Bennett Dominates, Boston Buries Angels Early on July 4th

Jake Bennett threw 7.2 innings of two-run ball with six strikeouts and zero walks, and Boston had this one locked up before the Angels ever found their footing. The Red Sox scored five runs in the first five innings and never looked back, beating Los Angeles 5-2.

Boston wasted no time making Reid Detmers uncomfortable. Jarren Duran opened the scoring in the second with a sacrifice fly to left, plating González for a 1-0 lead. Then the third inning arrived and the game was effectively over. González singled to right, scoring Abreu and Contreras to push it to 3-0 — the swing that buried the Angels, as LAA's win probability dropped from 38% to 22% on that single swing of the bat. Duran followed with a sacrifice bunt to the pitcher, and when first baseman Schanuel booted the play, Durbin scored and the lead ballooned to 4-0. Detmers never recovered, finishing with 5.0 innings pitched, 7 hits, 5 earned runs, and 3 walks against 5 strikeouts.

If the third inning was the knockout, Caleb Durbin delivered the exclamation point. Leading off the fifth, he drove a 358-foot home run to left to make it 5-0, capping a night in which he scored twice, drove in one, and went 1-for-3. Romy González was the quieter engine behind the whole thing — 3-for-4 with 2 RBI and a run scored, the kind of line that looks modest until you trace how many times his name appeared in the scoring sequence. Willson Contreras added a 2-for-4 night, and Duran, despite going 0-for-2 at the plate, drove in two runs with a pair of productive outs. The story of the night, offensively, appears to be Boston's ability to manufacture runs through contact and situational hitting rather than raw power — though Durbin's homer didn't hurt.

Bennett was the anchor. Seven and two-thirds innings, five hits, two earned runs, zero walks, six strikeouts — that's a performance that looks like a genuine ace outing regardless of the opponent. The Angels did flash some life in the eighth: José Siri launched a 408-foot shot to right center, and Zach Neto singled home another run to make it 5-2, but the deficit was never in real danger of closing. Mitch Farris and José Fermín kept Boston off the board in relief, but the damage was long done. For Los Angeles, this one stings less for the loss itself and more for what it revealed — Detmers couldn't hold a lineup down, and the offense had nothing to offer until the game was already a footnote.