Sonny Gray pitched 6 1/3 innings against one of his former teams, Willson Contreras homered and the Boston Red Sox continued their recent road success with a 5-3 victory over the New York Yankees on Friday night.
Gray (7-1), who struggled in 41 regular-season appearances for the Yankees in 2017 and 2018, won as a visitor to Yankee Stadium for the first time.
Gray allowed three runs on eight hits. The right-hander struck out three, walked two and improved to 5-0 in six starts since returning from a hamstring injury.
Contreras homered for the second straight game. With a runner on base in the fifth inning, he lifted a 1-1 changeup and kept it just fair into the second deck in left field off New York’s Ryan Weathers (2-4) to put the Red Sox ahead 5-2.
Contreras also hit a tiebreaking infield single in the third on a chopper to the left side of the mound.
Andruw Monasterio homered in the fourth and Wilyer Abreu hit an RBI groundout ahead of Contreras’ infield hit to help the Red Sox log a 10th win in their past 13 road games.
The Yankees lost for the third time in four games after putting Aaron Judge on the 10-day injured list with a stress fracture in his right rib cage. There is no timetable for his return, and the team announced that Judge would be re-evaluated in four to six weeks.
Ben Rice homered off Gray two batters into the first inning and Trent Grisham went deep in the fifth. Spencer Jones was called up to replace Judge and highlighted his first career three-hit game with a run-scoring single in the fourth to make it a one-run contest.
Weathers allowed five runs on seven hits in six innings, the third time in four starts that he yielded five runs. The left-hander struck out four and walked one.
Gray exited after striking out Austin Wells with a runner on first in the seventh inning. Danny Coulombe retired Grisham and Rice to end the seventh, doing so after Contreras was charged with an error for dropping Rice’s foul popup.
Boston’s Justin Slaten pitched a 1-2-3 eighth, and Aroldis Chapman stranded two in the ninth for his 13th save in as many chances and 28th in a row dating back to last July.
–Field Level Media
