Red Sox 13, A's 1

 

Nine straight wins. Twenty-seven of the last 30. The mighty Boston Red Sox winning machine just keeps on rolling.

Last night's victims were the Oakland Sacramento someday-Vegas A's, tied with the Angels and Rockies for the worst record in MLB. Last night, the Sox beat the A's 13-1 behind Payton Tolle's 14-K performance. Collectively, the A's pitchers - starter Jack Perkins and the bullpen - only had five K's.

New guy Raymond Burgos, who has pitched only one inning in the majors prior to last night, a June 24, 2024 game for the Giants, pitched three hitless innings last night, striking out two. That has got to build your confidence.   

Boston jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the second inning behind a two-run homer by Jarren Duran, and RBI doubles by new guy Jake Rogers and Wilyer Abreu. The Sox made it 9-0 in the fourth with another Abreu RBI, and base hits by Masataka Yoshida and Andruw Monasterio. The A's caught a break when Tolle slipped up and Tyler Soderstrom managed a  solo homer, ruining the potential no-hitter, but no big deal. Caleb Durbin and Yoshida brought in two more runs in the sixth, and Durbin and Ceddanne Rafaela brought in two more in the seventh.

It wasn't exactly a nail-bitter, but after Thursday night's 13-inning master class in Hitchcockian suspense, a laugher was more than welcome.

The Yankees squeaked out a 3-2 win over the Atlanta Braves last night in ten innings, so the Sox are still a half-game back from New York in the AL East and the Wild Card standings. They trail Tampa Bay in the division by five.

This afternoon (4:10 pm), big Jake Bennett (7-4, 2.90) takes the Fenway mound for Boston against Gage Jump (4-7, 4.59). The matchup is a repeat of the very last game that the Red Sox lost, the 4-3 defeat in Sacramento back on July 28. Jump struck out seven while allowing no runs and only two hits in that game, while Big Jake gave up three runs in six hits while striking out four. I'm sure Bennett and the Sox want to atone for that loss and continue their current win streak to 10.   

Red Sox 12, White Sox 11 (13 Innings)

 

Last night, I watched (actually, listened to - the WEEI broadcast over SiriusXM) one of the greatest games of baseball I've ever experienced. Quite possibly the greatest game since Game 4 of the 2004 ACLS, when the Red Sox, down three games to none, beat the Yankees, 6-4, in twelve innings (and went on to win the World Series).

The sheer intensity of last night's game is almost impossible to describe. The White Sox jumped out to an early 4-0 lead, but Connor Wong homered in the third, Monasterio and Seigler both hit RBI doubles in the fourth, and Yoshida scored Durbin in the sixth. Starter Ranger Suarez didn't have his best stuff last night, giving up three earned runs on three hits and walking two, and only lasted three innings. Relievers Weissert and Slaten weren't much better, and after 8½ innings, Chicago led, 7-6.

In the bottom of the ninth, Wong reached base on a double. Sogard advanced the runner with a sac fly, but then Rafaela struck out. Abreu came to the plate with two outs, down by one, and fell behind in the count, 2-1. The Red Sox were one strike away from losing the game when Abreu singled to shallow center, scoring the baserunner and tying the game. Abreu got caught stealing and the game went into extra innings.

And that's when things got interesting. In the 10th inning, Chicago's Chase Meidroth hit a two-run homer off reliever Aroldis Chapman, and the game seemed all but over. Boston hadn't led at any point in the game, and a two-run, 10th-inning lead seemed like an insurmoutable obstacle. But the Red Sox refused to roll over and die, and in the bottom of the inning, Monasterio hit a double, scoring the ghost runner (Abreu) and then Seigler hit a sac fly to score a second run and tie the game back up.

In the 11th, reliever Garrett Whitlock advanced the ghost runner to third on a wild pitch, and the White Sox brought him home on a sac fly to regain the lead. But Boston came right back and Abreu hit a sac fly of his own to score ghost runner Sogard from second and tie the game up a third time. Much the same thing happened in the 12th - reliever Brayan Bello gave up a run on three hits and a walk, giving Chicago another one-run lead, but then new guy Jake Rogers, in his first Red Sox appearance, brought ghost runner Duran home with a sac fly.

