On days where the Red Sox offense isn’t scoring runs in bunches, Wednesday offered a blueprint for how the club can win games anyway.
Timely home runs? Check. A dominant starting pitching performance? Check. Clean games by both the defense and bullpen? Check and check.
All of the ingredients were there for the Red Sox in Wednesday’s 3-1 win over the Phillies, which evened the series at one game apiece. Trevor Story and Ceddanne Rafaela each went deep, with Rafaela’s two-run pinch hit bomb in the sixth giving Boston the lead for good, and Sonny Gray delivered another strong outing in his second start back off the injured list.
The Red Sox struck first when Story hit a solo home run to the Green Monster seats with one out in the second inning. It was Story’s third home run of the season and his first since April 15, ending a streak of 21 games without a homer.
The lead proved short lived. Philadelphia tied the game in the top of the third on a solo shot by Justin Crawford, the son of former Red Sox outfielder Carl Crawford and a rookie appearing in just his 38th MLB game.
Crawford’s blast looked like a routine fly ball off the bat, but the ball was hit high enough to pick up the gusting winds and carried into the first row of the center field bleachers 403 feet from home plate.
The starting pitchers took care of business from there.
Coming off a strong return from the IL in which he threw five scoreless innings last time out, Gray was excellent again on Wednesday. Gray threw six innings on 78 pitches, allowed one run with two hits and one walk, and most encouragingly struck out a season-high six batters.
Gray recorded back-to-back 200-strikeout seasons the past two years with the St. Louis Cardinals, but entering Wednesday he had only tallied 15 strikeouts in 28 innings. His 12.6% strikeout rate was nearly half his career average and 14 points down from a year ago.
Phillies starter Andrew Painter, long regarded as one of MLB’s top prospects but who came into the night with a 6.89 ERA on the season, enjoyed his best outing of the season. He allowed one run over five innings with four hits, no walks, a hit batsman and four strikeouts.
The 23-year-old finished his outing by retiring the last seven batters he faced, including three straight strikeouts in the fifth to wrap up his night.
Once Painter was out of the game the Red Sox offense began waking up against Philadelphia’s bullpen.
Wilyer Abreu started things off in the sixth by recording his third single of the game — though not until after he swung through a pitch that wound up hitting him in the arm for a particularly painful strike. Two batters later Rafaela pinch hit for Masataka Yoshida to face Phillies righty Orion Kerkering, and Rafaela took him deep to the Monster for a go-ahead two-run homer.
That proved to be all the offense the Red Sox needed. Justin Slaten came on for Gray and tossed a scoreless seventh, Garrett Whitlock had a perfect eighth and Aroldis Chapman survived a stressful ninth for his ninth save of the season. Chapman allowed two walks and had runners reach second and third with two outs, but he struck out Alec Bohm to end the game.
The Red Sox defense also delivered its seventh straight game without an error, and Story and Willson Contreras in particular made several outstanding plays. The Phillies finished with three hits as a team on the night, and other than Crawford’s homer the club never had a runner advance past second.
One scary moment did take place in the eighth when Connor Wong fell down and appeared to hurt himself on a pop-up behind the plate. Whitlock was able to recover and make a sliding catch to end the inning, but Wong did not return and was subbed out for Carlos Narvaez to catch the ninth.
With the win the Red Sox improved to 18-24 and have a chance to take two out of three from the Phillies on Thursday. Ranger Suarez (2-2, 2.77) will get the ball against his former team, while the Phillies will answer with Jesus Luzardo (3-3, 5.98).
First pitch is scheduled for 6:45 p.m., though with inclement weather in the forecast fans will want to keep an eye out for possible delays.
