NEW YORK -- David Ortiz dressed in front of his locker in the visitor's clubhouse and looked around.

"Look at the babies,'' crowed Ortiz. "Look at what the babies are doing.''

This was not a veteran hazing the team's rookies. This was the team's longest-tenured player expressing admiration for what his young teammates are accomplishing down the stretch.

The Red Sox won their sixth straight Wednesday, a hard-fought 9-5 11-inning win over the New York Yankees that prohibited the Yanks from clinching a wild card spot for at least another night.

All week long here, the Red Sox young, breakout stars have been carrying the day. Mookie Betts hit two homers Wednesday night, giving him three for the series. Travis Shaw added a three-run homer in the first, his second of the series.

In all, the Sox have hit eight homers in the three games -- all by the players 25 years and younger. In the win, nine of the team's 13 hits and eight of the nine RBIs belonged to such players.

At this point, no one is hotter than Betts, who has eight extra-base hits in his last nine hits.

His first homer came off hard-throwing reliever Dellin Bettances.

"That was like the second time I've ever put (the ball) in play against him,'' said Betts. "So that was what I was kind of happy about. I'm just going up and trying to put it in play, help the team win and I got a good pitch to hit and put a good swing on it.''

Shaw's three-run homer in the first allowed the Red Sox to play what interim manager Torey Lovullo has taken to calling "downhill baseball'' -- getting an early lead and running with it.

In the 11th, Shaw also kickstarted the winning rally with a leadoff single and scored the go-ahead run after taking third on a hit-and-run single from Blake Swihart and scored on a single from Deven Marrero.

And there was a big contribution from Jackie Bradley Jr., who convinced Torey Lovullo that he was capable of dropping down a safety squeeze to bring home the second run in the 11th inning.

"Jackie felt like he could execute that type of game plan,'' said Lovullo. "I was trying to talk him out of it, but I've learned that when a player feels strongly enough about something, just get out of the way. He said he was going to try that particular play. It was an add-on run that was huge. That was all Jackie's idea. We all tried to talk him out of it, but he was very determined. He did his job.''

"I saw a man on first and a man on third,'' said Bradley, "and I just wanted to get an insurance run. I guess I was pretty stubborn about getting that run in. I didn't want to take a chance of hitting a hard ground ball somewhere and rolling two (outs). I wanted to make sure I got that run in.''

Not all the contributions came at the plate.

Both Bradley and Betts - in left and center, respectively -- ran down a half-dozen balls that might have eluded lesser outfielders.

Betts, in particular, took away extra-bases from Carlos Beltran in the fifth and Brett Gardner in the seventh while running a long way to make catches on the left-center warning track.

Bradley, with his studied nonchalance, raced to the track to haul in balls hit by Jacoby Ellsbury in the ninth and Chase Headley in the 10th.

New York manager Joe Girardi specifically cited the outfield play of the two in his post-game remarks as a huge factor in the first three games of the series.