Before play on Saturday the New York Yankees led all of MLB with 126 home runs this season, including 25 in their last 15 games.
The Yankees bats continued to stay hot blasting four home runs, homering back-to-back on two different occasions in their 6-1 win over the Red Sox in the first of a day-night doubleheader Saturday afternoon at Fenway Park.
As was the case in Friday night’s game, the Yankees wasted no time scoring in the top of the first.
After scoring five runs in the first inning Friday night, the Yankees scored four times Saturday afternoon off of Red Sox starter Franklin Morales.
Nick Swisher and Andruw Jones’ back-to-back home runs gave the Yankees an early 4-0 lead.
Swisher’s three-run bomb broke an 0-for-17 slump, and then Jones homered into the monster seats putting New York ahead 4-0 before fans could even get settled into their seats.
Jones was again involved in back-to-back home runs for the Yankees in the fourth inning.
He led off the inning with a home run into the Monster Seats. Jayson Nix then went deep to give the Yankees and their starter Freddy Garcia a commanding 6-0 lead.
Garcia, making his second start since returning to the starting rotation after a stint in the bullpen, pitched quite well allowing just one-run over 6 2/3 innings of work.
He did not allow a hit until David Ortiz’s wall-ball single in the fourth inning.
The Red Sox lone run off of Garcia came in the fourth inning when they strung together three straight singles, capped off by Mauro Gomez’s RBI single to center scoring Ortiz.
In his two previous starts this season Morales pitched extremely well, throwing into at least the sixth inning in each of the outings, but that was not the case Saturday.
Morales struggled with his control, leaving fastballs over the middle of the plate and Yankee hitters took full advantage.
The left-hander went 3 1/3 innings allowing six runs on six hits, while walking two.
Boston did get a strong outing from reliever Justin Germano, who was just activated to the big league roster on Wednesday. Germano did not allow a run, and struck out seven in 5 2/3 innings of work.
More importantly his long outing allowed the Red Sox bullpen to be well rested and fully available for second game of the double-header and tomorrow night’s series finale.
Derek Jeter led New York going 3-for-5 with three singles while for Boston, Adrian Gonzalez extended his hit streak to 17 games, which ties a career high.
The Yankees are now 9.5 games in front of the Red Sox for first place in the AL East standings.
The second game of the day-night doubleheader is set to begin at 7:15 p.m.
