The Yankees rolled into Fenway on Thursday night looking like a team that had something to prove, and for a couple of innings, they delivered. Jose Caballero — Cabby — got things rolling in a big way, sending a solo shot screaming off the bat at 103.2 MPH and dropping it right into the Green Monster bleachers. It was the kind of hit that silences a hostile crowd and has the Yankees dugout absolutely losing it.
Caballero's monster blast, with the 400 ft distance and 103.2 MPH exit velocity stamped right on screen.
That wasn't the only early spark. Jasson Dominguez came through with a run of his own, and the specific detail worth flagging is that Dominguez hit right-handed — he's a switch hitter, so leaning on the right-handed side and getting production out of it is exactly the kind of thing Yankees fans want to see developing in a young player.
Dominguez hitting right-handed at Fenway, scoring to push the Yankees lead to 1-0 in the early innings.
On the mound, the Yankees starter — Killa Cam, as the broadcast crowd was calling him — was dealing. Through 4 innings he had the Red Sox completely shut out, mixing in a sinker touching 100 MPH and keeping Boston's lineup off-balance. The Yankees had the lead, the pitching was holding, and everything felt pretty good for a team playing in one of the more hostile environments in the league.
Cam on the mound, getting dominant through 4 innings with a 100 MPH sinker and a 2-0 lead on the scoreboard.
Then the defense happened. At some point in the middle innings, the wheels came off on the other side of the ball. Errors, miscues, the kind of stuff that hands runs back to a team you're trying to bury. By the time it was becoming a pattern, the mood had shifted completely — from hype to frustration in the span of a few innings, which is a very Yankees-at-Fenway kind of emotional arc.
Defense failing them tonight all over the place.
The call after that was pointed: try a different defensive alignment, plug the holes, at least run it out there and see. The argument was that the defensive liability alone was swinging multiple runs — that's not a small thing at a place like Fenway where every run feels amplified. It's the platoon vs. defensive value debate that never really goes away with this roster, and a night like this brings it back loud.