Yankees humiliated Red Sox in more ways than one in wild-card series

The New York Yankees are moving on to the ALDS thanks to their 9-2 win over the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday night, sweeping their long-time rivals.

It was a dominant performance by the Yankees across the board as they completely humiliated a Boston team that looked overmatched in the two games.

Yankees humiliated Red Sox in more ways than one

This was not a close playoff series.

There was nothing random or flukey about it, there was no good luck, good bounces, or random results that went one team's way in a close, tightly contested series. 

It over as soon as it started.

The Yankees outscored the Red Sox by an 18-2 margin in the two games. 

That comes after the Yankees won the last two regular season meetings (which gave them the season tiebreaker over the Red Sox) by a 25-3 margin. 

That means over the last four head-to-head games this season, the aggregate score was: Yankees 43. Red Sox 5. 

It's almost impossible for one Major League Baseball team to dominate another Major League Baseball team to that degree over any four games. These are supposed to be the best of the best. Everybody is highly paid; everybody is good. 

What makes it even more astonishing is the Yankees did all of that over those four games without getting a single at-bat from Aaron Judge or Giancarlo Stanton. They also did it in the playoffs without getting a single start from Gerrit Cole.

It was a lot of the supporting cast that rose to the occasion and delivered. 

It is also a testament to the depth this Yankees team has accumulated that it has been able to do this without Judge for so much of the season. That would have been a non-starter for recent Yankees teams, but this one is still rolling in his absence. 

But what really added to the humiliation on Wednesday is that Jazz Chisholm Jr. rubbed the Red Sox nose's in it. With the Yankees leading by seven runs late in the game, Chisholm stole second and third base. It's a noteworthy decision because Chisholm drew criticism from the Red Sox radio announcers for doing the exact same thing in a blowout, resulting in announcer Will Flemming suggesting that Red Sox pitchers should throw at Yankees batters in response. They criticized him for not playing the game "the right way."

While Chisholm mostly shrugged the comments off at the time, there is no way he was not thinking of them when he swiped those bags on Wednesday.  It was a message. The entire series was a message. For as admirable as the Red Sox regular season was to overcome their brutal start and play their way into a playoff position, they simply were not on the same level as the Yankees. In this case, the scoreboard does not lie.