BOSTON — The Red Sox were punchless for seven innings on Sunday afternoon at Fenway Park. But when they punched back, they flattened the Yankees with a furious five-run rally in the bottom of the eighth en route to a thrilling 5-4 victory that gave them three out of four in the latest rivalry series.
That epic bottom of the eighth by Boston topped the one the Yankees had on Saturday, when they came back from 3-0 down to score a 4-3 win.
The Sox were down, 4-0, and didn’t even have a hit through the first seven innings. Everything started to change when Alex Verdugo busted up Domingo Germán’s no-hit bid by leading off the eighth with a double off the Boston bullpen.
That was all for Germán, and the Sox then went to work against Yankees reliever Jonathan Loasisiga, who was greeted by Hunter Renfroe hammering a double into the left-field corner.
The surge continued when Christian Vázquez answered a swarm of Yankees bloop hits over the last couple of days with a key one for the Red Sox, dropping it into right for an RBI single to score Renfroe.
Franchy Cordero kept the line moving with a single up the middle
Perhaps the key hit of the inning was delivered by Kiké Hernández, who hammered an RBI double to left that put the Sox within one. The fifth consecutive hit of the inning set up second and third and nobody out, and Boston suddenly down just one.
Pinch-hitter Kevin Plawecki tied it on a fielder’s-choice grounder against Zack Britton and Xander Bogaerts got the Sox the lead with a sacrifice fly to medium-depth right, in which Hernández came roaring in to beat the throw.
Matt Barnes worked around a Giancarlo Stanton single to pin down the save.