Asked if he had fully trusted his source, Betances smiled.
“Well, yeah, social media doesn’t lie,” he said.
On Saturday night, Girardi brought in Robertson first, because he would be able to go more than one inning, which he did — finishing off the seventh for Adam Warren and then striking out Xander Bogaerts on three curveballs to leave the bases loaded in the eighth. Then Girardi called on Betances to close out the game, which he did after Sanchez threw out pinch-runner Brock Holt trying to steal second.
It was a redemptive moment for Sanchez, who had allowed two third-strike curveballs — one by Robertson in the eighth and one by Betances in the ninth — to bounce away from him.
“If I block the pitch, he wasn’t going to be on base,” Sanchez said about Holt through an interpreter, nodding when asked if he felt a sense of relief.
The game was the second time in two weekends that the Yankees have hung on to beat the Red Sox by foiling their rival’s aggressive base running. Holt was thrown out trying to steal on a 2-0 pitch that was a ball.
“We have full confidence in his ability to steal a base right there, and particularly in a 2-0 count where typically…
