{"id":698425,"date":"2026-05-14T04:06:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T04:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/698425\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T04:06:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T04:06:23","slug":"red-sox-homer-twice-get-gem-from-sonny-gray-to-beat-phillies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/698425\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Sox homer twice, get gem from Sonny Gray to beat Phillies"},"content":{"rendered":"

On days where the Red Sox offense isn\u2019t scoring runs in bunches, Wednesday offered a blueprint for how the club can win games anyway.<\/p>\n

Timely home runs? Check. A dominant starting pitching performance? Check. Clean games by both the defense and bullpen? Check and check.<\/p>\n

All of the ingredients were there for the Red Sox in Wednesday\u2019s 3-1 win over the Phillies, which evened the series at one game apiece. Trevor Story and Ceddanne Rafaela each went deep, with Rafaela\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cTonight we get the long ball,\u201d said Red Sox interim manager Chad Tracy. \u201cIt\u2019s still three (runs), we want to get more obviously but two big swings in big spots and Rafaela obviously huge right there.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s third home run of the season and his first since April 15, ending a streak of 21 games without a homer.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Crawford\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"BostonBoston Red Sox center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela, right, celebrates his home run with Wilyer Abreu during the sixth inning at Fenway Park. (Photo By Matt Stone\/Boston Herald)<\/p>\n

The starting pitchers took care of business from there.<\/p>\n

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 promisingly struck out a season-high six batters.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was awesome,\u201d Tracy said. \u201cStrikes, pounded the zone, looked a lot like the last one and got an inning further with only about eight or nine more pitches than last time, so he was really, really good.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Gray said the strikeout issue has been vexing, but he was encouraged by Wednesday\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I left three out there, but to have one an inning at least at the minimum feels more normal,\u201d Gray said. \u201cIt\u2019s something honestly I\u2019ve been digging into a little bit because I strike people out, and I haven\u2019t been, so I\u2019ve been trying to find the why of that, and I think I\u2019m getting closer to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Phillies starter Andrew Painter, long regarded as one of MLB\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"BostonBoston Red Sox shortstop Trevor Story throws to first base in the third inning. (Photo By Matt Stone\/Boston Herald)<\/p>\n

Once Painter was out of the game, the Red Sox offense began waking up against Philadelphia\u2019s bullpen.<\/p>\n

Wilyer Abreu started things off in the sixth by recording his third single of the game \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a clutch gene in there with him,\u201d Tracy said. \u201cHe tends to get big hits in big moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI really want to be in those situations,\u201d Rafaela said. \u201cSometimes I don\u2019t do the job, sometimes I do, like I had a chance yesterday but I didn\u2019t do it, and I wanted to be in this situation today and it came true.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 on the night, and other than Crawford\u2019s homer the club didn\u2019t have a runner advance past second until the bottom of the ninth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve talked a lot about how good I feel we\u2019ve been defensively,\u201d Tracy said. \u201cTrev with two plus plays going to his backhand side and Willson obviously, those are big outs in big spots.\u201d<\/p>\n

One scary moment did take place in the eighth when Connor Wong stepped on Edmundo Sosa\u2019s foot and rolled his ankle on a pop-up behind the plate, causing the catcher to fall to the dirt in a heap. 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey did some quick images, everything\u2019s negative, he was able to kind of jump on it,\u201d Tracy said. \u201cJust felt a little discomfort pushing off of it and going into the last inning if we have to make a throw or something if he can\u2019t do that let\u2019s go ahead and make that move. So I think we\u2019re going to be OK but we\u2019ll know more tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c(I feel) good, it\u2019s a little sore, I\u2019ve done this one before much worse,\u201d Wong said. \u201cSo everything we did seemed like it\u2019s going to be fine so we\u2019ll see how it is in the morning and go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whitlock, who made a similar sliding catch on a pop-up in foul territory a few years ago, described the whole thing as playing out in slow motion.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mind was like \u2018alright we got out of it,\u2019 and then I was like \u2018holy crap Connor\u2019s in the dirt, I hope he\u2019s OK,\u2019 then it\u2019s like \u2018wait a minute the ball\u2019s still in the air, I need to go,\u2019 \u201d Whitlock said, adding that his teammates were joking that he could have made the catch standing up.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On days where the Red Sox offense isn\u2019t scoring runs in bunches, Wednesday offered a blueprint for how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2397],"tags":[5161,5,48,14364,1396,5159,4,144,25,4216,40,89,1587,1035],"class_list":["post-698425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia-phillies","tag-andrew-painter","tag-baseball","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-carl-crawford","tag-ceddanne-rafaela","tag-justin-crawford","tag-mlb","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-philadelphiaphillies","tag-phillies","tag-red-sox","tag-sonny-gray","tag-trevor-story"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116570959698998150","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}