BOSTON — Chance Adams’ biggest obstacle Saturday in his major league debut was the Yankees’ bats.
Filling in for J.A. Happ against the surging Red Sox, Adams did what the Yankees asked of him.
“Hopefully he gets us to the middle innings and gives us a chance to win,” manager Aaron Boone said before the Red Sox handed the free-falling Yankees a 4-1 loss in front of a sold-out Fenway Park crowd of 36,699 who sat for a second straight sub-three hour game (2:33), a rarity for the rivals.
Adams gave the Yankees five innings in which he allowed three runs, three hits, one walk and struck out two. Two of the hits were homers by Mitch Moreland in the first and J.D. Martinez in the fourth.
The loss was the 68-41 Yankees’ fourth straight, which is a season high, dropped them 8 ½ lengths (their largest deficit of the season) back of the 78-34 Red Sox and emphasized the only way the Yankees are getting into the postseason for the second straight year is through the AL wild-card door.
The Yankees tried to make it interesting with two outs in the ninth as back-to-back doubles by Giancarlo Stanton and Didi Gregorius brought in the only run. Closer Craig Kimbrel then walked Aaron Hicks and Gleyber Torres to bring the go-ahead run to the plate, but Greg Bird flew out to end it.
The Yankees will turn to Masahiro Tanaka on Sunday night to try to avoid losing four straight to their blood rivals. David Price goes for the Red Sox.
One game after Rick Porcello went the distance and didn’t face a Yankees hitter with a runner in scoring position Friday night, former Yankee Nathan Eovaldi almost matched his fellow right-hander.
Working with a 3-0 lead in the seventh inning, Eovaldi gave up a leadoff double to Stanton. That made the next hitter, Gregorius, the first Yankee to bat with a runner in scoring position since the ninth inning of Thursday night’s opening game of the four-game series.
Pitching out of the stretch didn’t bother Eovaldi. He retired Gregorius on a foul pop, watched Hicks line out to center and left Stanton on second by making Torres look ill striking out.
In his second start for Boston since being acquired from the Rays, Eovaldi is 2-0 and hasn’t allowed a run in 15 innings. He is 4-0 in six career starts in New England’s living room. In eight scoreless innings Saturday, Eovaldi allowed three hits.
The Red Sox added a run with the help of the review process in the seventh. Initially, third-base umpire Adam Hamari called Sandy Leon’s liner foul. Replay looks showed the ball was fair and scored Eduardo Nunez from second for a 4-0 lead and put runners at second and third for Jackie Bradley Jr. He stranded two with a routine fly ball to center.
Adams got bit by a very popular bug that lives in Fenway and has been annoying pitchers forever: the home-run ball.
Moreland hit a two-run homer to right in the first inning, and Martinez delivered a solo home run to left in the fourth.
Through five innings, Eovaldi wasn’t close to the pitcher who faced the Yankees on June 15, when he was with the Rays. In that game at Yankee Stadium, the hard-throwing righty allowed five runs in 7 ¹/₃ innings and was the loser.
A walk to Hicks leading off the second and Brett Gardner’s single starting the fourth accounted for the only Yankees baserunners in the first five frames, when they didn’t get a runner into scoring position. That followed the Yankees not batting Friday night with a runner in scoring position for the entire nine innings.
Following Moreland’s two-run homer, Adams retired the next nine batters before Martinez drove a 1-1 pitch over the Green Monster for his 33rd homer and a 3-0 Red Sox lead.
A walk to Xander Bogaerts followed Martinez’s homer, and Bogaerts was running on a 3-2 pitch to Nunez, whose hard smash started a 6-4-3 double play and ended the inning.
When Gardner opened the fourth inning with a lined single to left, it was the Yankees’ first hit since Miguel Andujar’s solo homer in the third inning of Friday night’s 4-1 loss.
Porcello and Eovaldi had retired 24 straight batters after Andujar’s homer when Hicks drew a leadoff walk in the second that was quickly erased by Torres banging into a 6-3 double play.
Gardner’s single in the fourth met a similar fate when Gregorius hit a grounder to the right side that turned into an inning-ending double play.
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