I Hope They Saved Some Runs for Fenway

There were a lot of Yankee Fans in Pittsburgh for this series.

It seems as though, every time the Yankees head into Fenway Park to play the Boston Red Sox, their previous game is one where they unload the lumber and score a lot of runs, and use up all their hitting, and fall flat in that little green pinball machine in the Back Bay, when they should be taking advantage of the fact that it's the best hitter's park in the major leagues.

Last night, they did it again. After barely hitting at all in the opener of a 2-game series at PNC Park, the Yankees made the Pittsburgh Pirates' pitchers pay.

Luis Severino started, and pitched shutout ball for 6 innings, allowing only 4 hits and no walks. The Yankees then got 1 scoreless inning each from Wandy Peralta, Aroldis Chapman (sure, when there's no pressure on him) and Albert Abreu. This was the kind of performance you would hope for on a night when the Yankees' own hits were few and far between.

It sure looked that way until the 5th inning began, with no score. But, Cliché Alert: Walks can kill you, especially the leadoff variety. Although they rarely lead to the amount of damage we saw the Yankees inflict last night.

Joey Gallo -- yes, Joey Gallo -- drew a leadoff walk. Isiah Kiner-Falefa singled. Kyle Higashioka struck out, but DJ LeMahieu singled Gallo and IKR home. Aaron Judge hit a double, but LeMahieu was thrown out at the plate. And when Matt Carpenter struck out to end the inning, there was a sense of foreboding that the run that DJLM was unable to score might matter later on.

Instead, that sense of forboding was vaporized by back-to-back home runs from Josh Donaldson and Gallo in the 6th. Higashioka led off the 7th with a homer. The game was put away in the 8th, against Manny Bañuelos, whom the Yankees had sold to the Pirates just 3 days earlier: IKF singled, Higgy walked, DJLM walked, and Judge hit a grand slam. Aaron Hicks doubled, and Bañuelos was replaced by Chris Stratton. He walked Giancarlo Stanton and Gleyber Torres, and gave up a sacrifice fly to Donaldson. 10-0 Yankees.

Josh VanMeter moved from 2nd base to pitcher to start the 9th. Some position players can actually pitch. Van Meter... couldn't, at least not last night. IKF singled. Higgy flew out. DJLM singled. Marwin González singled. Hicks hit a grand slam. The YES Network broadcasters hadn't finished showing replays of it when Stanton made it back-to-back home runs. Torres singled. VanMeter got Donaldson to ground out, but walked Gallo. That's right: In 1 game, Joey Gallo had a home run and 2 walks. IKF got his 2nd single of the inning. And Higgy singled home Donaldson, before VanMeter mercifully got DJLM to ground into a force play to end it.

Those last 5 innings had a linescore of 22156. That's a ZIP Code for Springfield, Virginia, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Yankees 16, Pirates 0. WP: Severino (5-3). No save. LP: Mitch Keller (2-6). It was the 2nd time this season the Yankees had scored at least 16 runs, and the 13th that they'd scored at least 10.

That's 16 runs, 22 hits, and 8 walks. The Yankees now have to play 4 games against The Scum, at Scumway Park in Scumtown. If the Yankees lose any of those games by just 1 run, I'm going to wonder what 1 run from last night's shellacking in Pittsburgh could have made the difference.

Currently, the Yankees lead the American League Eastern Division by 14 games over The Scum, and also by 14 games over the Tampa Bay Rays, 14 1/2 over the Toronto Blue Jays, and 20 1/2 over the Baltimore Orioles. The Magic Number to clinch the Division is 67.

So the Yankees would seem to be in great shape. But you know what games at Fenway can do to us. Especially if the Red Sox have found a new way to cheat. Or an old one that they think won't get caught this time.

Here are the projected pitching matchups, with all games starting at or around 7:05 PM:

* Tonight, the only game of this series that will air on YES: Gerrit Cole vs. John Winckowski.

* Tomorrow night, on Amazon Prime Video: Nestor Cortes vs. a Sox pitcher not yet chosen.

* Saturday night, on Fox: Jordan Montgomery vs. a Sox pitcher not yet chosen.

* Sunday night, on ESPN: Jameson Taillon vs. Nick Pivetta.

The fact that the Sox' starting rotation is still in flux this close to the start of this series, a key one for them to get back into the race if not one for the Yankees to knock them out of it, is a good sign. But this is Fenway: Anything can happen, and has. In the immortal words of Obi-Wan Kenobi, "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."

And if you're going, to any of these 4 games, for crying out loud, control yourself: It's better to be an uninjured quiet person than a hospitalized partisan.