Game 148: Red Sox (Bello) at Yankees (Cole) 1:05pm EDT

Yanks have beaten Weissert a few games the last two season, including one big meltdown against them this year, if I remember right.

Not much to say about this one, Yanks taken out of it by Cole's meltdown in the middle innings.
Yanks' lead back down 2 1/2 games, pending the O's Tigers game this evening.

The series finale is the usual later Sunday matinee at 1:37 pm back on YES, a battle of gopher ball specialists. Kutter Crawford (8-14, 4.09 ERA) starts for Boston; he leads the world in HR allowed, and has pitched 3 games against the Yanks already this year. One was sheer dominance, one was dominant after a poor start, and one was bad, so what will he give them tomorrow? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Carlos Rodon (14-9 with a 4.21 ERA) goes for the Yanks. He's hot on Crawford's trail with 29 HR allowed; he got undressed by the Sox in the early innings of his first start in Fenway this year, but came back to throw a good one in his 2nd start there 6 1/2 weeks later just 2 solo HR in 6 1/3 innings for an 8-2 Yankees win. What will he give the Yanks tomorrow? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Game preview done, I go to check notifications.

looked like a give up AB by gleyber to end this misery.

the HBP in the 1st and then the IBB, shows that devers is in cole's head. the optics is not good. the walk itself was "innocent" enough. for a while teams were walking judge a lot. but if you walk devers there, you can't implode like that. can't let it bite you in the butt. but then the 5th was worse with the cherry on top being devers getting a base hit proving cole was "right" walking him. i "own" you. and of course there's cole's over 6 ERA against the sox since becoming a yankee. not good. hopefully cole bounces back from this.

the other culprit in this game was the continued ineptitude of the offense. no judge bail out or walk off. 5 hits says it all. the offense hit some hard hit balls early but the usual missed opportunities w gleyber driving in the only run. the offense was the co-gotg.

will give mayza a potg for the yankees for 3 2/3 scoreless saving the bullpen in a blowout. gave up some hits but made pitches when needed. given his 6 ERA as a yankee, the performance was a surprise and huge. hill pitched a shutdown 9th as well.

Sounds right. Thanks, rizzuto.

listening to cole, seems like it was a strategy discussed as an option w boone & the coaches (blake) leading up the game and that there was a discussion at least w blake prior to the inning where they decided to stay with "the plan" and be "aggressive" - ie walk devers (to me that sounds like a "passive" solution).

as i've said, we've seen judge walked 19 times this season including 3 in one game. in those situations when judge is walked, it's incumbent on the offense to make the other team pay (wonder how many times we have) and just as incumbent on the pitcher to shut it down.

in this case think it was unnecessary with us holding a 1 run lead in the 4th inning with the worst that happen could is a tied game. if it was later in the game and there were men on and an open base it would make more sense. but if cole executed and shuts the inning down, it's no harm, no foul and people might actually laud it as a "good" call. can recall many times on this forum when folks were screaming for us to walk devers only for him to come through with the big hit. in this case, boston won & we lost. ultimately no matter who called it, cole didn't get it done.