Taking their biggest test of the season in this weekend’s road series with the Kansas City Royals, the Red Sox passed with flying colors.
The Royals came into Saturday on a seven-game winning streak, with only two losses in their previous 18 games, and without back-to-back losses since April 19, but it was the Red Sox who took the series, two games to one. After losing the opener 2-1 in the 12th inning, Boston rebounded with a 10-1 victory on Saturday and 3-1 clincher on Sunday.
A pair of top-four ‘24 AL Cy Young finalists, Cole Ragans (fourth) and Seth Lugo (second), started for the Royals in the second and third games, but they were out-pitched by three newcomers to Boston’s rotation. Rookie Hunter Dobbins, ace southpaw Garrett Crochet, and the recently-returned Lucas Giolito combined for 19.2 innings – at least six apiece – and just one earned run.
“The pitching staff as a whole, they were amazing,” lauded manager Alex Cora.
With the exception of his former home field on Chicago’s South Side, Giolito has spent more time on the Kauffman Stadium mound than at any other ballpark. The Red Sox right-hander entered Sunday’s series finale with a 2.97 ERA over 13 career starts (78.2 innings) in Kansas City, making it the perfect place for him to rebound from his last start, a 3.2-inning struggle he’d described as a “step back.”
Indeed, in his longest start since Sept. 15, 2023, Giolito held the Royals to one unearned run on two hits, one walk, and struck out five over 6.2 innings. His velocity topped out at 96.1 mph, and he induced 10 swings-and-misses among his 88 pitches (59 for strikes).
“Better mix, better command, fastball was a little bit harder, 93, 94 mph, but I think it was the mix of the pitches,” Cora said of his starter. “The last two days we were banged up in the bullpen. What you saw is probably what we had, and both of them, Crochet and Gio, gave us more than enough.”
Aside from a long third inning, Giolito breezed through the afternoon. He opened with back-to-back 1-2-3 innings. When the Royals sent six men to the plate in the third, the Sox starter managed to limit the damage. Drew Waters led off with a single, Luke Maile followed with a walk, and Kyle Isbel’s sacrifice bunt gave the Royals a 1-0 lead when Giolito made a throwing error.
Undeterred, Giolito got the next three batters in order to strand runners on the corners. After the miscue, he retired seven batters before giving up a single to Maile and promptly erasing it by getting Isbel to ground into an inning-ending double play. All told, he set the Royals down 1-2-3 in five of his six full innings, and recorded the first two outs of the seventh before Justin Wilson got Mark Canha to line out on the first pitch to complete yet another orderly frame.
“We got to work, we made adjustments with the slider,” Giolito told reporters, making sure to credit his coaches and catcher Carlos Narváez, who’s quickly become integral to the pitching staff’s success. “Narvy was fantastic behind the plate again.”
After knocking Ragans around for five innings on Saturday, the Boston bats didn’t make it easy for Lugo, either. The ’24 Cy Young runner-up lasted six innings, but allowed three earned runs on six hits, including Wilyer Abreu’s game-tying solo home run, and Rafael Devers’ go-ahead two-run shot in the sixth.
One of two players without a knock in Saturday’s 15-hit Boston bonanza, Abreu was Boston’s most productive bat in Sunday’s series finale. He snapped an 0 for 13 skid with a leadoff single in the second, tied the game with his 10th home run in the fourth – a 430-footer, tying the second-furthest hits of his career – and made it a three-hit day with another leadoff single in the ninth.
Each of Abreu’s first two hits, as well as Trevor Story’s third-inning single, came with two strikes. The Red Sox entered the contest with 148 two-strike hits, tied with the Los Angeles Dodgers for most in the majors.
The biggest hit, however, belonged to Boston’s blaster. WIth Jarren Duran on first with a one-out single in the sixth, Devers crushed Lugo’s first pitch, a 91.8 mph four-seamer. Hurtling 440 feet to dead-center at 110.4 mph, it may have been the Red Sox’s furthest hit of the season, but it was still only tied for 19th in Devers’ career. (467 feet on June 25, 2024 vs. Blue Jays’ Kevin Gausman.)
“Just another day,” Cora said of Devers’ latest powerful performance. “He’s swinging the bat well, he’s in a good spot, just seeing the ball well, executing his game plan, which is very important, and that ball was demolished.”
Over the three-game series, Devers hit .583 with a 1.560 OPS, seven hits, six RBI, two walks, a double, and a home run. He has three multi-hit performances in his last four games.
“He’s probably the best DH in the American League right now,” Cora said.
The Red Sox out-hit the Royals 8-4. Wilson, Greg Weissert, and Aroldis Chapman ensured Giolito’s gem would be rewarded with his first win of the year.
Facing Chapman, a former Royal, in the ninth, the home team looked poised for a rally, but only briefly. Vinnie Pasquantino reached on a fielding error by second baseman David Hamilton, and Salvador Perez singled to put runners on first and second with one out. With help from his defense, Chapman recovered; Maikel Garcia lined out sharply to left, where Duran made a tremendous grab, and newly-recalled, newly-minted first baseman Nick Sogard caught Canha’s pop-up in foul territory to bring the series to an end.
Too often over the last few years, the Red Sox have struggled to dispatch bad teams. (Last year’s 2-2 series split with the 121-loss White Sox comes to mind.) This weekend, however, they more than held their own against what could very well be a postseason opponent.
It’s exactly the kind of confidence-building weekend the Red Sox need as they head to Detroit for their next big test: three games against the white-hot Tigers, with reigning Cy Young, Tarik Skubal on the mound Wednesday.
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