Red Sox 5, Mariners 1

 

Young Connelly Early lives up to his potential. It took him an inning to settle in, and the two hits in the first gave Seattle a run, but after that he no-hit the Mariners for five innings, earning seven K's along the way. And then the bullpen kept the no-hitter (other than the first) going through the final three. 

Meanwhile,. Abreu hit a two-run homer in the fourth and scored on a wild pitch in the sixth. The Sox also scored two more runs on RBI singles by Durbin and Mayer in the sixth. 

The Mariners moved our old (2022-2025) friend Rob Refsnyder (.133), from first to fifth in the lineup, but he still went 0-3 at bat last night.

Two wins in a row, back to back victories. It's good to be playing anywhere but Fenway. 

More good news: the fucking Yankees finally lost a game, so the Sox pick up a game in the AL East standings. We're only 14½ back now, with 88 games left to play! 

That was sarcasm by the way.

But here we are now, out in the PNW - Cascadia - two up in a three-game road series with the potential to earn a sweep. We're putting Payton Tolle, our best starter (3-4, 2.93), on the mound to face the Mariners for the first time in his career. He'll be opposed by Seattle's Logan Gilbert (5-4, 3.43), who's a career 0-2 against Boston. The last time Gilbert pitched to the Sox, he struck out an impressive 10 batters over five innings, but the now-injured Roman Anthony also got his career-first MLB home run off him in a 2-0 Boston win. 

Past results are no indicator of future performance, so so they say, but really, it's all we've got to go on.