Bronx, NY – Clay Buchholz remained unbeaten and was credited with his fourth career shutout when rain shortened the finale of the Red Sox- Yankees series in the middle of the sixth inning of Boston's 3-0 victory.
The game began 45 minutes late in anticipation of rain that did not come until the top of the sixth, which caused a 37-minute stoppage. Shortly thereafter, the sky opened again and the tarp came back on the field.
The game was called just after midnight (ET) and the Red Sox took the rubber match of the three-game set behind the pitching of their ace and solo home runs by David Ortiz and Jose Iglesias.
Buchholz (8-0) was scratched from his previous start because of irritation in his AC joint near the collarbone, and the right-hander didn't skip a beat Sunday, allowing just two hits and one walk while striking out four over five stellar innings.
"He threw an assortment of pitches ahead in the count," Red Sox manager John Farrell said of Buchholz. "It looked like he could go to any single pitch in any given situation."
Hiroki Kuroda (6-4) was charged with three runs on eight hits in 5 1/3 innings for the Yankees, who have been held to four runs or less in every game during a 2-7 stretch.
"It's just kind of a team-wide thing that we're going through," New York manager Joe Girardi said. "I mean, we ran into a pretty good pitcher tonight. That's the bottom line. He threw the ball very well against us."
Both starters tossed three scoreless innings before the Red Sox started getting to Kuroda in the fourth. Dustin Pedroia and Ortiz both singled leading off the frame to put runners on the corners, and the former scored the game's first run on Mike Napoli's slow-rolling tapper to short.
Iglesias sent a first-pitch sinker into the left-field seats for his first home run of the season in the fifth inning, and as the rain started to come down on Yankee Stadium, Ortiz walloped a Kuroda offering deep into the second section of seats in right-center leading off the sixth.
Play resumed for all of four minutes -- and two outs -- when heavy rain forced the tarp back onto the field just as Andrew Miller was warming up to replace Buchholz in the bottom of the sixth.
The stoppage secured Buchholz's sixth career complete game and his second win over the Yankees in 2013. He came into the season with a 2-5 record and a 7.19 ERA in nine career starts against the Bronx Bombers, but has yielded just one run in 12 innings in a pair of stints against them this year.
Game Notes
The Red Sox took their first two series in the Bronx for just the second time in 25 years ... Buchholz, who had gone at least seven innings in his previous 11 starts this season, is the first Sox pitcher to start a season 8-0 since Daisuke Matsuzaka in 2008 ... Iglesias has reached safely in 15 of 16 games this season ... The nine straight games of four runs or less is the Yankees' longest since a 10-game stretch from May 28-June 7, 2005 ... Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira played in the 1,500th game of his career ... Yankees catcher Chris Stewart was taken to the hospital for dehydration on Sunday ... Red Sox outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury sat out the entire series due to left groin tightness.
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