NEW YORK — Willson Contreras gave Boston a jolt that had been missing for nearly a full year of postseason baseball, but Yankee Stadium swallowed it quickly. His two-out solo drive to right-center in the sixth inning briefly pulled the Red Sox into Game 2 of the American League Wild Card Series, only for the Yankees to answer with a six-run bottom half and finish a 9-2 victory Wednesday that ended Boston’s season.
Contreras sent the ball an estimated 387 feet, snapping a Boston scoreless postseason stretch that had reached 26 innings. The club had not scored in a playoff game since the second contest of last year’s Wild Card Series, another matchup with New York. For a moment, the homer felt like an opening. Instead, it became the last highlight of a short October stay.
The Yankees swept the two-game set without much of the tension that marked last season’s series, which went the distance before New York advanced. Boston’s offense remained stuck in the same rut that had followed it through an injury-hit final month of the regular season, while the bullpen could not hold the narrow margin after Sonny Gray left the game.
Gray kept the Red Sox in striking range, allowing six hits across 4 2/3 innings. He departed with Boston trailing only 1-0, but the Yankees broke loose once Contreras had put the visitors on the board.
A sixth inning that unraveled
Manager Chad Tracy turned to Garrett Crochet after the Contreras homer, giving the left-hander his first game appearance since April 25. Crochet’s attempt to return from left shoulder trouble in time for the postseason had been one of Boston’s more hopeful late-season developments. On this night, it came apart almost immediately.
Crochet opened by striking out Spencer Jones with a sweeper, but Adley Rutschman could not secure the pitch cleanly. Rutschman hesitated after recovering the ball and threw to first, where Jones was initially ruled out. Replay reversed the decision, putting Jones aboard. He stole second, then reached third when Rutschman made a throwing error.
Three consecutive singles followed, and Crochet was charged with four earned runs in a brief outing. Garrett Whitlock, usually one of Boston’s steadier relief options, could not stop the inning from growing. Cody Bellinger then drove a three-run homer, turning a close game into a Yankee Stadium rout.
The loss completed an abrupt finish for a club that had lived through nearly every kind of swing imaginable in 2026. Boston fell into a 32-46 hole before catching fire from June 25 through Aug. 7, going 32-5 during a turnaround that included a franchise-matching 15-game winning streak. That surge rescued the season, but it did not carry through September.
The Red Sox were outscored 18-2 over their final two games of September, then produced little in the Wild Card Series. The result is a fifth consecutive year without postseason baseball at Fenway Park, and an offseason shaped by the question of how a club capable of such a remarkable summer run could finish with so little left at the plate or on the mound.
