The Cleveland Guardians may have won the battle, a replay review that robbed Connor Wong of his first home run since 2024, but the Boston Red Sox won the war, Saturday’s game.

Wong’s 629-day, 91-game homer-less drought came to an end in the top of the sixth inning when he sent an 0-1 sweeper from Guardians right-hander Matt Festa soaring 380 feet deep to left field at 108.3 mph. The Red Sox catcher jogged around the diamond and returned to the visitors’ dugout, where he donned the Wally head and celebrated with teammates.

Scratch that.

Few things are going right for the 2026 Red Sox, but Wong’s almost-goner ranks among the most irksome grievances. He watched from the dugout as the Guardians successfully challenged the home-run call, the subsequent replay review so lengthy it beggared belief. MLB’s decision to overturn Wong’s blast directly contradicted its own Statcast tool, which stated he’d hit a home run in every major league ballpark but Texas’ Globe Life Field.

“I thought that was a homer, first of all,” starter Sonny Gray told reporters postgame. “I don’t know how it wasn’t.”

Wong’s homer was rechristened a go-ahead RBI double, and he was forced to return to second base. But he’d put the Red Sox in the lead for good, and they got the last laugh a few innings later, exploding for six runs in the ninth, including his two-run single, to win 9-1 and even the series.

“(I thought) it was a homer,” Wong echoed. “Wish I could challenge it myself, but it is what it is. We got the win. We’re good.”

Saturday marked just the sixth win for the Red Sox in 30 games in which their opponent scored first. Cleveland snatched an immediate 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first on back-to-back doubles by rookie leadoff hitter Travis Bazzana and star third baseman José Ramírez, but then Gray settled in and gave his team six innings of one-run ball on 92 pitches (58 for strikes).

“They jumped me early,” Gray said. “I feel like the first, maybe three innings we kind of got away with it. … I definitely felt like I got stronger (in later innings).”

The veteran Red Sox starter issued three walks but only yielded two additional hits after the pair of first-inning doubles. Gray struck out seven, including all three batters faced in his sixth and final frame, and retired the last seven in a row. The Red Sox are 7-3 when he starts, and his five quality starts are tied for the most on the staff.

Gray held down the fort while the Red Sox lineup continued a season-long trend of wasting opportunities. They had Guardians starter Parker Messick on the ropes several times in his five innings, but largely let him off the hook; he yielded one earned run on five hits, walked two and struck out four, on 93 pitches (59 strikes).

The Boston bats were 6 for 20 with runners in scoring position and left 11 men on base, including multiple runners in four of the first seven frames. But when all was said and done they out-hit their hosts 11-6, including multihit contributions from leadoff man Jarren Duran and the bottom third of the order, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Wong and Caleb Durbin.

Ceddanne Rafaela’s strong season at the plate continued with a patient and daring performance. The 2025 Gold Glove center fielder was the first man to reach base in the contest, with a one-out 11-pitch walk in the first inning. It marked his longest-ever plate appearance to result in a walk (previous: nine pitches, June 30, 2025 vs. Cincinnati), and served as the latest reminder of Rafaela’s improved discipline; he’s walked 13 times in 55 games this season, after just 28 walks in 156 games last year, and he’s chasing pitches at a 35.8% clip, compared to 42.2% in 2025.

Rafaela also tallied his 11th double of the season in the third, and stole his fifth and sixth bases of the year after reaching on a fielding error by shortstop Brayan Rocchio to lead off the seventh. Marcelo Mayer joined Rafaela on the corners because Guardians righty Codi Heuer’s 2-2 slider collided with his right ankle, but the two free baserunners were returned to sender when pinch-hitter Masataka Yoshida flew out to left.

Durbin was responsible for two-thirds of Boston’s runs through the end of the eighth. The Red Sox third baseman completed his third multiRBI game of the season, and first since April 25. Durbin tied the game with a first-pitch sacrifice fly to left in the fourth inning, and his 11th double of the year pushed the lead to 3-1 in the top of the eighth.

Aroldis Chapman warmed in the visitors’ bullpen, then sat down again as his teammates turned the game into a non-save situation. Left-hander Will Dion loaded the bases to begin the top of the ninth, with a walk for Wilyer Abreu, hit-by-pitch to Willson Contreras, and Mayer’s fielder’s choice and a missed-catch error by Ramírez. Yoshida walked to force in Boston’s fourth run of the afternoon before Dion set down Kiner-Falefa for the first out of the frame.

Wong got his replay-review revenge with a two-run single and advanced to second on a throwing error by left fielder Stuart Fairchild, Cleveland’s fourth error of the contest.

Duran’s ninth homer of the year and eighth of May, the most he’s hit in any calendar month of his career, was by then a wholly unnecessary coup de grâce.

Veteran lefty Danny Coulombe became the third and final Red Sox reliever of the evening, following righties Tyron Guerrero and Justin Slaten. Coulombe blazed through a 1-2-3 bottom of the ninth on eight pitches to officially tie the series 1-1.

____

©2026 The Boston Herald. Visit at bostonherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.