By this point, both teams had gone through their entire bullpens and benches. There were no more substitute players for either team, on the mound, in the field, or at the plate. Everyone on both teams was exhausted, but neither team was about to quit or concede the game to the other. 

Fortunately, Brayan Bello, who was a little wild in the 12th inning, settled down in the 13th and retired the White Sox in three. And then, bottom of the 13th, with one out and after four hours and 23 minutes of baseball, Caleb Durbin hit a single to center field and scored Nick Sogard from third. The Red Sox finally got their first lead of the entire night and won, 12-11, after 13 innings.

The Red Sox had to rally from behind five times to win the game, and baseball statisticians claim it was the first time any team has scored five times in the ninth inning or later since 1900. It's Boston's eighth straight win and 26th in their last 29 games. It's their second straight sweep of a team in first place of their division and earlier this season they swept AL East leaders Tampa Bay (it's also their second sweep of the White Sox this season). 

But don't dismiss the Pale Hose. They put up one hell of a fight, and like Boston, refused to roll over and die, reclaiming the lead over and over again. It was a gut check for both teams and both were pushed to their absolute limits, but Boston came out ahead and if you still have any doubts about this Red Sox team at this point, you're either an idiot or a Yankees fan (and there's a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram of those two demographics). 

Speaking of idiots, the Yankees lost last night and the Red Sox (63-51) now trail New York by a paper-thin half game. And the Yankees will be hosting the Atlanta Braves (70-45) for the next three games, while the Red Sox will entertain the hapless A's (45-70) this weekend. I think the Yankee fans are hearing footsteps up in the Bronx.

The Red Sox are still five games back in the AL East from the first-place Rays. But there's still 48 more games to play, including three down in Tampa Bay.

It's going to be hard coming off last night's high to play the lowly A's, and the Sox players must still be exhausted. But fortunately, Payton Tolle's still fresh, and he'll be putting his 6-6 record and 3.30 ERA up against the A's Jack Perkins (2-7, 6.72). The two pitchers faced each other last week in Sacramento and Tolle and the Red Sox won, 4-2, with Tolle getting seven K's and only one walk, while Perkins stuck out four and walked three.  Incidentally, that win marked the start of Boston's current eight game win streak, and a sweep of the A's would extend the streak to 11.   

But, wow, last night's game was pretty spectacular!

Red Sox 4, White Sox 0

The mighty Boston Red Sox have clinched the win in their ninth straight series, earning them another of the highly coveted (lol) Sweat Dissolves Water trophies. The last time the Sox won nine consecutive series was between August 4 and September 15, 1912. That year, they finished with a record of 105-47 and won the World Series, defeating the New York Giants.

Last night, Boston won the second of the three-game homestand against the White Sox in a 4-0 shutout for their seventh back-to-back win. They're now 9-1 in their last ten games and officially once again the hottest team in baseball.  Wilyer Abreu homered in the third inning, his 20th home run of the season. Willson Contreras, Andruw Monasterio, and Caleb Durbin all had RBI base hits too. Sonny Gray went six innings, striking out eight and giving up only three hits and no runs. The bullpen (Guerrero, Whitlock, and  Morán) struck out another six over the final three innings.

Contreras' .288 batting average is fifth highest in the American League, and Rafaela's .287 is sixth. Gray's 2.78 ERA is fifth best in the AL among qualified starters. Seven straight wins, nine in the last ten games. Nine series wins. Eleven games over .500. And to make it all the sweeter, the Yankees lost last night, so the Red Sox are now only one game back from second-place New York. They're up by six games in the Wild Card standings. 

Tonight, Ranger Suarez (4-3, 3.15) faces off against Chicago's Luis Castillo (3-9, 5.06). The Red Sox will win and complete their second straight series sweep. And with the anemic A's (45-69) on the schedule next, it could well be three sweeps and 11 consecutive wins. 

Way back on April 16, after the Red Sox beat the Twins, 9-5, I said, and I quote, "We're going to the World Series, and that's a guarantee!" And friendly reminder that I called it correctly on June 26, after the first game of the sweep of the Yankees, when I said, "The greatest comeback in sports history began last evening. We're going to the World Series, baby!" And of course I said it throughout the epic 15-game win streak as that greatest of all comebacks did, in fact, materialize. 

