Michael Kay couldn’t believe Yankees’ decision to intentionally walk Rafael Devers

Typically, you don’t see all that much respect in perhaps the biggest rivalry in all of sports between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. But in Saturday’s game, the Yankees respected Red Sox slugger Rafael Devers a bit too much, which longtime Yankees play-by-place voice Michael Kay took exception to.

Gerrit Cole, the reigning Cy Young Award winner in the American League, doesn’t struggle against many hitters. But throughout his career, Rafael Devers has simply had his number. Devers came into the game with a career .333 batting average against Cole with eight home runs.

With this in mind, the Yankees opted to intentionally walk Devers in the top of the fourth inning with one out and nobody on base, a move that Kay was perplexed by, to say the least.

“And that will bring up Devers,” said Kay as Devers walked up to the plate. “And they intentionally walk him?! With nobody on and one out… He did say last week that the player that gives him the trouble is Rafael Devers.”

Similarly, Matt Vasgersian and Tom Verducci were quite shocked by the decision on the MLB Network broadcast of Saturday’s game.

“Raffy Devers with his big career numbers at Yankee Stadium,” said Vasgersian. “His big career numbers against Gerrit Cole.

“He’s putting him on,” added Verducci. “He’s intentionally walking him…”

“With nobody out,” replied Vasgersian.

“He’s intentionally walking,” said Verducci. “It was Gerrit Cole who put up the four fingers. Gerrit Cole put up four fingers and pointed to first base. I want no part of you…”

With nobody on base, it is an incredibly perplexing decision. Especially considering Cole had a relatively flawless game going at that point. Ironically, the only batter to get on base in the game prior to this intentional walk was Devers after Cole hit him with a pitch in the first inning.

The worst thing that could have happened to the Yankees had they just pitched to Devers would potentially be a solo home run to tie the game at 1-1. But instead, they opted to pitch around him, which led to a big inning for the Red Sox.

Devers proceeded to steal second base and was later driven in on a ground rule double from Masataka Yoshida. In total, Cole would go on to allow three runs in the inning and seven runs in the rest of his outing. The Red Sox would go on to win the game 7-1.

Things completely fell apart for the Yankees after intentionally walking Devers. While it’s easy to use revisionist history and declare the decision to be a bad one after the fact, Kay, Vasgersian, and Verducci did so in the moment, and appear to be correct in their confusion over the decision.

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