Yanks Split Doubleheader, Lead Series Against Sox 2-1

By Andy Singer

August 30th, 2026

The Yankees split their doubleheader with the Red Sox on Saturday, losing the first game while winning the night game on national TV. The Yankees need a good series against the Red Sox based on where the teams are in the standings, and the Yankees are on their way to taking care of business with a lead in the series. With a win in game 2, the Yankees also tied the season series with the Red Sox at 6 apiece. Sunday will determine the winner of the season series.

Due to time constraints, I am going to give you my thoughts on each game in quick, bullet point form. Let's get at it:

Game 1 - Red Sox 6, Yankees 0

• I don't think the Yankees could have been any more listless in this one. With a lefty starter on the hill for the Sox, the Yankees just couldn't get anything going, scattering just 4 hits throughout the contest.

• To be fair to the Red Sox, Jake Bennett was quite good, as he has been all season. Bennett needed just 83 pitches to get through 6 innings. Given the fact that this was the first half of a doubleheader, I was surprised that Bennett didn't come out for the 7th inning. That said, Bennett displayed diminishing velocity throughout the game prior to the 7th inning when he had a sudden velocity spike, indicating that he might have been emptying the tank.

• This game was much closer than it sounds upon looking at the score. Ryan Yarbrough finished the game for the Yankees and just had less than nothing on the mound, giving up 4 runs. With a doubleheader and a thin bullpen, the Yankees didn't have much choice other than to watch him implode.

• Carlos Rodon did not have his best command out on the mound, and with a pitch limit in the 85-90 pitch range, he didn't give himself a great chance to pitch deep into the game. Rodon endured a lot of long at-bats, but he did manage to miss bats, generating whiffs on 34% of swings against, which is encouraging. His stuff wasn't quite as sharp as usual, but it was enough to get swings and misses. Overall, Rodon went 4.2 innings with 2 runs allowed and 5 strikeouts.

• Heliot Ramos doubled. It's nearly the first sign of life I've seen from him since he was acquired at the trade deadline. Frankly, it was almost the only sign of life the Yankees showed at the plate. Rafaela misplayed the fly ball in CF, though I think the wind was swirling a bit all day at Yankee Stadium. The play should have scored Amed Rosario, but the Red Sox executed a perfect relay to get Rosario by an eyelash.

• This was an awful game. Nothing left to do but shake it off

Game 2 - Yanks win 9-2

• Max Fried came out firing for his first 2 innings, but really looked like he either didn't trust his elbow or ran out of gas in innings 3 and 4 of his short start coming off of the IL. Fried struggled to keep his all of his pitches down, and looked as though he wasn't finishing his delivery well. Fried's arm was late on almost every pitch by inning 4, and the Yankees were right to pull him from the game before he did damage to his elbow. Fried was really only burned by a homer and pitched well overall, but you could tell this was a pitcher returning from an injury.

• The Yankees get dinged all the time for only scoring when they hit home runs. That criticism has plenty of merit. What bothers me most is when the Yankees prove incapable of producing productive outs that teams need to chip away at opponents. Well, the Yankees managed to have plenty of productive outs on Sunday night. The Yanks won this game in the 3rd inning (initially down 1-0) with timely hitting and productive outs. Ben Rice tied the game with a single. Grisham moved up to 3B on a poorly fielded ground ball by Wilyer Abreu. The Yankees proceeded to score two more runs on a sac hit to the left side of the infield by Garcia Jr. and a sac fly to deep CF by Jazz Chisholm Jr. It was a beautiful thing to watch! Not to be left out, Spencer Jones later had a sac fly in the 6th inning to give the Yanks a 4-1 lead.

• Why can't we have nice things?!? George Lombard Jr. clearly tweaked his knee on a swing in the bottom of the 2nd inning. He laced a single in the AB, but was later removed from the game. Lombard later went for imaging, which didn't show significant damage, apparently. The Yanks dodged a bullet, there. To me, it looked like Lombard's spike caught on the swing, which meant his foot didn't pivot as he loaded and torqued. Anecdotally, I've noticed more guys across the league get hurt as spikes catch this year. I wonder if someone changed a design on a lead cleat...

• The Yankee bullpen was outstanding, throwing 5.1 innings of 1-run ball. Max Fried needed the bullpen to help him out, and they responded. One guy I want to highlight is Brendan Beck. Beck had never pitched out of the bullpen prior to last night's game, and his stuff is very fringey as a starter. His fastball ticked up by 2.5 MPH out of the bullpen and all of his stuff looked surprisingly sharp. Beck has always been an interesting prospect to me, and I never expected his stuff to tick up out of the bullpen given the arm injuries he's suffered. After watching his appearance with the game in hand in the 9th inning, I am very intrigued by watching how his stuff plays again if he gets another shot out of the bullpen.

• The Yankees put the nail in the Red Sox's coffin in the 8th inning by blowing the game wide open. The Red Sox helped with some sloppy defense, but the Yanks still strung together 7 hits and 5 runs on the inning.

• This was a game where almost everyone got in on the act. It was a team effort and a great display of baseball. Let's hope the Yanks show that same level of play on Sunday. It would feel really good to take 3 out of 4 from the Red Sox.