So I'll repeat it now: World Series, baby. We're going to the World Series!

At Sea, At Last

 

Conditions have lifted in the Bering Sea to allow Ella Hibbert and the Yeva to finally leave St. Paul Island this morning and set sail for the Northeast Passage over Siberia and Scandinavia. Hopefully, by this fall, Hibbert will have completed the first solo circumnavigation of the Arctic Ocean. For the first time this year, all three sailors we've been tracking - Ella Hibbert, Tamara Klink, and Matt Rutherford - are all at sea at the same time. 

Klink has passed the Diomede Islands (she sailed north of the islands this time, not between them like she did last year) and then headed west (!) toward Siberia and the Northeast Passage. It still isn't clear if she was going to reach the Atlantic via the Northeast or the Northwest Passage to return her ship, the Sardinha, to Brazil, but right now, she's less than 10 miles off of Russia's Cape Deshnev, the easternmost point of Asia. She may just be tacking west as she heads north towards Alaska's Hope Point, but right now she's right at the entry to the Northwest Passage.

Storm conditions have also settled down on the Barents Sea and Matt Rutherford is underway again. His present course has him crossing north of Russia's Novaya Zemlya archipelago. The northernmost tip of the archipelago is at about 77° N, which is the same as his current latitude. If the sea ice allows him to maintain that latitude, it's a straight shot east across the Kara Sea from the tip of Novaya Zemlya to the Vilkitsky Strait between Siberia's Taimyr Peninsula and Bolshevik Island and on into the Laptev Sea. The shortest-distance, straight-line route to the Laptev is to stay on the 77th parallel, although clearing the top of the Taimyr will require him to go north to about the 78th. However, I wasn't sure if he was going to take that direct route or dip south closer to the mainland (less ice, closer to civilization in case of emergency). 

Hibbert and Klink (if she's heading that way) will also have to pass over the Taimyr, although in the opposite direction, as they complete their passages. Which brings up the question as to whether any of them will encounter the others in the great, wide Arctic as they take their separate voyages. 

Three separate sailors in the Northeast Passage at the same time! That has got to be a historical first.       

Beyond Nome

 

After nearly two weeks harbored in Nome, Alaska, Tamara Klink and the Sardinha 2 are finally at sea once again, heading north. It's still not clear whether she's planning on taking the Northeast or the Northwest Passage to reach the Atlantic, but her long stay in Nome makes me suspect that she may be Northeast bound. The Northwest Passage should have been clear of ice by this point in the season, but perhaps she was waiting for the ice over Siberia in the Northeast Passage to finally melt. Also, the red tape for Russian permits and entry visas may have taken some time to clear. But we probably won't know which way she's heading until she passes through the Bering Strait and past the Diomede Islands.

Speaking of the Northeast Passage, Matt Rutherford and the Chimera have passed over the Svalbard Islands. Rutherford got as far north as latitude 81° 14' before heading back south again, but his approach toward Russian waters has been interrupted by a major storm in the Barents Sea. He's currently tacking east and west at around the 78th degree latitude to kill some time until the storm plays itself out.

A separate storm in the Bering Sea has Ella Hibbert and the Yeva pinned down on Saint Paul Island, where she's been since May. She's ready to go on her trip over Siberia and across the Northeast Passage, but there's no point (or wisdom) in starting the trip under the torrential rainfall, high seas, winds, and low visibility currently in the Bering. Another day or two and she should finally be on her way.         

Red Sox 14, White Sox 2

 

What do you do after you swept the Dodgers in L.A. and return home on a five-game winning streak to face the Chicago White Sox, the first-place team in the AL Central?  

Score six runs in the first inning, including a Caleb Durbin home run and a Jarren Duran solo homer in the next at-bat, and go on to win the game, 14-2, of course. 

The Red Sox scored six more runs in the sixth inning, and Wilyer Abreu hit solo homers in the fifth and eighth innings. Starting pitcher Patrick Sandoval went five innings with five K's and two runs, and the bullpen kept Chicago hitless through four, including Eric Miller in his Red Sox debut and Brayan Bello closing the game with three hitless innings. Outfielder Eli White made his first Boston appearance, too, pinch hitting for Rafaela in the eighth (he grounded out on the first pitch to him). 

