Red Sox handed another quick playoff exit by rival Yankees after 2 quick hooks by Tracy backfire

NEW YORK (AP) — With the Boston bats ice cold at Yankee Stadium again, a couple of quick hooks by Red Sox rookie manager Chad Tracy led to an early postseason exit.

Same story, different year. And this time, it wasn't even close.

For the second consecutive season, the Red Sox were sent home for the winter by their biggest rivals when the New York Yankees rolled to a 9-2 victory Wednesday night and a two-game sweep of their Wild Card Series.

The Red Sox were outscored 18-2 overall and left to lament a miserable finish to this roller-coaster ride of a season.

Facing a New York lineup missing injured slugger Aaron Judge, the Red Sox gave up 26 hits despite a pair of effective performances from their starting pitchers.

At the plate, Boston mustered only seven hits and finally snapped a 26-inning postseason scoring drought that dated to last year when Willson Contreras homered just over the right-center fence in the sixth Wednesday.

Needing a victory to extend their season, the Red Sox sent 18-game winner Sonny Gray to the mound and he certainly gave them a chance. Boston trailed 1-0 in the fifth when the right-hander allowed a two-out single to Ben Rice that put runners at the corners.

Tracy then yanked Gray after only 70 pitches, eager to hand the ball to baseball's best bullpen during the regular season.

The 41-year-old Tracy, the youngest manager in these playoffs, made a similar move in the series opener when he pulled rookie starter Payton Tolle after 4 2/3 innings and 83 pitches in a 1-0 game.

Both decisions backfired.

On Tuesday, Rice greeted left-handed reliever Erik Miller with a 423-foot solo homer to straightaway center field, and the Yankees cruised to a 9-0 victory.

This time, Tracy summoned Miller to face a different left-handed batter, Cody Bellinger — who batted .274 against lefties this season and .259 versus right-handers. In fact, his .310 batting average against left-handers over the past two years was the best of any left-handed hitter in the majors.

Bellinger made Tracy and the Red Sox pay, lining an RBI single to right field.

“We’re struggling to score runs,” Tracy said. “And when you get in spots where struggling to score runs and you’re already trailing, you feel like you’ve got to be aggressive and go.”

Back from a shoulder injury, ace starter Garrett Crochet entered in the sixth for his first outing since April 25 and first relief appearance since 2023 with the Chicago White Sox. The left-hander opened with a strikeout, but Spencer Jones reached safely on a wild pitch, and Crochet never got an out.

Bellinger's three-run homer off right-hander Garrett Whitlock capped a six-run inning that made it 8-1, and the Red Sox were finished.

Their downfall in the Bronx was a crushing end to a wild 2026 season for the Red Sox, who stumbled to 32-46 start and went on a magical 15-game winning streak in July to climb back into contention.

“It’s obviously been an eventful year. In the moment right now you can’t think much more other than anything but the fact that we just lost a playoff series,” Tracy said.

See AP’s full MLB coverage here

Boston Red Sox relief pitcher Garrett Whitlock reacts after giving up a three-run home run to New York Yankees' Cody Bellinger during the sixth inning in Game 2 of baseball's American League Wild Card Series, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Boston Red Sox relief pitcher Garrett Crochet is pulled from the game against the New York Yankees during the sixth inning in Game 2 of baseball's American League Wild Card Series, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

New York Yankees' Cody Bellinger reacts while jogging the bases after hitting a three-run home run against the Boston Red Sox during the sixth inningin Game 2 of baseball's American League Wild Card Series, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Sonny Gray walks back to the dugout after being pulled during the fifth inning against the New York Yankees in Game 2 of baseball's American League Wild Card Series, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Sonny Gray, center facing, is pulled from the game against the New York Yankees during the fifth inning in Game 2 of baseball's American League Wild Card Series, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee officials were unable to put Christa Gail Pike to death Wednesday for a 1995 murder after administering two doses of a lethal drug. A death penalty expert said it was an unprecedented failure.

Pike was alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection and taken by ambulance from the prison, her attorneys said.

Neither the attorneys nor Tennessee Department of Corrections officials provided an update on Pike’s condition late Wednesday.

Pike, 50, had been scheduled for execution at 11 a.m. Wednesday for the killing she committed at age 18 and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. An appeals court stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start and hours later the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay.

Officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, her attorneys said in court filings late Wednesday. Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said what Pike experienced is “singular and unparalleled.”

Seven other people have survived medical problems due to the execution team's failure to access a vein to administer lethal injection drugs, but no one has stayed alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions, she said.

Media witnesses observing from a separate room said officials raised curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m., showing Pike strapped to a gurney.

Pike remained awake and at one point raised her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. It was not clear what she was referencing.

By 8:26 p.m., execution witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered.

Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m. At that time there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.

Tennessee Department of Correction spokesperson Dorinda Carter told media witnesses she was unable to immediately provide information about what happened.

Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion late Wednesday to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in “unnecessary agony” and it was violating her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment. They also filed motions in the Sixth Circuit court and district court.

The motion also asserted that the Department of Correction should begin lifesaving measures. “Failure to provide such care constitutes deliberate indifference to legitimate, serious medical needs.”

Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. The case garnered widespread attention in part because of a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.

It was the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution: In May state officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners tried and failed for over an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.

Pike was initially scheduled to be put to death in the morning, and witnesses had gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay. That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.

The attorney general’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that halting the execution at the last moment traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s attorneys.

Later in the day, the high court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain their order, while the three liberal members signed a dissent that said Pike’s claims deserved a closer look.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissent that the decision to vacate the stay interfered with the Sixth Circuit court’s handling of the case and “unnecessarily prevents that court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim.”

Pike does not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argue that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse.

“It is inconceivable that in the 21st century, the criminal justice system is poised to execute a survivor of rape and child sexual abuse whose jury never had the opportunity to consider those facts in weighing the defendant’s moral culpability,” her attorneys wrote in a filing.

As the execution date drew near, debate renewed over the death penalty for young offenders.

Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had such sentences vacated.

After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “put the brakes on.”

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,” Pike said in a statement.

Slemmer’s mother said she wants the lethal injection to go forward, saying she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.

“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.

Martinez said a group helped raise money so she and her husband could travel from Florida to witness the execution.

“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst,” she said, noting that her daughter would have turned 51 in September.

The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.

Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been put to death, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.

Tennessee announced in 2024 that it was switching from a three-drug series for lethal injections to the single drug pentobarbital. That came more than two years after the state abruptly halted the execution of Oscar Smith and acknowledged that it had failed to ensure its lethal injection drugs were tested properly.

Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Ed White in Detroit and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.

Emergency vehicles arrive at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution after the execution of Christa Pike was halted Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

May Martinez, left, mother of murder victim Colleen Slemmer, walks out of Riverbend Maximum Security Institution during a stay of the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Leslie Brown, right, stands with others in the area reserved for people in favor to the death penalty outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Kathleen Walter prays in the area reserved for people opposed to the death penalty outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Abraham Bonowitz speaks during a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. ahead of the Sept. 30th scheduled execution of Christa Pike. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Alonzo Hughes participates in a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. ahead of the Sept. 30th scheduled execution of Christa Pike. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

In this image from video provided by WBIR-TV, Christa Pike cries after being sentenced to death on March 30, 1996 in Knoxville, Tenn. (WBIR-TV via AP)

This photo provided by the Tennessee Department of Correction shows Christa Pike on Jan. 12, 2023. (TDOC via AP)