TAMPA — They had dropped four of their last six, all at home, and watched any hope of the division title slip away. In addition, as the losses piled up, they seemed to have forfeited their best chance to host a wild card series.
Along the way, their most noteworthy win came against a team with a losing record, in extra innings, with the winning run scoring without benefit of a hit.
So that sound you might have heard Friday night was the Red Sox exhaling. Their 11-7 win over the Tampa Bay Rays came with a large sigh of relief.
“It felt great,” confirmed Alex Bregman, who belted a solo homer in the early going. “Obviously, to be able to put up 11 runs and the quality of at-bats up and down the lineup….I thought the at-bat quality was great. Guys had a plan, were convicted and got after it.”
Seven different players in the lineup knocked in at least one run and every member of the starting lineup but one scored at least one run.
“The guys were fighting their tail off, believing in each other every single pitch out there,” said Bregman. “This is the kind of offensive game we’re capable of every single night.”
It hasn’t looked like that lately. Too often, the Red Sox have stranded baserunners by the bushel-full and frequently battled to score more than a couple of runs against some mediocre pitching.
The Sox had dropped five of their previous seven as they dipped further in the wild card standings, and the frustration had begun to percolate.
And when the Sox began trading runs in the early innings and fell behind 3-2, there was the uneasy sense that this was going to be another one of those nights.
But a two-run homer by Jarren Duran in the seventh swung the score from 3-2 Tampa to a 4-3 Red Sox lead, the atmosphere shifted in an almost perceptible way.
“Yeah, man, that’s a big swing,” said starter Garrett Crochet. “It was very uplifting, and then we capitalized on that momentum.”
Indeed they did. In the eighth, clinging to a one-run lead, the Red Sox erupted for seven runs, many of those scored with no small help from the Rays, who committed all manner of errors and walks to the cause.
From there, the contributions seemed to grow. Ceddanne Rafaela capped a big night with his fourth hit. Nate Eaton had two hits and an RBI. And on and on it went.
The win gave the Red Sox a chance to breathe. Even with yet another win by the Cleveland Guardians, the Red Sox maintained their game and a half lead in the wild card race and saw another day come off the calendar.
“(A win like this) could be great,” said Bregman. “Obviously, the last few games haven’t been going our way. We hadn’t really done much. For us, getting back to playing our best brand of baseball on a consistent basis is super important.
“That’s why I feel like the last few days can be good for us. We can learn a lot from it and I feel like this team is ready to roll.”
“It felt like tonight everything was falling for us, which is nice to see every once in a while,” said Duran. “The baseball gods looked down on us and we were able to get some hits and just have some fun. Everyone was swinging really good tonight, so that was good to see.”
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