The Boston Red Sox scored five times on five hits to begin a six-run first inning and Garrett Crochet matched a season-high 12 strikeouts across six innings en route to a 6-4 win over the visiting New York Yankees on Sunday night.
Carlos Narvaez punctuated the big inning with a two-out solo homer to deep center field while Trevor Story, Nathaniel Lowe, Romy Gonzalez (double) and Masataka Yoshida all had multiple hits for Boston (82-68), which lost the first two games of the three-game series.
New York (83-66) fell four games behind the first-place Toronto Blue Jays in the American League East but lead the Red Sox by 1 1/2 games for the top AL wild-card spot.
Crochet (16-5) allowed just two baserunners through the first three innings and finished his outing with six innings of three-run ball. Two of the five hits off him were solo home runs by Amed Rosario and Aaron Judge, who hit his 48th of the season.
Steven Matz and Garrett Whitlock bridged the gap to Aroldis Chapman in the ninth, who benefited from second baseman Gonzalez’s diving stop on Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s hard grounder and struck out Jose Caballero to post his 30th save of the season.
Judge was 2-for-4 and Rosario had two RBIs to lead New York. Will Warren (8-7) put up four straight scoreless innings after the first.
Singles by Story and Lowe continued the early onslaught, with the latter knock to right doubling the lead. Gonzalez’s RBI double into the right-field corner made it 3-0 and ended a game-opening stretch of five straight hits.
The first two outs — a Yoshida sacrifice fly and Rob Refsnyder RBI grounder — both produced runs before Narvaez’s round-tripper.
Crochet did not allow a hit until Ben Rice’s ringing double to center with one out in the third. The Boston lefty, though, fanned Austin Slater and Judge back-to-back to end a three-strikeout third.
New York got on the scoreboard at 6-2 in the fourth. Stanton hit a one-out single past shortstop before Rosario just cleared the Green Monster in left-center field for a two-run homer.
In the fifth, a batter after Crochet picked up his 10th strikeout, Judge hit a solo shot into the right-center field bullpen to bring the Yankees another run closer.
Caballero cut the New York deficit to 6-4 in the seventh, sending a one-out solo homer totally out of the ballpark in left field off Matz.
The visitors’ eighth began with Judge lining a hard-hit single off the left-field wall against Whitlock, who recovered to strike out the heart of the lineup in order.
