BOSTON — After the Yankees took the series opener against the Red Sox on Friday night, Jazz Chisholm Jr. said they wanted to set a statement for the rest of the season.
After clinching the series victory — their first against the Red Sox this year — on Saturday, Chisholm made it loud and clear what exactly that statement entailed.
“That we’re the best team in the league,” Chisholm said after the Yankees’ 5-3 win at a sold-out Fenway Park.
“I feel like any team that thinks they’re better than us, they should know when we step on the field that we’re coming with relentlessness. We’re coming to step on necks. We’re not here to play around. We’re going to do the job and get the job done.”
The Yankees (83-65) still have a ways to go to prove they are the best team in the American League — let alone their division, where they still trail the Blue Jays (who own the tiebreaker) by three games with 14 to play.
But for now, they are at least creating separation with the Red Sox (81-68), moving 2 ¹/₂ games ahead of their rivals for the top AL wild-card spot with a chance to finish off the sweep Sunday night.
Their magic number to clinch a playoff spot is nine (against both the Rangers and Guardians).
The Yankees arrived at Fenway Park on Friday 2-8 against the Red Sox this season but have secured the series, improving to 7-4 in this 12-game gauntlet against four fellow contending teams.
“We’ve said it all year long that we’ve been playing to everybody else’s level instead of our own level,” said Chisholm, who led the way Saturday with three hits and three RBIs, including his 29th home run of the season to pull closer to a 30-30 season. “We’ve been letting games go. We’ve been losing games ourselves, making errors, having poor at-bats and stuff like that. At the end of the day, we finally looked ourselves in the mirror and realized we’re the team to beat. That’s how we’ve been stepping on the field for the last two weeks.”
To do that on Saturday, the Yankees conquered a nemesis on the mound in Brayan Bello, who had previously had their number, before their bullpen delivered late to close out the nail-biter.
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On a day when the Yankees wasted multiple chances to break open the game and allow themselves to breathe a little easier in the late innings, their inconsistent back-end crew did its job as Luke Weaver, Devin Williams, Fernando Cruz and David Bednar combined to record the final 11 outs.
Weaver had the most pressure-packed outs, relieving Max Fried in the sixth inning of a 4-2 game with the tying runs on base. He struck out Ceddanne Rafaela and Romy Gonzalez to escape the jam with Alex Bregman and Trevor Story looming.
“That’s a playoff atmosphere right there,” Weaver said. “That’s a huge matchup, huge game, a lot on the line.”
Williams handled the heart of the order for the second straight night for a scoreless seventh inning before Cruz gave up a solo home run (for the second straight night) to pinch-hitter Jarren Duran in the eighth inning to pull the Red Sox within 4-3.
But Cody Bellinger got the run back in the ninth with an RBI double that capped off a terrific nine-pitch battle against lefty flamethrower Aroldis Chapman.
“He did what he did the whole entire year, which is put together a good at-bat and hit a ball off the Monster in a big spot for us,” Fried said.
Bello entered Saturday having thrown a pair of seven-inning, shutout gems against the Yankees this season. And his 1.95 career ERA against them was the lowest by any pitcher (minimum 10 starts) in the live ball era.
The right-hander did not have his command early, though, and the Yankees took advantage, scoring a pair of runs in the first and four in five innings against him, even while missing opportunities to do more damage considering all the early traffic they had.
Fried and the bullpen made sure the lead stood up.
“Baseball at this time of year, it’s all intense,” Fried said. “Every game we go out there, we feel like we need to go out there and win it. Knowing we’re both tight in the standings, don’t have many opportunities to go out there and start, just wanted to make sure I left it all out there.”