It’s been too quiet on the offensive front for the Red Sox of late.
They entered Saturday averaging 2.8 runs per game over 10 contests since the Rafael Devers trade. Baseball’s last team to be shut out, the Red Sox weren’t held scoreless by anyone until May 31 in Atlanta. In 10 games post-Devers, however, they’ve been shut out twice, including a 9-0 Blue Jays drubbing in Friday’s series opener.
Baseball is beautifully, maddeningly unpredictable, though.
So it was a welcome change of pace when the Red Sox scored three runs in each of the first three frame, knocked Toronto starter Chris Bassitt out of the game after two innings (plus three batters in the third), and beat the Blue Jays by a whopping 15-1.
The road to ending Boston’s longest losing streak since 2022 began with two quick outs in the bottom of the first. The third batter, Abraham Toro, was the charm. He waited out a 10-pitch at-bat before lining one to left-center for a two-out single.
The next two at-bats were over in the blink of an eye. Carlos Narváez rocketed a first-pitch single through the right side of the infield, nearly clipping Toro’s ankle as he raced to second. Wilyer Abreu wrapped his first pitch fair inside the Pesky Pole for a three-run homer.
Asked if the Red Sox were able to breathe after Abreu’s homer, manager Alex Cora said, “I think the whole stadium was able to breathe.”
It was the ice-breaking, floodgate-opening, table-turning hit the Red Sox badly needed. They loaded the bases on a Trevor Story walk, Romy Gonzalez single, and Nick Sogard hit-by-pitch before Ceddanne Rafaela grounded into a force-out to end the inning, but in the bottom of the second, they picked up right where they left off and never let up. Save for Jarren Duran, who was hitless reached base three times on a pair of walks and a hit-by-pitch, and scored twice, every member of the lineup contributed at least two hits to the grand total of 18.
It was Roman Anthony’s first career multi-hit game by the fifth inning, and his first three-hit game by the eighth.
“He’s been outstanding,” Cora said. “The at-bats have been great.”
Gonzalez had the other three-hit performance, including a 446-foot homer to the batter’s eye. Rafaela hit a 400-foot homer to the National Car Rental sign at the back of the Green Monster in the sixth to make it the team’s highest-scoring game of the month.
Toro’s magic number was two: two hits, two walks, two runs, and two RBI.
“He was really good today,” Cora said. “You get caught up in the (Abreu) homer and all that, but he was able to foul off a few pitches, lay off some others, and just to put the ball in play, right, with two strikes. That was huge for us.”
In a welcome change of pace, it was the opponents’ turn to look lost at the plate. The Blue Jays collected six hits to the Red Sox’s 18.
While Toronto cycled through five pitchers, including catcher Tyler Heineman pitching the eighth, Lucas Giolito gave the Red Sox seven innings in his fourth consecutive quality start. He yielded one unearned run – from his own error – on six hits, walked one, and struck out five on 105 pitches (72 strikes).
“Gio was good, we needed that,” Cora said. “Like I always say, if we pitch, we have a shot.”
After his start against the Giants last weekend, Giolito told reporters he felt like his sixth and final inning had been his best of a “grinder outing.” He hadn’t found his “rhythm” until then, a frustrating thing for a pitcher whose day was over after that inning despite an 83-pitch count.
This time, Giolito was back out for the seventh, and finished it.
“It’s up there,” Giolito said of where this start ranked among his best of the season. “But getting through seven innings, and a game like this is just fun, because we get that early lead, the offense was so locked in, so just kind of allowed me to relax. Narvy did his thing behind home plate, incredible pitch-calling, and we just got to work.”
Over seven starts between his April 30 Red Sox debut and his June 4 start, Giolito pitched to a 6.42 ERA (though his FIP was 4.78) and averaged 3.4 earned runs per game. Over his four subsequent starts, he’s allowed six runs total (and only two earned) over 25 innings. On Saturday, he lowered his ERA to 3.99.
The turnaround stems from something he and the pitching staff unlocked earlier in the month.
“When we were in New York, I was coming off that really horrible outing against the Angels (on June 4),” Giolito said. “We got to work looking at some mechanical stuff, made adjustments. That bullpen was like this huge step forward for me where it’s like, ‘Oh, OK I feel like myself again.’”
“Before the way I was throwing, it’s like I went out there and whatever I had that day was what I had just because of my slot was so out of sync,” the righty continued. “Whereas now, I can misfire a throw and then kind of feel the correction I need to make and then make the adjustment on the very next pitch. And being able to do that really like opens the door to being able to have pitch ability within a game and work deeper into games.”
The eighth inning saw left-hander Chris Murphy take the mound for the first time since September 2023. His first inning of big-league work was a quick 1-2-3 in which he got Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Jonatan Clase to ground out, with an Alejandro Kirk strikeout in between. In the ninth, Murphy worked around a pair of walks to finish off the win.
“Good stuff, man,” Cora said of Murphy. “The breaking ball stuff was outstanding, the curveball, the split, good fastball. So it was good to throw him out there for two innings.”
The Red Sox are 41-43 on the season. They staved off a seventh straight loss, which would’ve been their longest losing streak since 2020.
“Obviously we needed it,” Cora said of the win, “but we’re not panicking. It’s part of the season. You’re gonna win five in a row, six in a row, this is gonna happen.
“I think the timing of it (with the Devers trade), I think people made a bigger deal than what it is. We lost a few games in San Fran that we thought we should have won, we lost a few games in Anaheim that we thought we should have won. Yesterday they kicked our butt, yeah, and then tonight there were two outs in the first inning and that happened. So, good job by the boys.”
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