Ben Rice hit two home runs, including a go-ahead grand slam, and drove in six runs as Cam Schlittler carried a two-hit shutout into the seventh inning, sending the New York Yankees past the Boston Red Sox 9-0 in the opener of their American League Wild Card Series on Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium. New York now leads the best-of-three series 1-0, with Game 2 set for Wednesday night in the Bronx.
Rice went 4-for-5 with a double and both of his homers coming off the outfield wall in dead center — a 423-foot solo shot in the fifth that opened the scoring 2-0, and a 408-foot grand slam in the eighth that turned a comfortable lead into a laugher. He also singled home a run in the seventh. Rookie Yankees catcher Austin Wells added two RBI of his own, and 21-year-old George Lombard Jr. collected three hits in his postseason debut. Schlittler finished with 10 strikeouts and one walk over 6 1/3 innings, allowing only two hits across 117 pitches before handing off to the bullpen.
A Statement From the Mound
Schlittler entered the night as a front-runner for the American League Cy Young Award after leading the league with a 1.95 ERA during the regular season, and he pitched like it. His 117 pitches were 10 more than his previous career high and the most thrown by a Yankees postseason starter since CC Sabathia's 121 in the 2012 AL Division Series against Baltimore, according to the game recap distributed by the Associated Press. Toronto's Dylan Cease had thrown the major league season-high of 120 pitches in a July start at Boston.
The Yankees were without star slugger Aaron Judge, who is sidelined by a calf injury, but hardly missed him. New York scored in four different innings, opening with a run in the second on a Wells single, adding two more in the seventh on a Rice single and a fielder's-choice groundout, and tacking on a Wells sacrifice fly in the eighth before Rice's slam blew the game open. Boston starter Payton Tolle kept the Yankees to one run into the fifth before the bullpen unraveled in the late innings.
A Rivalry With a Twist
The result carried an extra layer given the backgrounds of the two Yankees who did the most damage. Both Schlittler and Rice were raised in Massachusetts as Red Sox fans and played college baseball in New England before New York drafted them out of Boston's own backyard. Facing their hometown team on a postseason stage for the first time, both delivered the kind of nights that get replayed on Massachusetts sports radio for years: a four-hit, six-RBI game from Rice and a double-digit strikeout gem from Schlittler, both against the team they grew up rooting for.
Elsewhere on the year's opening night of Wild Card play, the National League produced two shutouts and the American League bracket saw an early upset. The Boston Red Sox's AL counterparts in Houston fell 6-3 at home to the Chicago White Sox, who got a solo homer from rookie infielder Colson Montgomery and two RBI from Sam Antonacci to seize a 1-0 series lead over the Astros. In the National League, the Atlanta Braves beat the Philadelphia Phillies 5-3 behind a three-run homer from Austin Riley, and the San Diego Padres shut out the Chicago Cubs 8-0.
For the Red Sox, the loss was their first taste of October baseball in this format, and it leaves them needing to win consecutive games — Wednesday in the Bronx and, if necessary, a decisive Game 3 back in New York on Thursday — to advance to the AL Division Series. Boston will need a far different showing from a lineup that managed only three hits all night and never had a runner advance beyond second base.
New York, meanwhile, sits one win from the Division Series without needing to use its full complement of relievers, after Paul Blackburn and John Schreiber combined for the final 2 2/3 shutout innings behind Schlittler. The full 2026 postseason schedule has Game 2 of this series set for Wednesday night, with the winner advancing to face the AL's top seed in the Division Series beginning this weekend.
