Bennett Dominates, Boston Blanks New York 6-0
Jake Bennett threw six innings of three-hit, zero-run ball with seven strikeouts, and Boston's offense piled on late to hand New York a shutout loss. The Red Sox won 6-0, and it wasn't particularly close at any point.
The story of the night was Bennett. Six innings, three hits, zero walks, seven strikeouts — that's a performance that suffocates an offense, and that's exactly what it did. Garrett Whitlock and Jovani Moran each added a clean inning of relief behind him, combining for two more strikeouts and zero hits allowed. Boston's pitching staff threw a collective shutout, and New York's lineup had no answer from the first pitch to the last.
Boston struck first in the opening inning when Wilyer Abreu homered to right center, 387 feet, to put the Red Sox up 1-0. That swing shifted the home win probability from 65% to 55% — a 10-point swing that set the tone immediately. The lead grew in the fifth when Adley Rutschman scored on a passed ball by Sánchez, pushing it to 2-0. Rutschman went 3-for-4 on the night with two runs scored, and he looks like the kind of consistent presence at the top of the order that makes a lineup genuinely difficult to navigate. Carlos Rodón lasted just 4.2 innings for New York, allowing 2 earned runs on 3 hits with a walk and 5 strikeouts — not the outing his team needed against a Boston club that was already in control.
The ninth inning turned a competitive-looking score into a statement. Andruw Monasterio singled to right, scoring both Caleb Durbin and Rutschman to make it 4-0. Nick Sogard followed with a double to left, scoring Monasterio for 5-0. Then Ceddanne Rafaela singled to left, scoring Sogard to cap the night at 6-0. Four runs in the final frame, all with two outs or on clean contact — that's the kind of late-inning execution that appears to reflect a team playing with real confidence. Sogard finished 2-for-4 with an RBI and a run. Monasterio drove in two. Boston's lineup distributed the damage across the card, which makes it harder to game-plan against. New York, meanwhile, got nothing going offensively and got hurt by their own catcher's passed balls in the fifth. That's not a recipe for winning a ballgame.