For most of this season, it seemed like five consecutive wins were something beyond this team's pay grade. Now, after the 15-game win streak, they've just won a sixth straight for the second time this year. 

The Red Sox are now 61-51, ten game over .500. Just last June, they were 14 point underwater at one point. They trail the Rays by 5½ games and the Yankees by two, and in any other division of the American League, their .545 record would put them in first place. The AL East is a tough neighborhood.  

Sonny Gray (13-2, 2.93) starts tonight. His ERA is the sixth lowest in the American League and his thirteen wins are the most of any pitcher in the AL, and tied for second over in the NL. Gray has a 7-2 lifetime record against the White Sox. 

Gray will be up against Chicago's Sean Burke (7-5, 3.04). In his last start against the Red Sox back on 4/20 of last year, he struck out five and gave up four runs (only one officially earned) in five innings.

At 8-2 over their last ten games, the Sox are tied with Houston and San Diego as the hottest team in MLB. It's time to make that record 9-1 and leave those Astros and Padres behind.

Red Sox 8, Dodgers 4

 

NOW do you believe? Since late June, the mighty Boston Red Sox have gone 28-5, sweeping, among others, the Yankees, the Rays, and now the Dodgers, won nine of ten series, and had a 15-game winning streak. Their current win streak is at five, and they're 60-51 on the season, nine games over .500, seventh-best in the majors.  

Being a Red Sox fan is about long periods of suffering interrupted by ecstatic bursts of pure joy. The suffering is necessary to make the joy feel more cathartic and the joy is necessary to make the suffering tolerable. Believe me, I know: I've been a fan for 50 years now and have seen it all - 86 years without a World Series win (I was only present for 28 of those years), Bucky Fucking Dent in 1977, and Bill Buckner in 1986. But then coming back in 2004 from 0-3 to win the ALCS against the Yankees, finally winning our first World Series that year since the days of Babe Ruth, and all the League and World Series championships since then.

So far, this season has been a microcosm of that whole suffering-and-joy cycle in one year. On June 24, this team was 32-46, 14 games underwater, and couldn't even win a series against the pathetic Colorado Rockies. Then, the next day after losing in Colorado, the Yankees came to Fenway, and we entered the ecstatic joy portion of the cycle. It's been (mostly) all winning ever since.

Last night, the Red Sox beat the Dodgers in L.A., 8-4, completing a three-game sweep of the team. Two of the three wins were by four or more runs. The Sox beat L.A. like a bunch of red-headed stepchildren while Dodger fans and the media could only watch in speechless astonishment from the stands. Tarik Screwball was at yesterday's game in a brand-new Dodgers uniform for photo-ops and adoration by the fans, but the Red Sox spoiled his little quinceañera.

Boston opened the game with two runs in the first inning on RBI singles by Masataka Yoshida and Caleb Durbin. The Dodgers took the lead, 3-2, with some small-ball hitting of their own, but then the Red Sox took charge, opening the third inning with home runs by three of the first four batters to the plate. Ceddanne Rafaela hit a bomb 407 feet into deep left center, and Wilyer Abreu followed with another homer on the very next pitch. After Willson Contreras (back in the lineup from concussion protocol after getting beaned by a vicious fastball by the dirty, cheating Dodgers in the first game of the series) flied out, Yoshida homered 406 feet into deep right. Down 5-3, starting pitcher Ed Sheeran Emmet Sheehan hit Andruw Monasterio with a pitch because of course he did - it's all the dirty, cheating Dodgeballs know how to do. "If you can't beat 'em, bean 'em." They sat Sheehan after that, but I think it was more because of the three homers he just gave up than to protect opposing batters. 

Jarren Duran homered in the seventh to make it 6-3, Boston. In the eighth, the Dodgers pitchers reverted to hitting batters again, this time reliever Wyatt Mills hitting Caleb Durbin with a pitch. But the joke was on the Dodgeballs - Mills loaded the bases and then Durbin scored on a wild pitch. Mills sailed his next pitch past the catcher, allowing Monasterio to score from third. 8-4, Boston. L.A. literally threw the game away. 

