Just as the 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 4.1 innings. Most of the damage – four earned runs on seven hits, two walks, and eight strikeouts – was done by Devers, whose two hits, two runs, and two RBI were all against the Yankees starter. Cole got him 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.
It 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. Devers then stole second and scored the go-ahead run on Masataka Yoshida’s single.
“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,” Alex Cora told reporters. “He’s becoming, well, he is the face of the franchise, and we’re very proud of him.”
Cole was in a groove and had just completed his fifth consecutive swinging strikeout when the face of the franchise decided it was time for him to leave. Career hit No. 1,001 was positively atomic. New York out-homered Boston 4-1 on Saturday, but none came close to Devers’, blasted 441 feet at 110.2 mph for a 4-3 lead and a pitching change.
“Special hitter, special,” Cora said. “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 3.2 innings, and allowed three earned runs on five hits – including a pair of homers – walked two, and struck out four. New York was in front immediately when Cohasset, Mass., native Ben Rice led off with a home run. Rice also took Chase Anderson deep twice in later innings, becoming the first Yankees rookie ever with a three-homer game.
Both starters suffered from poor umpiring, which prolonged early innings. In the second, a sinker firmly in the zone was ruled Ball 4 to Jose Trevino, and rather than Out No. 3, the inning continued. Winckowski gave up a single to Oswaldo Cabrera and walked DJ LeMahieu to load the bases before getting Rice to strike out out to strand a full diamond.
“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.”
Neither of Boston’s two leads lasted into the following frame. Devers, Yoshida, and Reese McGuire gave Boston a 3-1 lead on a trio of RBI singles in the top of the third, only to have Winckowski give up a single to Aaron Judge and a game-tying homer to Alex Verdugo in the bottom of the inning. 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.
“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 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 – the latter 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, and Cabrera’s sacrifice fly and LeMahieu’s RBI single plated two more. With two on and two out, Cora went to Anderson, who gave up five earned runs as he pitched the rest of the game.
There would be no comeback or extra-inning heroics 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 4.2 innings, struck out five, and held Boston to one hit. A walk in the park, albeit without issuing a single walk.
