BOSTON — The Red Sox are starting to look like the Comeback Kids.
For the second straight night, the Sox fell behind to the mighty Yankees and had to claw their way back.
Sunday, it was Christian Vazquez, J.D. Martinez and, yes, Jeter Downs who paved the way for a roller coaster win at Fenway Park, where the Red Sox scored nine unanswered runs in an 11-6 victory over their rivals from the Bronx.
They played 37 innings over the four-game series and were tied or behind for 34 of those innings, and yet somehow found a way to split the series and take a happy flight to Tampa, where they’ll get right back at it for another week in which they exclusively play the Rays and Yankees.
The takeaways from Fenway:
No Rafael Devers, no problem.
When manager Alex Cora revealed after Friday night’s loss that Devers had reaggravated a back injury and wouldn’t be playing for the rest of the series, it was easy to imagine the Yankees running away with a series sweep while embarrassing their rivals in the process.
Instead, the Red Sox fought back against the flamethrowers in the Yankees bullpen and scored three in the 10th for a walk-off win on Saturday. The Yankees had previously been 48-0 when leading after seven innings this year.
Then on Sunday, the Sox erased a 6-3 deficit in the fifth inning and delivered yet another wild comeback against the Yanks’ bullpen.
Replacing Devers in the two-hole was Christian Vazquez, who delivered a solo homer in the third inning and an RBI double in the fifth to get the Red Sox going. The next batter, J.D. Martinez, cranked a two-run homer to tie the game. It was Martinez’s first homer in 23 games.
The Yanks called on intimidating lefty Aroldis Chapman in the sixth, and the Red Sox worked some patient at-bats to load the bases with nobody out. After Bobby Dalbec struck out swinging on a 100-mph fastball, rookie Jeter Downs came through with a blooper to center field that pushed across the go-ahead run.
In the seventh, the Sox added four more runs for good measure. They loaded the bases again and Trevor Story came through with a sky-high double off the wall to score three. Then Franchy Cordero dropped down a drag bunt to push Story home.
Without Devers, the Sox scored 17 runs over the final two games of the series.
2. Sox bullpen hangs tough.
Cora admitted he was chasing a win on Saturday when he burned his best relievers, John Schreiber and Tanner Houck, for three innings while the Sox were losing.
It worked on Saturday, but set up a difficult Sunday in which Cora needed to go elsewhere.
No problem as Kaleb Ort, Matt Strahm, Hirokazu Sawamura and Ryan Brasier combined to throw 5-2/3 scoreless innings.
3. Pivetta struggles again.
Pivetta had been ace-like for an 11-game stretch heading into his last outing against the Rays, but got lit up twice in a row.
He had nothing working on Sunday as the Yanks knocked him around for six runs on eight hits and two walks. The ball was flying around Fenway as Giancarlo Stanton and Matt Carpenter took him deep to right field.
He entered his start against the Rays this week with a 3.23 ERA but exited Sunday with a 4.08 ERA on the year.
