Yankees 4, Red Sox 1: The New York Yankees clinched an American League wild-card spot Thursday night by defeating the Boston Red Sox 4-1.
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After two years of being eliminated from playoff contention in the final week of the regular season, the New York Yankees are back in the postseason.
Yes, five National League clubs already reached that milestone – but the senior circuit had a 25-year head start.
Severino figures to be on a short leash as the team keeps him fresh for what it hopes will be an extended run through the postseason.
As mentioned, the recent win was also the team’s 10,000th in their franchise history. I guarantee that to most Yankees fans these milestones and achievements will seem nearly meaningless if the Yankees fall flat on their faces Tuesday and lose in the AL Wild Card game.
With their division lead down to seven games, the Sox hosted the Yankees for four games in early September at Fenway Park. A Subway Series could be in the offing.
“We’ll never forget what Derek [Jeter] did for this organization”, Girardi explained to the press after the game about the team transitioning in 2015 after the shortstop’s retirement. However, injuries would contribute to a regression for Boston, leading up to a four-game series with the rival Yankees that would later be nicknamed “The Boston Massacre”.
The Yanks need to win one of their remaining three games this weekend in Baltimore to guarantee home-field advantage for that game.
Sabathia thought back to his late-summer stint on the DL.
Alex Rodriguez talked about if he expected to be popping champagne at this point, when he was at the beginning of the season, he said, “I always believed there something about wearing this uniform that gives you a tremendous amount of confidence”.
While closer Andrew Miller and setup man Dellin Betances flashed their dominant ways virtually all season, there were legitimate questions about who would be third-in-command. “When the time comes, hopefully we’ll be one of those teams that’s playing better than the others”.
“I think it’s extremely gratifying with what we’ve went through this year, where people figured we would be at the end of the year”. “They’re not a big stolen base team, so if you can get the ball on the ground, you have a chance to turn them”. We shall see in 2016 if he’s finally worth all that money.
Sabathia (6-10) allowed one run and six hits while pitching through rain and wind at times during his fifth start since returning from right knee inflammation.
Yankees manager Joe Girardi split his regulars between the first and second game. Nearly all of his big league production came against lefties (.322/.355/.471); against righthanded pitchers, hit.233/.266/.324 and made a lot of weak contact against pitchers who could exploit his aggressiveness. The Rangers host the Angels for four games (as of this writing the Rangers are beating the Angels 4-2 in the 6th), the Astros are in Phoenix to play the Diamondbacks starting tomorrow while the Twins host the Kansas City Royals.
The Yankees were built to hit the home run and they did, and the bullpen threw four shutout innings to preserve the win for Sabathia.
Part of the celebration included several of the newer players dressing up as 1980s hip-hoppers – despite the ’80s being the worst decade for the Yankees since the 1910s.
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Parra singled in a run in the sixth and drove in two more on his second double of the game in the seventh. This is probably the first year since I’ve been here in ’04 that we were underdogs.
