# Bridgewater Keeps Showing Up in October: Somerset Patriots Alumni Help Yankees Sweep the Red Sox 2026-10-01 · TD Bank Ballpark · Bridgewater, New Jersey · Reported Event A night after Cam Schlittler and Ben Rice overwhelmed Boston in Game 1, Spencer Jones, George Lombard Jr., Austin Wells, Rice and Will Warren all had a hand in the 9-2 clincher. Across two Wild Card games, former Patriots were everywhere. A night after Cam Schlittler and Ben Rice overwhelmed Boston in Game 1, Spencer Jones, George Lombard Jr., Austin Wells, Rice and Will Warren all had a hand in the 9-2 clincher. Across two Wild Card games, former Patr… --- The Somerset Patriots did not need an encore after what their alumni did in Game 1 of the American League Wild Card Series. They gave the Yankees one anyway. New York finished off Boston on Wednesday night with a 9-2 win at Yankee Stadium, completing a two-game sweep and advancing to the American League Division Series against Tampa Bay. The Yankees outscored the Red Sox 18-2 in the series and outhit them 26-7. Once again, players who came through Bridgewater were woven directly into the result. Game 2 was not the one-man pitching show and Ben Rice eruption that Game 1 became. This time the offense spread around. But when the Yankees turned a 2-1 game into a rout, Somerset fingerprints were all over the inning that broke Boston. The Sixth Inning Started With Spencer Jones Spencer Jones opened the bottom of the sixth in one of the strangest ways possible. He swung through a Garrett Crochet sweeper for strike three, but the pitch got away from catcher Adley Rutschman. Jones hustled to first. He was initially called out, the Yankees challenged, and replay showed he had beaten the throw. That was enough to start the avalanche. Jones stole second, then took third when Rutschman's throw skipped into center field. A strikeout had somehow turned into a runner 90 feet from home with nobody out. Then George Lombard Jr. came up and ripped a 97.9 mph fastball into center field for his first career postseason RBI, scoring Jones and giving the Yankees a 3-1 lead. Lombard had collected three hits in his playoff debut the night before. Twenty-four hours later, he delivered the first run of the inning that ended Boston's season. Austin Wells followed later in the rally with a sacrifice fly that brought Lombard home and pushed the lead to 4-1. Ben Rice was intentionally walked with two outs, a reasonable response after the six-RBI nightmare he had created in Game 1. That decision only put another former Patriot on base for Cody Bellinger, who launched a three-run homer to make it 8-1. Even when Boston chose not to let Rice beat them, his presence still became part of the inning that buried them. Wells Added One More, and Warren Helped Bring It Home The Somerset contribution continued in the seventh. Wells singled home another run, giving him two RBI in Game 2 and four across the two-game series. He finished the clincher 1-for-3 with a run scored, two RBI and a sacrifice fly. Will Warren then became the fifth former Somerset player to appear in the clincher. Working out of the bullpen, Warren gave the Yankees 1 2/3 innings. Nick Sogard reached him for a solo home run in the seventh, but that was the only hit and only run Warren allowed. He walked nobody and struck out one while getting five outs between Max Fried's start and the late-inning bullpen. Rice finished Game 2 1-for-4 with a walk and a run scored. Jones was 1-for-5 with a run and a stolen base. Lombard went 1-for-4 with a run and his first postseason RBI. Wells went 1-for-3 with a run and two RBI. Those are not the cartoon numbers from Tuesday night, but in a clinching postseason game they were attached to the moments that turned a one-run lead into a celebration. And Then You Add Game 1 The full Somerset story only becomes ridiculous when the two games are placed next to each other. In Game 1, former Patriots hitters supplied 11 of the Yankees' 12 hits, all eight of the team's credited RBI and seven of its nine runs. Cam Schlittler worked 6 1/3 scoreless innings, allowing two hits and one walk while striking out 10. Rice went 4-for-5 with a double, two home runs and six RBI, including an eighth-inning grand slam. Wells drove in the first run and finished with two hits and two RBI. Lombard went 3-for-4 with two runs in his postseason debut. Jones reached twice and scored twice. Anthony Volpe singled and later executed a sacrifice bunt that helped set up the five-run eighth. Rice's six RBI tied the Yankees' single-game postseason record. He also became the first Yankee to hit at least two home runs, including a grand slam, in the same postseason game. Schlittler became the first pitcher in Yankees history with multiple postseason outings of at least 10 strikeouts and zero runs allowed. Both have come against Boston. At 25, he also became the youngest pitcher in postseason history with two scoreless starts of at least 10 strikeouts. Lombard, at 21 years and 119 days, became the youngest Yankee to start a postseason game since Mickey Mantle in 1952, then collected three hits. He followed that historic debut by driving in Jones in the clincher. The Somerset Wild Card Series, By the Numbers Counting the former Yankees prospects who played for Somerset on their way through the farm system, the five Patriots hitters used in the series - Rice, Lombard, Jones, Wells and Volpe - combined to go 15-for-34. That is a .441 batting average. They scored 11 of the Yankees' 18 runs and drove in 11 of the club's 17 credited runs batted in. They produced 15 of New York's 26 hits, hit both of the home runs supplied by the Somerset group, and added a double, two walks, a stolen base, two sacrifice flies and a sacrifice bunt. The Yankees as a team hit .382 in the series. The former Somerset hitters hit .441. On the mound, Schlittler and Warren combined for exactly eight innings, allowing three hits, one earned run and one walk while striking out 11. That works out to a 1.13 ERA from the two former Patriots pitchers who appeared against Boston. There is an even cleaner way to say it: former Somerset hitters accounted for about 58 percent of the Yankees' hits, 61 percent of their runs and nearly 65 percent of their credited RBI in the sweep. From Bridgewater to the Division Series There is a tendency to talk about a minor-league affiliate as though it is a holding area: prospects arrive, prospects leave, and the real story begins when they reach the majors. The last two nights were a reminder that the story does not begin in the Bronx. It is already happening in places like Bridgewater. Somerset fans watched Rice punish Double-A pitching. They watched Wells catch a championship team. They watched Volpe steal bases and climb toward the majors. They watched Jones develop through parts of three seasons. They watched Schlittler take the ball, Warren build innings and Lombard arrive as the next wave. Then the Red Sox came to Yankee Stadium for two postseason games, and those names stopped being future pieces of the Yankees. They became the reason the Yankees were moving on. Game 1 belonged almost completely to the Patriots alumni. Game 2 showed something different: even when the rest of the Yankees lineup joined the party, the Bridgewater group kept finding the pivotal moments. Jones created the opening. Lombard cashed it in. Wells kept driving runs home. Rice's bat was dangerous enough to earn an intentional walk. Warren helped cover the late innings after Fried left. After two games against Boston, that is not sentimental local pride. It is right there in the box score. Research Sources • MLB Game 2 summary and highlights • Associated Press Game 2 recap • MLB Game 1 recap • MLB Game 1 play highlights and record note • StatMuse - Ben Rice 2026 postseason game log • StatMuse - George Lombard Jr. 2026 postseason game log • StatMuse - Austin Wells game log • StatMuse - Spencer Jones 2026 game log • StatMuse - Will Warren 2026 postseason game log --- ProbleMattic is written and maintained by Matthew Kulcsar, a software engineer, project manager, technologist, platform builder, emergency-services-trained helper, grandfather, and lifelong collector of broken systems, odd behaviors, and useful nonsense.