No matter how good Yankees relievers looked down the stretch, they had inflicted enough pain during the course of the regular season to induce nightmares about what might happen in October.
The Yankees could not wake up from such a night terror on Tuesday, though their bullpen was not the only unit responsible for that.
After Max Fried carried a gem into the seventh inning, hanging on to a one-run lead, Luke Weaver relieved him and quickly flushed it away, resulting in a tense 3-1 loss to the Red Sox in Game 1 of their AL wild-card series in The Bronx.
Weaver had no room for error because Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet was in the midst of a dominant night, throwing 7 ²/₃ innings of one-run ball while striking out 11.
Crochet passed the baton to former Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman, who finished off the eighth before giving up three straight singles on three straight pitches to Paul Goldschmidt, Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger to lead off the ninth.
Giancarlo Stanton, the author of so many epic postseason at-bats, could not deliver another as he struck out on four pitches. Jazz Chisholm Jr., who had entered the game in the top of the eighth, flied out to right field, not deep enough to score Goldschmidt from third.
Chapman then struck out Trent Grisham on a 101.2 mph heater to end it in dramatic fashion, putting the Yankees’ season on life support entering Wednesday’s Game 2.
They will have to fare better against Brayan Bello, who has mostly had their number until the last time they saw him in mid-September.
After giving up a solo home run to Anthony Volpe in the second inning, Crochet retired 17 straight Yankees before Volpe singled with one out in the eighth inning.
Crochet came back to get Austin Wells looking at a 100.2 mph fastball on his career-high 117th, fastest and final pitch of the night, at which point Red Sox manager Alex Cora called on Chapman.
Volpe distracted Chapman by taking big jumps off of first base, getting him to throw over unsuccessfully three times, which awarded Volpe second base.
But Chapman buckled down to get José Caballero to fly out to end the threat.
The Red Sox added an insurance run in the top of the ninth off David Bednar, as longtime nemesis Alex Bregman roped an RBI double to make it 3-1.
Fried, who had escaped jams in the fourth and fifth innings, threw his 102nd and final pitch to record the first out of the seventh inning, then walked off the mound to a standing ovation.
But the good feelings did not last much longer. Weaver entered and quickly got ahead of Ceddanne Rafaela 0-2 before the Red Sox center fielder — who had the lowest walk rate on his team during the regular season — fought back for an 11-pitch walk. No. 9 hitter Nick Sogard followed with a hustle double to right-center field — seemingly testing and taking advantage of Aaron Judge’s arm — to put two runners in scoring position.
The Red Sox then sent up pinch-hitter Masataka Yoshida, who pounced on the first pitch he saw and drilled it to center field to score both runs for the 2-1 lead.
In Volpe’s first at-bat of the postseason — a year after he came alive during the Yankees run to the World Series, with some low moments in between this regular season — he drilled Crochet’s 97 mph sinker into the seats in right field for the 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second.
But that was the only source of Yankees offense on the night. Besides the ninth inning, their best chance came in the bottom of the first, when Goldschmidt and Judge led off with back-to-back singles.
But Crochet fanned Bellinger on a 99 mph fastball above the zone and then got Stanton to ground into an inning-ending double play.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
