Significant blunders bite Red Sox in Game 2 loss to Yankees

If you didn’t know any better, you might mistake Wednesday’s 4-3 Yankee win in Game 2 of the AL wild-card series as one that happened before 2004, when the Red Sox still found ways to lose to the Yankees on a regular basis. 

Because for all the Yankees did right in The Bronx to even the series and force another game on Thursday, two of the most significant reasons they survived were Boston miscues. 

First, there was Aaron Judge’s RBI “single” to left in the fifth that briefly put the Yankees up by a run again, when left fielder Jarren Duran dropped the ball with two out, allowing Trent Grisham to score from second. 

But perhaps even worse was Nate Eaton stopping at third base when Jazz Chisholm Jr. made a tremendous diving stop of pinch-hitter Masataka Yoshida’s hard grounder up the middle. 

Eaton was on second base on the grounder and by the time Chisholm got up, the second baseman would have had no chance to get Eaton at the plate. 

And to make matters worse, Chisholm ended up firing to first base, where the ball got past Ben Rice. 

But Eaton held up at third and Fernando Cruz got Trevor Story to fly out to deep center to keep the game tied in the seventh. 

“Obviously, it was a big play,’’ Eaton told reporters after the Yankees went ahead in the bottom of the eighth and held on for the win. 

“We didn’t score,’’ Eaton said. “I obviously couldn’t see it. As I’m getting to third, I’m told to stop and then I couldn’t see how far away the ball was away when it got by Rice.” 

That all came after Cruz replaced Carlos Rodón with runners on first and second and no one out in the seventh and light-hitting Ceddanne Rafaela, trying to move the runners over, popped up a bunt to help stall the rally. 

And that was after Duran, typically steady in left field, misplayed Judge’s fly ball into a single that drove in Grisham. 

“I was just playing pretty deep on Judge and as I was coming in, I thought it was a little higher than it was,’’ Duran said. “I didn’t really have to go into a full dive there and just kind of pushed the ball on myself a little more. It kind of got really up on me. It’s on me.”