NEW YORK – The left-handers of the New York Yankees earned their "Bronx Bombers moniker," led by Cody Bellinger, whose three-run homer in the sixth inning closed the door on the Boston Red Sox and sent
them to the American League Division Series against the Tampa Bay Rays after a 9-2 Game 2 throttling at Yankee Stadium.
Three hours before David Bednar struck out Caleb Durbin to end the series, Cody’s father, Clay, threw out the ceremonial first pitch to his son before Game 2. The elder Bellinger played for the Yankees from 1999 to 2001 and was part of two World Championship teams.
"I definitely appreciate it. I'm able to appreciate it in the moment," Bellinger said. "That was a cool moment, just a great game. Happy I was able to contribute, and we've got a lot more work to do. So obviously enjoy the moment, understand how cool it is, but keep on going."
2x World Series Champion Clay Bellinger threw out tonight's ceremonial first pitch to his son, Cody Bellinger! 🙌 pic.twitter.com/mSy10CwbfJ
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) September 30, 2026
After grounding out in his first two at-bats, Bellinger singled in the fifth to score Austin Wells, extending New York’s lead to 2-0.
The next inning proved to be a death knell for the Red Sox as Garrett Whitlock, the fourth Boston pitcher, began his 35-pitch meltdown by giving up a sacrifice fly to Wells, scoring one run, and allowing Jazz Chisholm to score another on Ryan McMahon’s ground out. After Game 1 hero Ben Rice, the team’s home run leader and another left-handed nuisance for Boston, was intentionally walked, Bellinger came up to the plate, looking to put the game away.
The scouting report on Bellinger is straightforward. He hit 17 home runs and drove in 73 runs this season. The 2019 NL MVP likes the ball down, feasting on breaking pitches and posted a .555 slugging average on that pitch in 2026.
Bellinger, who has a career .268 average against left-handed pitching, said there isn't a formula to his success against southpaws.
"No secret sauce. For me, just take it as another at-bat. Felt like when I was playing baseball coming up, didn't hear too much about the match-ups. I was just playing baseball," Bellinger said.
Whitlock’s first pitch was a slow changeup that landed outside, but instead of coming back with something different, he threw the same pitch again. This time, his changeup didn’t break and landed right in the middle of the plate, letting Bellinger turn on it and drive it 360 feet to right-center field, sending the New York dugout and the sellout crowd at Yankee Stadium into a frenzy. All four of Bellinger’s RBIs on Wednesday came with two outs.
"I think with where we were at in today's game, we pretty clearly knew who we were going to throw," Red Sox manager Chad Tracy said. "Those are the best ones we have to offer. So it was pretty obvious that we were going to be aggressive in using that group. Like I said, they swung the bats. Didn't work out. They swung the bats extremely well, so got to give them credit, it was frustrating."
Before Game 2, Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he was going to take an “all-hands-on-deck" approach against Red Sox starter Sonny Gray, who lasted only 70 pitches before Tracy went to his beleaguered bullpen to try to stop the bleeding they couldn’t in Game 1.
"We have some guys that are good left on left. Some of their guys aren't necessarily lefty specialists. There are a couple that were really tough that we had some success against," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said.
"I think the experience of playing against that so much this year – they faced so many guys for months there where we were very left-handed where in the fifth inning every day it was one lefty and then another one because that's how they attack us. So I'd like to think some of that familiarity and reps and all that prepared us well."
The stark contrast is that Rice and Bellinger, the two big left-handed bats in the lineup, had more RBIs combined than the Red Sox had all series, where New York scored 90% of the total runs in the two-game beatdown.
Boone was surprised by the margin of victory against their AL East rivals.
"As I said, kind of all year but even going into this series, that was a scary team to us, especially as well as they pitch. So for us to have the offensive outbreaks that we had here these last two nights and late, credit to those guys," Boone said.
"That was very satisfying to play that well in these two games. And that's what it was. They played great and beat a really good team that deserves a lot of credit for, was down and out in the middle of the season and fought their way back to being a no-doubt into the playoffs by the end."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Cody Bellinger caught first pitch from his dad then sent Yankees to ALDS
