BOSTON -- Here's the good news, Yankee fans: Only 18 more games and you'll never have to see David Ortiz again.
And the bad news: There are still 18 more games left between the Yankees, the Boston Red Sox and, oh yeah, Ortiz, before the one-man Yankee wrecking crew known as Big Papi toddles off into retirement.
And if there was any question about whether Ortiz would go quietly into that good night, they were dispelled in the eighth inning of Friday's night's game between these former bitter AL East rivals, won, of course, by Ortiz, with a two-run homer off the previously untouchable Dellin Betances to give the Red Sox a come-from-behind 4-2 victory at Fenway Park.
If the Yankees hadn't seen this so many times before, it might have been surprising, or even shocking. But while it was dispiriting -- the Yankees held a 2-0 lead behind a cruising Masahiro Tanaka with two out in the seventh -- neither was it entirely unexpected.
In 225 career games against the Yankees, Ortiz has belted 48 home runs, driven in 160 runs, batted .307 and posted an OPS of .960. He has been even more deadly at Fenway, the site of 32 of those home runs and where his OPS against New York is a gaudy 1.025. And 14 of his home runs against the Yankees have given the Red Sox the lead, most recently last April 10, when he homered off Esmil Rogers in the 16th inning of a game at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees came back to tie that one, but the Red Sox eventually won in 19, and by the end of June, Rogers was pitching in Korea.
“I’ve been seeing it since he was in A-ball in Appleton, Wisconsin, with the Mariners,” said Alex Rodriguez, Ortiz’s on-again, off-again buddy who had given the Yankees a 1-0 lead with a second-inning home run. "He’s unbelievable. I don’t have anything else to say. He’s unbelievable.”
There really was nothing else to say, although there was a question or two to ask. Mainly, why did Betances, who can hit triple digits on the radar gun with his fastball, choose to start Ortiz off with a curve, and not just any curve, but a helicopter that spun but didn't move? Or, as Yankees manager Joe Girardi said, "a breaking ball that didn't do a lot."
All it did was clear the 37-foot-high wall in left-center field with a runner aboard to provide the Red Sox with the margin they needed against the punchless Yankees' offense. By Betances’ own admission, he was trying to get over on Ortiz with the pitch.
“I’ve done that a lot to lefties where I’m going for a first-pitch strike, just trying to reach that outside corner, and he just had a great at-bat,” Betances said. “There’s nothing I can really do differently there, unless I’m not trying to throw it for a strike and bury it and hope he swings over it. But I faced him a lot and a lot of times he takes it. This time he had a different approach.”
In eight previous plate appearances, Ortiz had been 0-for-7 against Betances with four strikeouts and one RBI on a sacrifice fly.
“For him to hit that ball the way he did, he’s been great his whole career, so all I can do is tip my cap to him,” Betances said. “I think my breaking ball was a little flat today.”
The Ortiz home run was set up by a bit of bad luck when a crazily spinning ground ball off the bat of Xander Bogaerts handcuffed second baseman Starlin Castro, who couldn't seem to decide whether to backhand it or barehand it. He wound up doing neither, which gave the Red Sox a runner on and one out in the eighth, still a favorable position for the Yankees, considering the way Betances and closer Andrew Miller have pitched through the first month of this season.
“I thought Tanaka was going to get through the seventh, then we go to Dellin and we go to Miller and you get through it,” Girardi said. “It didn’t happen.”
It didn't happen for a number of reasons, several of which occurred before Betances even got into the ballgame. The Yankees' offense, among the lowest scoring in the league with just 72 runs in its first 20 games, struggled to score against Boston starter Henry Owens, who came in with an ERA of 8.10. They didn't help themselves by hitting into four double plays, running into two of them, the first when Castro was thrown out at home plate on a fly out to shallow left by the struggling (.140) Chase Headley, and the other when Jacoby Ellsbury was thrown out trying to steal second on a third strike to Brett Gardner in the third. They also stranded runners at second and third in the fifth when Carlos Beltran popped out.
Then there was the seventh inning, when despite having Betances and left-hander Chasen Shreve ready in the bullpen, Girardi chose to leave Tanaka in to pitch to lefty Jackie Bradley Jr., who was just 1-for-11 against Tanaka. But Bradley drilled Tanaka's 99th pitch of the game off the Green Monster, driving in two runs to tie the game.
That set the stage for one more big hit against the Yankees from Big Papi.
"He’s been a great hitter for a long time," Girardi said. "I’ve still got a lot of faith in Dellin in that situation, but this wasn’t meant to be."
What is meant to be is 18 more meetings between the Yankees and David Ortiz before the big fella shuts it down.
How many more times he's meant to torment them remains to be seen.