BOSTON — It looked like a wild Fenway Friday in the making when the Texas Rangers took a 1-0 lead against Sonny Gray in the top of the first, and the Boston Red Sox answered for two runs off fellow...
BOSTON — It looked like a wild Fenway Friday in the making when the Texas Rangers took a 1-0 lead against Sonny Gray in the top of the first, and the Boston Red Sox answered for two runs off fellow right-hander Jack Leiter in the bottom of the inning. But from there both starters settled in for a not-so-brief duel. The Red Sox clung to a one-run lead for several innings before finding a spark of relentlessness and fanning it into a blazing series-opening 10-1 win. The Boston bats tallied 12 hits, including six doubles and three home runs. Andruw Monasterio was the only Red Sox player to homer and collect multiple doubles in a game this season (April 25 at Baltimore) until Ceddanne Rafaela and Wilyer Abreu each contributed a pair of doubles, a homer and three RBIs on Friday night. Mickey Gasper, batting leadoff and serving as designated hitter, began the bottom of the first with a four-pitch walk. He was out at second on Rafaela’s subsequent force-out, but Rafaela stole second and advanced to third on a throwing error by catcher Kyle Higashioka, and so was in scoring position for Abreu’s game-tying sacrifice fly. Willson Contreras’ team-leading 14th home run of the year soared to the front row of the Green Monster seats to give Boston an enduring lead. Leiter then worked around Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s leadoff single in the second, Ceddanne Rafaela’s ground-rule double to lead off the third, and Marcelo Mayer’s two-out walk in the fourth. The Red Sox got to Leiter in a four-run bottom of the fifth and never looked back. Mickey Gasper, Rafaela and Abreu began the inning with three consecutive doubles; the latter two on the first pitch. Contreras followed with a single and advanced to second on third baseman Josh Jung’s throwing error while Abreu scored. Jarren Duran’s groundout advanced Contreras to third, and Caleb Durbin’s sac fly plated the fourth and final run of the frame. Leiter finished the fifth, but the fifth finished him. The Red Sox charged him with six runs, five earned, on eight hits. Leiter walked two, struck out three and threw 103 pitches (63 for strikes). From back-to-back swinging strikeouts of shortstop Ezequiel Duran and center fielder Evan Carter to strand two in the first inning, Gray retired 14 Rangers in a row before designated hitter Joc Pederson led off the sixth with a single. Said single and Wyatt Langford’s two-out double were blips on the Gray-dar, though; the Sox starter completed six innings of one-run ball on 88 pitches (60 for strikes), with five hits, seven strikeouts and no walks. While pitching for the Colorado Rockies in July 2024, Cal Quantrill ignited a benches- and bullpens-clearing altercation with the visiting Red Sox when then-catcher Reese McGuire flew out with the bases loaded and took exception to Quantrill’s reaction. Red Sox Nation has a long memory, and the crowd of 33,919 heartily booed Quantrill when he hit catcher Connor Wong with a pitch with one out in the sixth, and again in the seventh, when he plunked Contreras after Abreu’s 421-foot homer to dead-center. Facing Luis Curvelo in the bottom of the eighth, Wong drew a one-out walk and scored on Rafaela’s Monster bomb. Abreu and Contreras followed with back-to-back doubles; the latter made Friday the team’s first double-digit scoring game at Fenway since Sept. 2, 2025. A scoreless inning apiece from Tyron Guerrero, Danny Coulombe and Tommy Kahnle completed the home team’s best all-around Fenway win of the year. ©2026 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at bostonherald.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. The News-Gazette mobile app brings you the latest local breaking news, updates, and more. Read the News-Gazette on your mobile device just as it appears in print.
