The Red Sox beat the Rangers 4-2, evening the series and putting the Sox back above .500. The Red Sox got another incredible start from young star, Bryan Bello. Justin Turner and Adam Duvall provided the Sox with a two-run lead in the first, and they never looked back. After tonight’s Sox victory, and a loss from the Angels, the Red Sox have leapfrogged them in the wild-card standings but are still four games back of the Yankees for the final playoff spot.
Bryan Bello continues to amaze. Tonight, against baseball’s number one run-scoring offense, he went seven innings, only allowing two runs on eight hits. What makes this start so special for Bello is that he was able to make adjustments throughout. During the first couple of innings in today’s game, Bello was clearly struggling. The Rangers worked his pitch count to 43 and managed four hits. However, Bryan was able to escape jams in both those innings, leaving four Ranger base runners stranded. After those initial high-stress innings, Bello made the necessary adjustments and cruised through his final five innings of work. The importance of winning on the days Bryan Bello starts is huge. Aside from Bello and Paxton, the Red Sox rotation is completely up in the air. The only certainty we get is that Bello and Paxton are both going to give you a great start, so the Sox need to take advantage of those games, like they did tonight.
The Red Sox offensive player of the game tonight, was Justin Turner. It feels like every single night Turner gets a couple hits and a couple RBI’s, which is exactly what he did tonight. Tuner got the scoring started in the first inning driving in Jarren Duran with a base hit up the middle. Later, in the fifth inning, Turner singled home Yoshida to extend the Sox lead to 3-0. Turner is now hitting .282 with a .815 OPS. After hitting .288 with 22 RBIs in June, in four games in July, he is hitting .471 with a 1.206 OPS. As I mentioned many times before, Turner gives you a professional at-bat time and time again. Justin ranks fifth in the MLB in pitches seen per plate appearance at 4.33. Turner is clearly rubbing off onto the whole team, because the Red Sox as a team rank sixth in the MLB in pitches per plate appearance.
The Red Sox went to their closer to finish it out tonight. They handed Kenley a two-run lead, which was more than enough for him. He ended up sending the Rangers down in order to end the ballgame. While there are debates to be had as to whether the Red Sox should have had more than one All-Star, nobody debates that Kenley deserved the nod. The Sox closer has 18 saves on the season and a 3.34 ERA. For the past few seasons, the Red Sox haven’t had a real closer. Aside from the first half of 2021 when Matt Barnes was incredible, the Sox have had to use a number of players in this role. As the Red Sox know, a must-have on a championship-level roster is a shutdown closer. In 2018, the Red Sox had Craig Kimbrel, who had 42 saves that year. In 2013, when the Red Sox won the World Series, they had Koji Uehara, who that year finished seventh in Cy Young voting as a closer! Looking at the lists of teams that have won the World Series, they all have one thing in common: They have shutdown closers. For the Red Sox this season, Kenley Jansen has been just that.
The Red Sox will host the Rangers for the series finale tomorrow at 7:10 PM. The Sox will start Kutter Crawford, who gave up only two runs on three hits against the Blue Jays in his last outing. The Rangers will go with our old friend Nathan Eovaldi. Eovaldi pitched for the Red Sox from 2018 to 2022. This year so far, Eovaldi is one of the front runners for the NL Cy Young, as he has a 2.64 ERA and has already thrown two complete games. The Red Sox will try to hand their old friend his fourth loss of the season and take a series win against the first-place Rangers.
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