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| Nuno delivered for NY last night. Photo Credit: Jim McIsaac/Getty Images |
The Bronx Bombers showed up on Friday at Yankee Stadium for real, smacking three home runs en route to a 6-0 drubbing of the Boston Red Sox.
By: Sunil Sunderraj
Vidal Nuno tossed 5 2/3 innings of shutout ball allowing only two hits, two walks while striking out seven Red Sox batters. New York scored their first run in the bottom of the first inning off a sacrifice fly from Mark Teixeira that scored Derek Jeter giving New York the early 1-0 lead. Since turning the magical 40 on Thursday, Jeter went 2 for 4 in the game.
From the onset Nuno was strong and had command of all of his pitches. He also was able to get strikeouts right from the beginning of this game as Dustin Pedroia and Mike Napoli were the first two strikeout victims of his.
In the fourth inning, the Yankees utilized the long ball to generate most of their offense in this game. They went back to back with home runs by Kelly Johnson, who crushed a 2 run home run off the Modell’s sign in right center field and then followed by Brett Gardner who promptly delivered the ball just over the right field wall to make the score 4-0. at the time. New York had Boston reeling at this point and the Red sox would struggle to find an answer to the Yankees barrage offensively.
The Red Sox offense was in a funk all game long as they were unable to advance a runner past second base. A perfect example of that is when in the sixth inning after Nuno departed after issuing a walk to David Ortiz, they had a chance to muster something out of this inning but that was quickly turned away by Dellin Betances who came in and got the final out of that inning on a ground ball that kicked up off the third base bag but Johnson was able to recover and step on the bag.
Just to add more salt to the Red Sox wound, in the eighth inning, Carlos Beltran flared a base hit into shallow right field. Brian McCann then came up and hit a two run bullet into the second deck giving the Yankees a commanding 6-0 lead. New York’s bullpen was able to close out the Red sox and get the easy victory.