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Giancarlo Stanton finished the 2021 season by mashing against the Red Sox.
The Yankees slugger has started off 2022 by doing more of the same.
Stanton crushed a two-run homer in the sixth inning, his second in as many days, to break a tie and lift the Yankees to a 4-2 win over the Red Sox on Saturday in The Bronx.
Anthony Rizzo also homered for the second straight game and Luis Severino threw three solid innings in his first start in more than two years as the Yankees clinched the series victory and opened a season 2-0 for the first time since 2018.
For the second day in a row, the Yankees’ bullpen was asked to cover a big chunk of innings and delivered, this time throwing six no-hit frames to shut down the Red Sox.
Stanton’s decisive blast came with one out in the sixth inning off Red Sox starter Nick Pivetta, who had held the Yankees to three hits up to that point. But Stanton took advantage of a hanging slider, driving it 437 feet into the left-field seats in a hurry to snap a 2-2 tie.
Including his line-drive home run in Friday’s 11-inning win, Stanton has homered in six consecutive games against the Red Sox — including a late-September series and the AL wild-card game at Fenway Park — while batting 12-for-24 with 14 RBIs.
Severino, making his first start since the 2019 ALCS (he was limited to just six relief innings since then because of Tommy John surgery and various setbacks), offered an overall encouraging, if brief, debut. He struck out five and averaged 97.8 mph on his fastball, though he gave up five hits and his return was blemished by a two-run homer from Alex Verdugo in the second inning.
Severino cruised through the first inning on 13 pitches, striking out Rafael Devers and Xander Bogaerts.
But his second inning was rockier, thanks in part to a pair of fielding misplays behind him. J.D. Martinez led off the second with a ground ball to shortstop, but Isiah Kiner-Falefa was not able to field it cleanly.
Alex Verdugo made the Yankees pay, crushing a 98 mph fastball from Severino into the right-field seats to put the Red Sox up 2-0.
Trevor Story then hit a fly ball to left field that Joey Gallo dove for but could not handle. The two miscues forced Severino to throw more pitches to get out of the inning, which proved to be costly because the final batter of the frame, Christian Vazquez, worked a 12-pitch at-bat before finally grounding out.
Gallo’s rough day continued. In the bottom of the second, he ripped a rocket off the right-field wall, but was thrown out easily by Jackie Bradley Jr. trying to stretch the hit into a double. Then, in the top of the third, Gallo let a fly ball off the left field wall bounce past him, allowing Rafael Devers to make leg out a double.
But Severino stranded Devers at second, striking out Bogaerts and Martinez to end the third.
Severino allowed a leadoff single to Verdugo in the fourth, marking the end of his day after 65 pitches.
Ron Marinaccio relieved Severino to make his MLB debut and flirted with danger, as the Red Sox put runners on the corners. But the Toms River, N.J., native escaped with a strikeout.
Rizzo then delivered his second two-run homer in as many days, a shot to right field off Pivetta to tie the score 2-2 in the fourth.
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