press conference room, after which we returned to the clubhouse, only to hear the same song begin again.
Chances are we will hear it about four more times tonight, just to remind us all where we are.
Not a ton of pregame notes for you. Dan Wheeler did throw yesterday at Pawtucket to begin his rehab, but there is no timetable for Bobby Jenks, Francona said.
The manager was asked about John Lackey and how to proceed. Essentially, nothing changes. Francona would not get into any of the personal issues Lackey may be having off the field, but said there is nothing that needs to be altered between starts, other than to take a look at ways to improve.
The Sox are beginning a stretch of 20 games in 20 days, so there is no more room to skip a guy who might need some work on the side or anything like that. It’s time to buck up.
Speaking of bucking up, Clay Buchholz will face this lineup tonight:
Derek Jeter, SS
Curtis Granderson, CF
Mark Teixeira, 1B
Alex Rodriguez, 3B
Robinson Cano, 2B
Nick Swisher, RF
Jorge Posada, DH
Russell Martin, C
Brett Gardner, LF
There has also been a lot of talk about Tampa Bay, which moved into first place last night. Look for a little more on what people here are saying in a separate story on the site.
Back in a bit.
3:08 p.m.: Greetings from Yankee Stadium, where it is overcast and a tad breezy. A notable lack of buzz over this series in the city, in part because of the Yankees’ current slide, the Red Sox’ rough start and the fact that Carlos Beltran hit three home runs last night for the Mets.
The Amazins dominated the headlines in most papers today.
Sure enough, something will happen tonight to make everyone take notice of what’s going on in The Bronx.
Here is the Red Sox lineup against Bartolo Colon:
Jacoby Ellsbury, CF
Dustin Pedroia, 2B
Adrian Gonzalez, 1B
Kevin Youkilis, 3B
David Ortiz, DH
J.D. Drew, RF
Jed Lowrie, SS
Carl Crawford, LF
Jarrod Saltalamacchia, C
This group is a collective 16-for-100 (.160) with 36 strikeouts (!) against Colon.
8 a.m.: The Red Sox make their first visit to Yankee Stadium this year when they open a three-game set Friday night on NESN.
Clay Buchholz gets the call, looking to build on a gradually improving run in a city that has not been kind to him. Buchholz is 3-1 with a 2.66 ERA over his last four starts but has allowed 12 runs in 17 innings in his career in the Bronx.
Boston had a day off Thursday, a much-needed respite after dropping a pair in Toronto. The bullpen, which has been worn thin, should finally be at full strength in the opener, the first of 20 games in 20 days for the Sox.
Bartolo Colon is on the mound for the Yankees, and we will be on scene to bring you all the action. First pitch is 7:05 p.m.
