Yankees pound the Red Sox to hurt their wildcard chances

The New York Yankees defeated the Boston Red Sox by the score of 9-1 on Saturday evening. Freddy Garcia made the start for the Yankees and pitched great, he may have secured himself a spot in the postseason rotation. The Yankees bullpen did a good job and the offense really hammered Jon Lester. Jesus Montero had a big day at the plate.
Garcia pitched six innings giving up six hits and no runs. He walked one and struck out three. Garcia improved to 12-8 on the season. Raul Valdes pitched 2/3 of an inning giving up two hits and one run, Cory Wade gave up a hit without recording an out and Boon Logan faced two batters and retired both of them, one on a strikeout. Luis Ayala faced two batters and retired them both and George Kontos pitched a perfect inning with two strikeouts.

Derek Jeter had a hit and three RBI, Robinson Cano had a hit and Nick Swisher had a hit and two walks. Andruw Jones had two hits, Montero had three hits and four RBI and Russell Martin had a hit and two RBI. Montero had a double, Jeter and Montero each had a homerun. The Yankees were 5-6 with runners in scoring position and they left two men on base. Rodriguez made a throwing error.

In the second Montero had an RBI single to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead. Martin had a two run single to make it 3-0 and Jeter had a three run homerun to make it 6-0 Yankees. In the third Montero had a two run double and it was 8-0 Yankees. Montero hit a solo homerun in the sixth to push the lead to 9-0, the Red Sox would get their only run of the game in the seventh inning. It was the last run of the game as the game finished 9-1. Carl Crawford had an RBI double.

The Yankees with their win had a magic number of one to clinch home field advantage throughout the AL playoffs. The Tigers were taking on the Orioles this evening and lost so the Yankees have clinched home field advantage. The Yankees also with the victory put the pressure on the Red Sox who came into the day with a 2 ½ game lead over the Rays for the wild card. The Rays won so the lead is down to 1 ½. The Red Sox will be pitching John Lackey and Tim Wakefield in the doubleheader tomorrow. These are two pitchers that have really struggled for an extended period of time. There was a crowd of 49, 556 which was the largest in the new stadiums history. Garcia said “I needed to pitch good today. I did it, I’m really happy about it, and now I’m looking forward to my next start. I don’t know when, but hopefully it will be in the playoffs.” The Yankees had their regular lineup in there against the Red Sox. I would assume in one of the games tomorrow they will and then in the other it will be a lot of backups since it is a doubleheader. The key though is pitching and that is why the Red Sox are struggling so much, the pitching for them has been awful. A.J. Burnett will star the first game for the Yankees on Sunday and Ivan Nova will pitch the night cap of the doubleheader. The Yankees will really try to hurt the Red Sox chances by beating them in both games of the doubleheader.