Andy Pettitte had his worst start of the second half on Friday night. Not that it mattered. By the time he got the hook with two on and none out in the bottom of the sixth, the Yankees had scored 15 runs and were well on their way to a 20-11 win. The Yankees scored six runs in four innings off Boston starter Brad Penny without the benefit of a home run, added six more in the fifth off Penny and just-recalled rookie Michael Bowden, and boasted a 12-1 lead before the Red Sox picked up their second hit of the game in the bottom of the fifth.
Pettitte struggled from there on out, giving up three in the fifth (all of which the Yanks got back off Bowden in the top of the sixth), and one more in the sixth before getting pulled with men on first and second and none out. Brian Bruney came on and walked in a run and let another in on a double-play before finally getting out of the inning. The Yankees got one of those runs back off Manny Delcarmen in the top of the seventh. Bruney worked into another jam in seventh, loading the bases on two walks and a hit batter, but Damaso Marte, fresh of the disabled list, emerged from the bullpen and got David Ortiz to fly out and struck out Mike Lowell, hitting 94 on the radar gun in the process. Marte started a string of eight straight outs that was snapped when the two teams combined for eight more runs in the ninth, with Ramon Ramirez and Sergio Mitre, who had pitched a perfect eighth, taking the beating.
The specifics of how the runs scored were unimportant. Nearly every Yankee starter got a hit and both scored and drove in at least one run. The exception was Johnny Damon, who struck out in his first at-bat after fouling a pitch off the inside of his right knee and never took the field in the bottom of the first due to the resulting bruise (it was nothing more). Erik Hinske took Damon’s place and in his first at-bat he hit an RBI ground rule double down the right field line, then came around to score. Hideki Matsui hit the only Yankee home runs, both of them three-run shots, contributing to his seven-RBI night, though one came with the Yanks leading 16-7 in the ninth inning.
So the Yankees finally won a game at Fenway this year, but hidden behind all the scoring was a poorly played game, even by the victors. Pettitte needed 105 pitches to get through five-plus innings and gave up seven runs on seven hits. Just five of those runs were earned because the sixth inning began with a throwing error by Robinson Cano that pulled Mark Teixeira off first base on a ground ball by Casey Kotchman. That wasn’t the worst play of the night however. In the third, Eric Hinske misplayed a ball off the Monster into a would-be triple, only to have Derek Jeter range out to shallow left and gun out Dustin Pedroia at third; Hinske never touched the ball. The “hit” that drove Pettitte from the game was a pop up to the triangle in shallow left center by David Ortiz that Melky Cabrera should have had, but let drop expecting Hinske to move in. That drove in a run. Bruney’s inning and a third was flat-out dreadful. He faced eight batters, walked three of them, hit a fourth, and gave up a single to a fifth. He threw 37 pitches to get four outs (two on a double play), and just 14 of those tosses were strikes. After a 1-2-3 eighth, Sergio Mitre got torched in the ninth, retiring just three of eight batters, hitting one and giving up a pair of homers and four runs, putting him even further behind Chad Guadin in the competition for the fifth spot in the rotation.
Still, it was a good time for Joe Girardi and Dave Eiland to get a look at the inconsistent Bruney, the newly activated Marte, and the relief version of Sergio Mitre. It also kept the Yankee boot on the Red Sox’s neck. The Yankees have now won the last five head-to-head meetings, hold a 7.5-game lead in the AL East, and have A.J. Burnett and CC Sabathia starting the final two games of the series.
