How a tiny change kept Yankees’ Zach Britton from throwing win away

Yankees reliever Zach Britton made a small change to his grip before making a throw for the game-ending double play.

NEW YORK — It happened once.

Zach Britton wasn’t going to let it happen again.

After a crucial error, Britton made sure he did things differently — changing his grip on the ball — to finish the ninth inning of a tight 3-2 win over the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday with a double play.

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Britton made a bad throw to second base on a comebacker trying to start a double play in the prior at-bat, allowing a run to score.

The throw, on Sam Travis’ hard grounder, was thrown too far to second baseman Gleyber Torres‘ left and it was too low. Torres has to lead into a sliding runner to try to catch it while keeping his foot on the bag.

The ball bounced into shallow center and a run scored.

Britton said it didn’t bother him.

“I think you lean back on past experiences and slow yourself down and say, it really is one pitch that you’ve got to make and after I made that error on the throw, I just go, hey, it’s over with, I can’t do anything to change that now,” he said.

But almost immediately after, Ian Kinsler hit a grounder back at Britton.

So Britton took the extra second to find a four-seam grip on the ball before firing it to Torres, who started the game-ending double play.

“The balls were wet,” Britton said. “So after the error that I made, I just thought, if I find the other one, I’ve really got to find the four seams and make a good throw to second and make sure we got one out.”

The Britton error also followed another costly Yankees miscue.

Defensive replacement Adeiny Hechavarria made a bad throw to Torres at second base trying to start a double play on the previous play. Hechavarria’s throw was also wide, but to Torres’ right, and it bounced off the end of Torres’ glove.

Torres was given the error because it was catchable and the runner advanced to third base.

Brendan Kuty may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @BrendanKutyNJ. Find NJ.com Yankees on Facebook.