Big Jake Bennett went 5⅔ innings with four K's and three runs on four hits. Unlike the Dodgers, he managed to make it through the game without wild pitches, passed balls, or hitting batters with pitches. 

The Rays lost last night, so the third-place Red Sox (60-51) are now five games back from first and 2½ back from second-place New York. They're currently second in the AL Wild Card standings, four games ahead of Cleveland.

The Sox are off today, traveling back to Fenway after completing their West Coast road trip with a 6-1 record.  On Tuesday, they start a three-game series with the White Sox (59-52), who they swept in Chicago during their epic, 15-game win streak, followed by a weekend series against the A's (45-67).

We're going to the World Series, baby, and if you don't think the team that has swept both the American League and the National League leaders is going to win the Series, then you don't know baseball (and probably live in New York or L.A.).     

Red Sox 3, Dodgers 2

 

With last night's 3-2 win over the Dodgers, the mighty Boston Red Sox have now won their eighth straight series. No one can stop them, not the Rays or the Jays, not the A's or the O's. Not the Mets, not the White Sox, not the Angels. Not even the motherfucking Dodgers. Friendly reminder that all this started ten series ago, back in June, when they swept the Yankees. 

The last time the Sox won eight series in a row was 2013, and they went on to win the World Series that year. So bow down, MLB, to your new overlords, your next World Series champions, the Boston Red Sox! 

The Red Sox came into L.A. riding a hot streak, and the Dodgers tried to level the playing field by taking out Boston's best hitter, Willson Contreras, with a vicious fastball to the skull. He may return from concussion protocol today (if so, Daddy's back, you dirty Dodger motherfuckers), but the Red Sox still won two in a row without him. Cheaters never prosper.

Last night, Ceddanne Rafaela hit Yoshinobu Yamamoto's third pitch of the game out of the park, a 411-foot solo homer into deep left center. In case you thought that was a fluke, a bad pitch that just somehow got away from the Yams, Rafaela homered again in his next at bat, this time hitting the ball 421 feet into deep left center. The Yams gave up a third run in the eighth, a grounder by Connor Wong that turned into a double play but brought Andruw Monasterio home from third.

The Yams finished the game with three Boston strikeouts and two home runs. The Red Sox' Payton Tolle struck out seven and gave up only one homer. In a pitcher's duel between Tolle and the Yams, Tolle won and the Dodgers lost the game, 3-2.

The Dodgers were so freaked out by the losses (with back-to-back losses, they no longer have the best record in baseball) they went out after the game and purchased two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Screwball from the Tigers. The Dodgers are now so ridiculously overloaded that talk of parity in baseball and meaningful salary caps has already started. But they're still not so overloaded that they can beat the Boston Red Sox.

New York lost last night because the Yankees suck, so now Boston (59-51) is only 2½ back from them in the AL East and the Wild Card standings. 

Game three of the Dodgers series, and the last game of this West Coast Road trip, starts at 7:20 tonight. Big Jake Bennett (6-4, 2.74) starts tonight for his first appearance in Dodgers Stadium. L.A. will start Emmet Sheehan (4-7, 4.95). Sheehan has faced the Sox once before, five innings last year in Fenway, when he gave up two runs and struck out five. But Sheehan's record this year begs the question how a starting pitcher on a 69-42 team can have an overall losing record - his seven losses account for 17% of all the Dodgers losses this year.

History is being made this season. This is as good as it gets for sports fans. Get on board and enjoy the ride, folks!

Red Sox 9, Dodgers 4

 

In-fucking-credible! The 15-game win streak may have ended, but the season turnaround of all season turnarounds continues.  The mighty Boston Red Sox have gone 26-5 since June 25, the start of the homestand against the Yankees, and 21-4 in the month of July, the winningest month in 125 years of Red Sox baseball. Their .840 winning percentage in July passed the franchise record of .800 set in August 1950 and June 1901. 

Their 21-4 July record is the fifth best in MLB history for the month. The record, if you're curious, is the 20-3 run (.870) by the 2017 L.A. Dodgers, and last night, the Red Sox beat the Dodgers, 9-4, to end the month of July with one big fat exclamation point.  

This is a truly historic run - no hyperbole or fan-boy overstatement - and if you've still got your head up your ass and ignoring it, that's on you, boo. You're not likely to see a team this on fire again in your lifetime.    

