BOSTON — It started out well. Strikeout, popup, groundout, strikeout.
Henry Owens was rolling.
Eight batters later, all of whom reached, the Red Sox rookie pitcher was done. Walk, homer, homer, single, double, walk, single, single, hand the ball to the manager, make the slow walk to the dugout, take a shower, spend the next couple of hours wondering what just happened.
Almost a month ago, Owens made his big-league debut in Yankee Stadium and left with a lead, though eventually he was charged with the defeat.
Wednesday afternoon, Owens made an encore appearance against the Bombers, and this time it was a mugging in broad daylight, the Yankees scoring seven runs charged to the left-hander en route to a 13-8 victory in the rubber game of a three-game set.
Despite trailing 12-1 entering the bottom of the fifth, the Sox forced Yankees manager Joe Girardi to summon his two best relievers, Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller, to quell late uprisings. The Sox scored runs in each of the last five innings.
Against Owens, Greg Bird and John Ryan Murphy hit consecutive home runs on mediocre fastballs that split the middle of the plate, Alex Rodriguez hit a two-run single that knocked out Owens with two outs in the second, and Carlos Beltran hit the first pitch thrown by reliever Ryan Cook for a two-run homer that capped the Yanks’ eight-run uprising in the second inning.
The Yankees have scored eight or more runs in an inning five times this season. The Marlins (three times) are the only other team to have done so more than twice this season.
The Yankees also hit five home runs in all, the second team this season to inflict that kind of damage on a Sox pitching staff that had not allowed a home run in its six previous games until Brett Gardner homered in the eighth Tuesday night. Stephen Drew and Didi Gregorius also went deep for the Yankees, who are 39-11 this season in games in which they hit at least two home runs.
Drew, who also doubled and singled, homered off Cook in the third, and Gregorius homered off reliever Heath Hembree in the fifth.
The Sox, down 11-1 after three innings, made it a game against the soft underbelly of the Yankees’ bullpen after scoring four times off starter Masahiro Tanaka, who was lifted after issuing a leadoff walk to Blake Swihart in the seventh.
The Sox scored twice in the seventh and twice more in the eighth, forcing Girardi to fetch setup man Betances with the bases loaded and the score 13-7. Betances froze Pablo Sandoval on a full-count curveball, then induced Xander Bogaerts to bounce into a force play.
Bogaerts had a good afternoon with three hits, including his sixth home run. It was his 15th game this season with three or more hits, most on the team. Rusney Castillo, playing left field for the first time as a member of the Sox, singled twice and was credited with an assist when Gardner was caught in no man’s land on Chris Young’s single off the Monster and tagged out between second and third. Swihart walked twice, doubled, singled and scored two runs and Jackie Bradley Jr. walked and singled, drove in a run and scored another.
Back-to-back doubles by Sandy Leon and Travis Shaw, who had singled and scored in the eighth, made it 13-8 and brought on Miller, who issued a two-out walk to Swihart before striking out Bradley to end it.
