NEW YORK — Boston Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet made a promise to manager Alex Cora during the team’s workout on Monday ahead of his start in Game 1 of the AL Wild Card Series against the New York Yankees.
Cora, the pitcher vowed, was going to make just one call to the bullpen on Tuesday, straight to closer Aroldis Chapman to have him finish off a win over their rivals. Just one.
“That’s how it worked out,” Cora said.
Crochet made good on his guarantee by delivering a dominant performance in his first career postseason start, stifling the potent Yankees lineup with a career-high 117 pitches over 7⅔ innings, before Chapman took the ball and executed a bases-loaded high-wire act to record a four-out save in Boston’s 3-1 comeback victory at Yankee Stadium.
The Red Sox will have the chance to advance to face the Toronto Blue Jays in the AL Division Series — and eliminate the favored 94-win Yankees — in Game 2 on Wednesday. No team that has won Game 1 of a best-of-three wild-card series has gone on to lose the series since the format was permanently implemented for the 2022 season.
“We are going to show up tomorrow, and I expect us to do pretty well,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said.
Not having to face one of the top two candidates for the AL Cy Young Award should help.
Crochet, 26, had pitched in four playoff games before Tuesday, but all were relief appearances with the Chicago White Sox in 2020 and 2021. Last season, he transitioned to starter and immediately excelled, though with a limited workload, for a historically dreadful White Sox club that sought to trade him for younger talent that better aligned with its rebuild plan’s timeline.
In the end, the Red Sox won a bidding war to acquire Crochet for four prospects in December for nights like Tuesday. The left-hander, who recorded a 2.59 ERA with a major-league-leading 255 strikeouts over an AL-high 205⅓ innings during the regular season, held New York to one run on four hits. He compiled 11 strikeouts to zero walks. At one point, he retired 17 consecutive batters, becoming the first pitcher to retire that many Yankees in a row in a postseason game since Carl Erskine retired 19 straight in the 1952 World Series, according to ESPN Research.
“Every time he takes the mound, we feel like we have a chance to win,” Red Sox third baseman Alex Bregman said.
For 6⅓ innings, however, Max Fried bested Crochet. Fried, another left-hander acquired over the offseason, wiggled out of jams in the fourth and fifth innings to hold the Red Sox scoreless. The Yankees, meanwhile, jumped out to a lead in the second inning when Crochet surrendered a two-out, two-strike solo home run to Anthony Volpe that ignited the rambunctious crowd.
But it was lights out for the Yankees after that until Volpe singled with one out in the eighth inning as Crochet’s pitch count neared uncharted territory. The next batter, Austin Wells, was Crochet’s last. He concluded his night with an exclamation point: a 100.2 mph fastball — his fastest pitch of the night — that caught Wells looking for strike three.
“With them leaving me in there, I wanted to honor that decision,” Crochet said. “I felt like [Cora has] put a lot of faith in me this year, and I haven’t let him down yet. So I was going to be damn sure this wasn’t the first time.”
On the other side, Boone replaced Fried with right-hander Luke Weaver with the bases empty and one out in the seventh inning after Fried had retired Jarren Duran with his 102nd pitch to begin the frame. A meltdown followed.
Facing Ceddanne Rafaela to start his outing, Weaver got ahead on the notably aggressive hitter — Rafaela worked 28 walks in 587 plate appearances during the regular season — but he couldn’t put Rafaela away. Eventually, Rafaela worked an 11-pitch walk.
Moments later, Nick Sogard slashed a line drive to right-center field that Aaron Judge, playing the field with a flexor strain in his right arm, fielded on a hop. Sogard, who had already aggressively taken second base on a flyout earlier in the game, chose to test Judge and darted for second base for a hustle double after Judge’s 73.2 mph throw arrived late.
“That’s preparation,” Cora said. “We talk about their outfielders and what can we do or what we cannot do, and he saw it right away and took advantage of it.”
The next batter, pinch-hitter Masataka Yoshida, ripped a two-run single on the first pitch to chase Weaver from the game.
“They pressured him pretty good in the fourth, fifth, sixth,” Boone said, explaining his decision to pull Fried in the seventh inning. “Had a couple base runners each inning. Felt like he kind of cruised through the first few and he obviously ends up pitching great. [But he] had to work pretty hard. I was going to have the sixth be the end. After we finished with the double play, I wanted him to go out and get Duran and felt like we were lined up.”
Bregman, playing in his 100th career playoff game, added an RBI in the ninth inning against Yankees closer David Bednar to pad Boston’s lead before Chapman played with fire in the ninth.
The Yankees strung together three consecutive singles off the 37-year-old All-Star left-hander to load the bases for Giancarlo Stanton, an October hero for the Yankees in their run to the World Series last year. As quickly as he found trouble, Chapman escaped.
First, Stanton struck out on a 92 mph splitter after seeing three 100-plus mph fastballs. Next, Jazz Chisholm Jr., who had entered the game for defense in the eighth inning, flied out to shallow right field. Then Trent Grisham struck out for the fourth time on a 101.2 mph fastball.
The Red Sox could have done without the drama, but, in the end, the script — Boston’s two dominant lefties, separated in age by 11 years and in postseason experience by 40 games, overwhelming the Yankees and bookending a win — went as Crochet predicted.
“Just being arrogant, to be honest,” Crochet said of his promise to Cora. “I didn’t actually expect that to be the case.”
