The new york yankees and Boston Red Sox have had their fair share of history. In their earlier matchup in April up in Fenway Park, there was a bench-clearing brawl. The Yankees had Masahiro Tanaka on the mound on Wednesday night (May 9), coming off of a quality start against the Astros. The Red Sox saw 2016 AL Cy Young Award winner Rick Porcello take the mound with a 5-0 record and a 2.14 ERA entering the night. The game had a playoff feel throughout the night and the winner would take sole possession of first place in the division.

Game recap

The Yankees took an early 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first when Aaron Judge hit a groundball up the middle to score Brett Gardner.

The top of the second saw Mitch Moreland send Tanaka deep with Xander Bogaerts on base for his sixth home run of the season to make it 2-1 Red Sox. The bottom of the third saw Gardner and Judge on base and Giancarlo Stanton continued his hot hitting against the Red Sox with a double to right field to score both runners and make it 3-2 Yankees. Aaron Hicks hit a sacrifice fly in the inning that scored Stanton to give the Yankees a 4-2 lead.

In the top of the fifth inning, Andrew Benintendi hit his second homer of the year to right center field and made it 4-3. In the bottom half of the inning, with Aaron Judge on third, Gary Sanchez hit a sac fly to center to make it 5-3 Yankees. The Red Sox hit a sac fly of their own in the top of the sixth inning with Xander Bogaerts on third base and ex-Yankee Eduardo Nunez at the plate to make it 5-4.

Hanley Ramirez hit his fourth homer on the season off of Chad Green with Andrew Benintendi on base in the top half of the seventh to give the Red Sox a 6-5 lead.

The bottom of the eighth inning saw Matt Barnes come into the game as the setup man. Neil Walker hit a double to lead off the inning and Miguel Andujar moved him to third on a groundout to second base.

Gleyber Torres worked a walk for runners on the corners and Boston brought in closer Craig Kimbrel in an attempt to hold the lead. Kimbrel came in to face the top of the Yankees' lineup and Brett Gardner had a good at-bat that resulted in a two-run triple as center fielder Mookie Betts was playing shallow on the play to give the Yankees a 7-6 lead.

Aaron Judge came up next and hammered the baseball to center field for his ninth home run of the season and made it 9-6.

The Yankees had their closer Aroldis Chapman pitch the bottom of the ninth and gave up a single and three strikeouts for the win. The Yankees now have won five games after trailing in the eighth inning or later in the past two weeks and now are the division leaders in the American League East.

Preview for tomorrow

The probable starters for tomorrow's series-ending matchup (May 10) are Eduardo Rodriguez (3-0, 5.29 ERA) and CC Sabathia (2-0, 1.39 ERA). The Yankees will be looking to sweep the Red Sox and extend their hot streak of winning 17 of their last 18 games and look to make it a 12-game home win streak, which has come against all of the other 2017 American League playoff teams. These lineups came to hit in the second game and will look to continue that as both bullpens surrendered leads late in the ballgame.
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