What a game! The scoring started in the second inning when Jarren Duran, yes, Jarren Duran, hit an RBI single, scoring Caleb Durbin. For the haters out there, Duran also had another RBI in the seventh when be brought Durbin home again with a ground out.

But everyone knows you don't beat the Dodgers in L.A, with a single run, and the Dodgers helped us out by allowing two more runs in the third inning when meme player Freddie Freeman bobbled a Masataka Yoshida hit up the first-base line and allowed Ceddanne Rafaela and Nick Sogard to score.

But everyone also knows you don't even beat the Dodgers in L.A. with three early-inning runs, and Freeman reminded us of that in the fourth, when he (partially) atoned for his error by hitting a single that brought Shohei Ohtoni home from third. The Dodgers made it 3-2 in the fifth inning with another RBI single, and then Ohtoni gave L.A. a 4-3 lead with a two-run homer in the Dodgers' very next at-bat.

At that point, I was already consoling myself with "You can't win 'em all" and "At least we played them tough," but then Rafaela stepped to the plate in the seventh and crushed a two-run homer 411 feet into deep left center. But the Red Sox weren't done that inning, far from it, and Andruw Monasterio hit a double, scoring Yoshida and Wilyer Abreu to make it 7-4, Boston. And that set the stage for Duran's second RBI of the night, the groundout that scored Durbin a second time.

And here's the real shocker: Brayan Bello was near perfect in four innings of shutout relief, striking out three, including the last batter in the ninth inning, and giving up only three hits. Bello, who has the worst ERA (10.35) in baseball among starting pitchers, now has the best ERA among relievers (0.69). Overall, Boston pitchers now have the third-best team ERA (3.54), in all of baseball, even including Bello's numbers, better than the Dodgers' 3.61. 

Where was Willson Contreras in all this?, you ask. On the bench, in concussion protocol. He got beaned in the third inning - hit in the head by a speeding fastball thrown by L.A. starter Cole Irvin. Now, you could give Irvin the benefit of the doubt - Contreras is known for crowding the plate, and sometimes pitches go a foot or two off target, it happens. But the pitch was the second up-and-inside of the at-bat, and Contreras had to hit the dirt two pitches earlier, so it doesn't look completely accidental. The Dodgers pulled Irvin after the errant pitch, but I'm not impressed - Irvin's throw proves the Dodgers are a bunch of dirty, low-life, cheating motherfuckers (except for Mookie, of course), who think nothing of injuring an opposing player, even ending a career, if it burnishes their statistics even in the slightest. It's no coincidence that Dirty Don Drysdale, their legendary hero, still holds the NL record for hit batsmen (154). They can all rot in hell for all I care.  

The Red Sox are now 58-51, and with Tampa Bay losing last night, are now only six games out of first in the AL East, 3½ back from the second-place Yankees in both the division and Wild Card standings. Last night's win was the fourth of this seven-game road trip, guaranteeing they'll return to Fenway with a winning record for this West Coast trip. 

Tonight's game starts at 9:10, the last game that Boston will start after 9:00 pm this season. Payton Tolle (6-6, 3.32) gets the start for Boston, his first game in Dodgers Stadium and first time facing the team. The Dodgers will start Yoshinobu Yamamoto (11-6, 2.72), who despite three years in L.A., has not faced the Red Sox yet. So we'll have two teams getting their first looks at two pitchers.  

Exciting, isn't it?

Red Sox 5, A's 4

 

The Boston Red Sox let the A's jump out to a 3-0 lead after four innings in last night's game, but then tied it up in the fifth, only to allow the A's to move out to another lead in the sixth. Then Abreu and Contreras rolled up their sleeves and hit back-to-back homers to start the 8th, and the Red Sox leave Sacramento with a 3-1 series win.

During the game, Jarren Duran threw a much publicized temper tantrum in the dugout, but I'm not talking about that here but you can read all about it to your heart's content elsewhere. Knock yourself out.

Sonny Gray went seven full innings, striking out five while giving up all four of the A's runs on seven hits. 

