Yankees salvage Red Sox doubleheader split with late-inning offensive surge

All over The Bronx on Saturday night was relief.

From a Yankees lineup that awoke, first with a three-run third inning and later a five-run eighth. From a Yankees, well, relief corps that did not bend. From presumably George Lombard Jr., who exited early with knee discomfort but initial examinations were encouraging. From a Yankees club that escaped a very long day of baseball still stiff-arming the charging Red Sox.

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After the lineup could do nothing right against lefty Jake Bennett in the doubleheader-opening 6-0 loss, the Yankees cracked the Boston staff, pounded single after single — 13 in total — to pull away late and rode tired arm after tired arm to a mostly closer-than-it-appeared 9-2 victory in the nightcap.

A total of 91,580 fans watched 18 innings that took 5 hours and 59 minutes to complete, a lot of action for a day that did not alter the race for the top wild card.

The Yankees (77-59) maintain a three-game edge on the Red Sox (74-62), and the tiebreaker — should the teams finish with the same record — will be decided Sunday.

The teams are 6-6 against each other before the series finale. The Rays (81-54) moved 4 ½ games clear of the Yankees.

“It’s going to be big tomorrow to win the series,” acknowledged José Caballero, who added a pair of singles in the nightcap. “We’re looking forward to that.”

There were all sorts of hitting, fielding and decision-making concerns after a Saturday opener in which manager Aaron Boone acknowledged, “We played poorly.”

They played most poorly with their bats, held down by a second Red Sox lefty (Bennett, who threw six scoreless innings) in a series Boston stacked as many southpaws as possible to exploit a Yankees weakness.

The first two games of the series included just seven Yankees hits — Paul Goldschmidt’s Friday home run the only run-scorer — and 20 strikeouts. Of those seven, all were scattered: They had not logged multiple hits in any frame.

That changed beginning in the nightcap’s third inning.

Against righty Brayan Bello, who followed lefty opener Alec Gamboa (1 ¹/₃ scoreless innings), they exploded for the only three runs they would need.

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There were good at-bats, like Caballero’s leadoff single. There was good baserunning, like Caballero’s ensuing steal of second.

There was good situational hitting, like Luis García Jr. just making contact with the bases loaded for an RBI fielder’s choice and Jazz Chisholm Jr. following with a sacrifice fly.

And in the never-ending eighth, there was an onslaught of singles against lefty Raymond Burgos — seven in total, on a night all 13 Yankees hits were singles — in an inning when it was the Red Sox’s turn to play poorly, from a Cody Bellinger bloop into shallow right field that somehow fell to Spencer Jones hitting a ground ball to first and watching Burgos not hustle over to cover the base.

“It’s good to see those at-bats because those are what have plagued us at times offensively, those tack-on runs,” Boone said after the Yankees, who barely had any chances in the opener, went 6-for-13 with runners in scoring position in the second game.

Not that the bullpen needed the cushion.

In what is maybe the biggest series of the season thus far and in a head-to-head battle with the Red Sox that features eight total All-Stars, arguably the most important Yankees on Saturday night were Yerry De los Santos, Michael Fulmer, Paul Blackburn, Tim Hill, Brent Headrick and Brendan Beck, who combined for 5 ¹/₃ innings in which they let up just one run.

After a building-up Carlos Rodón lasted just 4 ²/₃ innings in the opener, Max Fried made it 3 ²/₃ innings fresh off the injured list in the second game, leaving a buffet of innings for the bullpen to eat.

“Got us into the fourth there,” Boone said of Fried, “and then the bullpen was able to make it happen the rest of the way.”

The biggest standouts from the unit were De los Santos — who became the first Yankee since Chad Green in 2021 to pitch in both ends of a doubleheader, finishing with 1 ¹/₃ scoreless innings — and Blackburn, who entered a two-on, no-one-out jam in the sixth and struck out Caleb Durbin and Andruw Monasterio before inducing a flyout from Nick Sogard.

“That’s been him,” Boone said simply of Blackburn. “That’s, in a lot of ways, the game in the balance right there. … He comes in and cuts them up, 1-2-3.”

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