It wasn’t going to always work out.
Not all the little adaptations the Yankees have had to make at the beginning of this very strange season were going to translate to wins, no matter how well-suited to it they seemed in the first two games of the year.
Though they have those extra two players on the roster, working around a starting pitching staff that isn’t fully stretched out presents some pretty significant challenges. So does a lineup that hasn’t had the time it usually does to prepare for the season. Granted, every team is going through the same thing, it was just that on Sunday, it was the Yankees' turn to feel the pain of it.
Their lineup failed to get timely hits and the usually sterling bullpen faltered just enough as they lost to the Red Sox, 4-3, at Yankee Stadium on Bobby Dalbec's solo home run in the sixth inning.
They Yankees (2-1), who left 11 men on base, had 10 hits and three walks in six innings but were able to turn all that offense into only three runs. They left nine on base in that span and missed a good opportunity when Aaron Hicks grounded into an inning-ending 4-6-3 double play with the bases loaded in the third.
The bullpen, which entered the day having allowed only one earned run in 13 innings, finally cracked in the sixth when Clarke Schmidt allowed Dalbec's 391-foot homer to right-center for a 4-3 Boston lead. Before that, Schmidt, who pitched 2 2/3 innings, allowed an inherited runner to score the tying run on a sacrifice fly in the fourth.
And with all that, it could have been a lot worse.
Things got ugly early when, after a one-out single, Xander Bogaerts hit a 102.8-mph missile off the back of starter Jordan Montgomery’s thigh. Montgomery attempted to walk it off before collapsing on the ground. The Yankees summoned the trainer (and the bullpen) but the ball, which hit the fleshy part of his leg, apparently didn’t do grave enough damage to take him out. Montgomery, though, did seem rattled, and he quickly let up an RBI double to JD Martinez, hit Dalbec, and let up a sacrifice fly to Alex Verdugo before getting out of the inning down 2-0.
The Yankees were finally able to touch up Tanner Houck in the third, when Anthony Rizzo led off with a walk, and Aaron Judge stroked a line drive to right that was just missed by a diving Christian Arroyo for a single. Stanton singled for the first run of the game and his fourth RBI this year. The Yankees eventually loaded the bases, but Aaron Hicks hit into the inning-ending double play to keep the Red Sox ahead.
Montgomery, like both starters before him, was subjected to a quick hook because of the shortened spring, but not before he put two runners on in the third. With Arroyo at third and Schmidt in, Jonathan Arauz hit a sacrifice fly to increase the Red Sox lead to 3-1. Montgomery departed after 58 pitches, allowing three earned runs on four hits with a walk and four strikeouts in 3 1/3 innings.
Two runs, though, was more than striking distance for Anthony Rizzo, though. Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Jose Trevino hit a double and single to lead off the fourth, accounting for both of their first hits as Yankees, and moved over on a wild pitch. Then Rizzo, who came into the game with two homers and four RBIs over the first two games, came up with reliever Ryan Brasier on the mound, and promptly lined a two-run single to left to tie the game at 3.
“Riz in a good spot right now,” Aaron Boone said after the game Saturday, after his second homer. “He’s just missed another pitch or two on top of the two homers where he’s had a chance, but good to see him in, I know, in a good place with his mechanics and his swing. I know he feels real good.”
The Yankees squandered a chance in the fifth, when they put runners in scoring position with one out, but Hicks grounded out and Kiner-Falefa struck out. That was enough for the Red Sox, who capitalized in the next half inning, when Schmidt threw a first-pitch, 93-mph sinker that rather inconveniently settled in the dead center of the strikezone for Dalbec, who hit it 391 feet to right for a solo home run, his first of the year.