After 108 games, the Red Sox are 57-51. After 108 games last year, they were 57-51, and in 2024, they were 57-51 after 108. In 2023, after 108 games, they were, you guessed it, 57-51. We just arrived there in very different ways each year.

New York lost their second straight to the White Sox last night, so now the third-place Red Sox are only 3½ behind them. The Yankees (61-48) are staying in Chicago for the weekend for four games against the Cubs (62-47), so more losses by the slumping Yankees can be expected. 

Unfortunately, the Sox move on to L.A. (69-40) to visit our old friend Mookie Betts and check in on Shohei Ohtani. Realistically, I'm not expecting much from Boston in this series, and if we win even a single game against the Dodgers, I'll be happy. On the other hand, this Red Sox team has played its best against top-level opponents - they swept both Tampa Bay and the Yankees recently. I'm not predicting another sweep here, but like I said, one out of three isn't inconceivable.

The first game will see Ranger Suarez (4-3, 3.02) making his second start since returning from the IL. Suarez is a career 3-2 against the Dodgers in five starts, with 30 strikeouts and only three runs. Last year, in the playoff division series, he got the Dodgers to strike out four times and gave up only one run in long relief (five innings) for the Phillies.

The Dodgeballs will start Edgardo Henriquez (4-1, 2.79). In three years in the majors, Henriquez has thrown all of one pitch to the Sox, a July 26, 2025 relief appearance where he got Romy Gonzalez to ground out in Fenway. So, other than that, he's pretty much an unknown commodity to the Red Sox.

Red Sox 4, A's 2 (10)

 

This game had everything. Sure, the obvious - an extra inning and a come-from-behind Red Sox win. But the game also had a fifth inning Jahmai Jones homer to tie the game up at one each, only to then have him pulled from the lineup for pinch-hitter Jarren Duran (.197), who went 0-3 in his plate appearances, with a ground out, a fly out, and a line out. It had Nick Sogard, back in the majors for his first game since May 30, tie the game up again in the sixth inning with an RBI single. And it had pitcher Patrick Sandoval hit an A's batter in the wrist with a pitch, two days after an A's pitcher hit the Sox' Curtis Mead with a pitch, fracturing his wrist and putting him on the IL for an estimated six weeks.     

That last part was just a coincidence, I'm sure.

But the best part of all, after Sogard tied the game up and forced an extra inning, Andruw Monasterio hit a two-run homer into deep left center in the tenth inning to win the game.  

Oh, and the Yankees lost last night, 6-5, in 12 innings in Chicago to the White Sox. Since June 25, when the Yankees came to Fenway for a four-game series, the Red Sox have gone 24-5 and are currently 7-3 in their last ten games. At 56-51 (.523) on the season, they are quite literally the best third-place team in baseball.  

The Red Sox wrap up this road series with a fourth and final game in Sacramento tonight. Sonny Gray (12-2, 2.78) starts tonight, although I really wish that his rotation came up tomorrow instead to pitch against the Dodgers, when we could really use him. The A's will start with righty Mason Barnett (1-1, 4.74). In two starts last year, Barnett gave up six runs on 12 hits to Boston, including a Rob Refsnyder home run, and didn't see the fifth inning in either game. 

A's 4, Red Sox 3

 

A Connor Wong two-run homer in the ninth wasn't enough to win the game, or even to force extra innings. Boston takes a 4-3 road loss in Sacramento.

 

Meanwhile, it was confirmed that Curtis Mead has a fractured wrist and is on the 10-day injured list, at least for now. If he needs surgery, he'll be out even longer. We traded young Connelly Early for Mead, and got all of one at-bat from him (a strikeout) before he got hit by a pitch. Not his fault, but just our luck. 

A sweep of  the A's would have been nice, but Tampa Bay lost last night, too, so at least there wasn't that much damage to last night's loss, other than a missed opportunity to move up a game in the standings. The Red Sox (55-51) are still in third place and still seven back from the Rays, but now are 5½ back from New York in both the AL East and Wild Card standings.

Tonight, it's Patrick Sandoval (0-0, 3.21) against Jacob Lopez (5.4, 6.12). In 11 games over seven seasons, Sandoval is 4-4 against the A's. Lopez has been in the majors for four years now, but has somehow missed the chance to pitch to the Sox before this evening. 

First pitch is at 9:40.