BOSTON — It took a little longer than they possibly would have wanted, but the Yankees’ mission to avoid traveling to Oakland for the AL wild-card game was accomplished Friday night at Fenway Park.
Knowing that a victory over the Red Sox would allow the wild-card game against the A’s to be held in The Bronx on Wednesday evening, the Yankees scored two runs in the third and six in the fourth en route to an 11-6 victory that was witnessed by a sold-out crowd of 36,779.
The Yankees tied the major league record for homers in a season by swatting four. Gary Sanchez, Aaron Hicks, Luke Voit and Aaron Judge homered to raise the Yankees’ total to 264. That matches the 1997 Mariners for the most in a season with two more games to break it.
J.A. Happ, a very strong candidate to start against the A’s in the loser-go-home game, dominated a lineup full of Red Sox regulars through five innings in which he didn’t allow a run and just one hit. That changed in the sixth when Happ loaded the bases with two outs and watched Steve Pearce drive a grand slam over the Green Monster that cut the hosts’ deficit to 8-4.
Happ, 17-6 overall and 7-0 as a Yankee, won his seventh straight game since being acquired from the Blue Jays on July 26. After winning his first five decisions, he had four no-decisions in his next five outings entering Friday night’s action. In six innings, Happ allowed four runs on four hits while walking two and fanning seven.
The Yankees scored three runs in Happ’s past four starts, so he was due for some support and got plenty of it.
Voit’s 14th homer of the year and 13th with the Yankees in 38 games was one of two Yankees runs scored in the seventh, when the visitors upped the lead to 10-4. The other run was unearned when Red Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts allowed Sanchez’s ground ball get under his glove and score Didi Gregorius.
Gregorius and Hicks returned to the lineup after recovering from a torn cartilage in the right wrist and a left hamstring problem, respectively. Gregorius went 1-for-5, and Hicks went 2-for-5 and drove in three runs with his 27th homer.
Dellin Betances took over for Chad Green to start the home eighth and gave up an RBI single to Pearce (five RBIs) and walked Rafael Devers to load the bases. Betances ended the rally there when Eduardo Nunez’s low liner was snagged by second baseman Gleyber Torres.
Miguel Andujar’s one-out double in the fourth was his 73rd extra-base hit. That is third all-time among Yankee rookies: Joe DiMaggio had 88 in 1936 and Judge had 79 last season. Sanchez walked and scored behind Andujar on Torres’ double high off the Green Monster. Singles by Andrew McCutchen and Judge preceded Hicks’ three-run homer to right that made it 8-0.
Sanchez opened the third inning with a towering home run against lefty Brian Johnson that went over the Green Monster for his 18th of the year. Sanchez’s second homer in three games traveled 446 feet.
Johnson struck out Torres and McCutchen before walking Judge. Hicks’ single moved Judge to second and he scored on Giancarlo Stanton’s shattered-bat single to center for a 2-0 lead.
Happ retired the first nine batters before walking MVP candidate Mookie Betts and giving up a single to Andrew Benintendi to start the fourth.
That put runners at the corners for J.D. Martinez, the other Red Sox MVP candidate. Judge raced to the short wall and grabbed Martinez’s foul ball before making contact with the wall and his mid-section.
Happ fanned Bogaerts and stranded two by feeding Pearce a grounder to Gregorius. After escaping his first jam, Happ retired the Red Sox in order in the fifth.
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