BOSTON — Maybe the Red Sox can schedule the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, because they clearly can’t handle the real Yankees right now.
The Yankees stomped the Sox again yesterday, 14-3, for their sixth consecutive win and fourth straight over their rivals, propelled by three home runs from Mark Teixeira and 17 total hits.
“This team is all about winning,” said Teixeira, who became the first Yankee to hit three homers at Fenway Park since Lou Gehrig on June 23, 1927.
The Yankees have done plenty of that this season. They now have won nine of their first 10 series, and they trail the Rays by a half-game in the AL East.
The Rays might be the Yankees’ new rival because the Red Sox look hapless and hopeless. They caught several breaks yesterday and still ended up embarrassed. The Yankees were without two of their regular hitters and regular second baseman Robinson Cano did not play the field. They even got an abbreviated day from CC Sabathia, who exited in the fifth inning after a one-hour, 14-minute rain delay.
The Yankees ended up not needing much from their ace as Teixeira and Francisco Cervelli (3-for-4, five RBIs) led an offensive outburst that resulted in season highs in runs and hits for the team.
The Red Sox used six pitchers, including outfielder Jonathan Van Every in the ninth inning.
Teixeira’s May has been every bit as good as his April was bad. He put the Yankees ahead 4-3 in the fifth inning with his first home run before adding insurance runs with blasts in the seventh and ninth. He is batting .400 in May after hitting .136 in April.
“If we were in last place and I was leading the league in hitting and home runs, I wouldn’t be happy,” Teixeira said. “It’s all about wins and losses for us. We’re playing great baseball. When one guy doesn’t do the job the next guy comes up and picks him up. We’ve been doing that all season.”
Sabathia was robbed of a win by umpire Tim McClelland. The big lefty had two outs in the fifth inning and a 2-2 count against Victor Martinez when a downpour hit Fenway Park. McClelland did not give Sabathia the chance to throw another pitch and possibly end the inning to pick up the win. He called for the tarps and Joe Girardi replaced Sabathia with Alfredo Aceves when the game resumed.
Sabathia said he did not realize the rain was coming down as hard as it was or he would have worked more quickly to end the inning.
“It was raining pretty hard,” said Sabathia, who gave up three runs on four hits with four strikeouts and two walks. “It came pretty quick. If I had been paying attention, I probably would have tried to speed it up.”
The best pitch Sabathia made all day was not an out, but a beanball directed at the backside of Dustin Pedroia in the third inning. The plunking occurred with two outs in the third and no one on, and was clearly retaliation for Josh Beckett drilling Robinson Cano and Derek Jeter in Friday’s game.
“Just a fastball that got away,” Sabathia said.
The pitch nearly came back to haunt him when Martinez, the next batter, hit a two-run homer over the Green Monster to give the Sox a 3-2 lead.
That lead was short-lived, as the Yankees offensive onslaught was just getting under way. They scored four runs over the next two innings to retake the lead.
The only lowlight for the Yankees was yet another injury. Aceves had to leave the game in the sixth inning due to a stiff lower back.
The Red Sox entered this series feeling good off a four-game sweep of the Angels, but they have looked overmatched in the first two games of the weekend, getting outscored 24-6. The second-place Yankees have a seven-game lead over the fourth-place Sox in the AL East.