NEW YORK — Aaron Judge loves the rivalry.
The Yankees slugger loves that the fans in the Bronx bring extra energy when the Red Sox show up at Yankee Stadium. He even likes it when the Red Sox faithful are riding him at Fenway.
Judge feeds off the energy and Friday was no different for him. He clobbered his 14th home run of the season, but the rest of the Yankees’ offense continued to struggle and the Red Sox won, 5-2, in front of a season-high crowd of 18,040.
It was the second straight loss for the Yankees (31-27) and their seventh out of their last 10 games. It was also the first win for the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium in two years (June 2, 2019) and their first out of their last 12 games here. The Red Sox (34-23) put more distance between them in second place in the American League East and the third-place Yankees. The Rays held a two-game lead in the division going into Friday night.
“This is the toughest division in baseball, I know that ever since my first game up in 2016 from talking to different guys playing in this league,” Judge said of the AL East. “We got four to five teams now really competing and all five teams are solid ball clubs, but you got four teams that could be (interchangeable) on that top spot. So it’s a tough division, great opponents, great competition. That’s where you want to play, that’s where you want to be. You want to play against the best and see how you stack up against the best.”
So far, because of the offense aside from Judge, the Yankees have not stacked up well. This is the first time the Yankees have faced the Red Sox this season, but they already have lost eight of 13 against the Rays and six of nine against the Blue Jays.
For a team that talked about winning the division to set themselves up for the playoffs, that’s not a good start.
“Obviously going into it, you expect to be first, you expect to win every game and we haven’t been doing that,” Judge said. “But it’s still a long season, like we’ve been saying we’ve only played 60 games out of 162. A lot of things can happen, a lot of things can change.
“Every team goes through the ups and downs and as long as we continue to focus, learn from our mistakes and continue to improve I think this team is going to keep getting better and better and hotter as the year goes on.”
Friday night, the Yankees offense did not get hotter or stronger, but their pitcher, Michael King, did.
He started out shaky, but grew stronger as the night went on. The young right-hander gave up a two-out, three-run homer to Rafael Devers in the first inning, but wasn’t rattled. He retired five of the next eight for two scoreless innings. Then he threw an Immaculate Inning in the fourth, striking out the side on nine pitches. In the fifth, he retired the side on four pitches. Having thrown 66 pitches, King’s night ended on Xander Bogaerts’s single to lead off the sixth.
The Immaculate Inning has only happened 103 times in baseball history and King became the 94th pitcher to do it. He is the seventh Yankees pitcher to throw an Immaculate Inning and the first since Dellin Betances in 2017. It was the second in the majors this season.
Lucas Luetge allowed Bogaerts to score, so King was charged with four runs on six hits. He struck out five and did not walk a batter.
As has been the case for most of this season, the Yankees bats didn’t give him any room to work.
The Yankees did not really get to Nathan Eovaldi until the sixth. They had back-to-back hits to lead off the first and had baserunners in the fourth, but after a grounded-into-double play in the sixth, Judge homered and Gio Urshela scored when Marwin Gonzalez couldn’t handle Rougned Odor’s grounder and threw it away.
The Yankees struck out 15 times, went 0 for 6 with runners in scoring position, grounded into two double plays and stranded six batters. The Yankees went into Friday night’s game with the second worst OPS (.657) and third worst average (.231) with runners in scoring position. In 376 at-bats with runners in scoring position this season, the Yankees have converted just 130 runs.
