By MIKE FITZPATRICK AP Baseball Writer
NEW YORK — Cam Schlittler pitched another playoff gem against the Boston Red Sox, and Ben Rice also burned their hometown team with a late grand slam and six RBIs as the New York Yankees opened this American League Wild Card Series rematch with a 9-0 victory on Tuesday night.
With the Yankees playing without star slugger Aaron Judge because of a calf injury, Rice homered twice, doubled and finished with four hits to power the offense. No. 9 batter Austin Wells drove in two runs for New York, and 21-year-old rookie George Lombard Jr. had three hits in his postseason debut.
Rice and Schlittler were both raised among Red Sox fans in Massachusetts and went to college in New England before getting plucked by the Yankees out of Boston’s backyard in baseball’s amateur draft.
Schlittler, the overwhelming favorite to win the AL Cy Young Award after leading the league with a 1.95 ERA, struck out 10 and walked one in 6⅓ innings. He allowed only two hits while throwing 117 pitches – 10 more than his previous career high and the most by a Yankees postseason starter since Hall of Fame left-hander CC Sabathia threw 121 in the 2012 AL Division Series against Baltimore.
The major-league high this season was 120 by Dylan Cease for Toronto at Boston in July.
The 25-year-old Schlittler retired 13 consecutive batters before issuing a two-out walk in the fifth, bringing several chants of “M-V-P! M-V-P!” from the sellout crowd of 48,437 in the Bronx. He walked off the mound to a standing ovation after yielding a one-out single in the seventh, and Paul Blackburn promptly got Ceddanne Rafaela to ground into an inning-ending double play that preserved a 2-0 lead.
Game 2 in the best-of-three series is Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium, where a victory would send New York into a best-of-five ALDS against AL East champion Tampa Bay.
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The Yankees won last year’s Wild Card Series between the longtime rivals on the strength of Schlittler’s outstanding pitching performance in Game 3.
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Red Sox right-hander Sonny Gray (18-5, 2.72 ERA) will make his seventh postseason start on Wednesday night but his first since 2023 with Minnesota. Gray, who tied for the major league lead in wins this year, spent a turbulent 1½ seasons with the Yankees from 2017-18. He hasn’t been shy in the past about his dislike for the Bronx Bombers, but he was more diplomatic on Tuesday.
“I do know that playing here made me a stronger person, made me a better man, a better husband. Ultimately, it made me a better pitcher,” Gray said. “I learned a lot.”
Gray took a no-hitter into the eighth inning against the Yankees in late June to help finish a four-game sweep at Fenway Park that helped turn around Boston’s season.
Left-hander Max Fried (5-5, 2.80 ERA) will take the mound for New York. The three-time All-Star, a former Harvard-Westlake standout, was limited to 20 starts this season because of two stints on the injured list with a bruised left elbow. He threw 6⅓ scoreless innings against Boston in the Wild Card Series opener last year.
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More to come on this story.