NEW YORK -- No one can explain it, so the Red Sox are simply content to enjoy it.
Pedro Ciriaco is murdering Yankees' pitching this season.
He had a four-hit game Saturday in the team's 4-1 win over New York -- singles in the second and fifth, a bunt single in the seventh innings, before adding a double in the eighth.
He also scored a run and stole a base.
For Ciriaco, it was his second four-hit game of the year and both have come against the Yankees. In fact, Ciriaco has had six games this year with at least three hits and four of those have come against the Yankees.
He's batting .517 (15-for-29) against the Yanks, with nine runs scored and seven RBI in seven games.
"We're in the same division,'' shrugged Ciriaco of playing this well against his team's rivals. "I just try to play my best. I've been really happy to be doing what I've been doing. I'm not trying to do too much -- just trying to get a good pitch to hit and take advantage.''
Boston Red Sox
Ciriaco said the setting isn't a factor in his success.
"I'm excited every time I get to the plate,'' he said.
A career journeyman, Ciriaco takes pride in the fact that, both at Triple-A Pawtucket and in his various stints with the Red Sox, he's "been more consistent this year.''
Joked Bobby Valentine: "You think they the Yankees are going to try to trade for him? He's played well against the Yankees.''
Lefty reliever Craig Breslow and catcher Ryan Lavarnway made history Saturday, but of more consequence to the Red Sox was that they got the biggest two outs of the game.
Both Lavarnway and Breslow are graduates of Yale and Saturday is believed to have represented the first time in modern baseball history that a game has featured an all-Yale battery.
Still, it wasn't just the historic first. It was what they did on the only pitch in which they were in the game together.
Breslow came in with Nick Swisher on first and one out in the eighth. Lavarnway called for a curve, which Robinson Cano hit for the start of a inning-ending double play, 3-6-3.
"He threw a really good curveball and got on top of it,'' said Valentine of Breslow.
Lavarnway said he heard from his former college coach, ex-major league pitcher John Stuper -- via text -- after the game.
When it was noted of his Ivy League battery that Breslow has a degree in biomolecular engineering, Valentine joked: "I don't talk to those guys."