Payton Tolle strikes out 14 as Red Sox rout A's for ninth consecutive win

BOSTON — The Red Sox and Athletics are two teams that have walked polar opposite paths over the past month and a half.

Everyone knows what the Red Sox have pulled off. Coming into Friday the Red Sox were 31-5 since June 25, by far the best record in MLB over that stretch. Yet the Athletics have been nearly as bad as the Red Sox have been good, going 7-28 over that same stretch while firing their general manager earlier Friday.

With that context, nothing that transpired Friday night was any surprise.

The red hot Red Sox whipped the Athletics, 13-1, for their ninth straight win, ripping off five runs in the second inning and cruising to an easy victory from there. While the offense laid it on rookie left-hander Payton Tolle was in complete control, striking out a career-high 14 while retiring the first 12 batters he faced.

The second inning started off innocently enough. Masataka Yoshida led off with a groundout and Andruw Monasterio walked to bring up Jarren Duran. But then the outfielder started a string of three consecutive extra-base hits for the Red Sox off A’s starter Jack Perkins by crushing an opposite-field blast to the Green Monster for his 16th home run of the season.

The Red Sox were off to the races from there.

Anthony Seigler and Jake Rogers followed with back-to-back doubles, the latter of which extended the lead to 3-0. Nick Sogard walked to make it five straight Red Sox reaching safely, and when Ceddanne Rafaela flew out for the second out, it brought up the scorching Wilyer Abreu with runners at the corners.

Abreu launched one to deep right field that looked ticketed for the bleachers, and while he missed his fifth home run in the last five games by a couple of inches when his ball bounced off the top of the short wall, he still brought both runners home for a two-run double.

By the time it was over the Red Sox had batted around and led 5-0. Shortly afterwards they racked up another four runs in the fourth on a botched pickoff attempt, an Abreu single, a Yoshida double and a Monasterio single. They added two more runs in the sixth on a pair of sacrifice flies by Durbin and Yoshida, and wrapped up the scoring with two runs in the seventh on a Rafaela single and Durbin double.

The Red Sox have now scored 12 or more runs in back-to-back games for the first time since 2016, when they did it in three straight games from May 9-11. But the way Tolle was pitching, the A’s never stood a chance no matter how many runs the Red Sox scored.

Tolle was marvelous, striking out five of the first six batters he faced and racking up nine by the end of the fourth inning. The velocity on all of his pitches was up 1-2 mph from normal, and his fastball averaged 97.6 mph while hitting 99 on multiple occasions.

The Athletics didn’t get their first baserunner until the top of the fifth, when Tyler Soderstrom won a successful ABS challenge to stave off a strikeout and hit a sky high pop fly that just carried and carried in the steamy Boston sky and wound up dropping straight into the Red Sox bullpen for a solo home run.

That broke up the perfect game bid, the no-hitter and the possibility of a complete-game shutout, but it didn’t matter much beyond that. Tolle came back and struck out the next two batters, matching his career high of 11 strikeouts in a game through just the fifth inning.

He blew past that the following frame, punching out three more to wrap up his outing with 14 strikeouts over six innings while allowing one run on two hits and no walks on 84 pitches.

With the game well in hand and the Red Sox bullpen in need of a break after Thursday’s 13-inning marathon, Red Sox interim manager Chad Tracy gave the ball to freshly called up Triple-A arm Raymond Burgos to go the distance. He threw three perfect innings to record his first career save.

Tolle’s 14 strikeouts is the most in a game by a Red Sox pitcher since Chris Sale had 17 on May 14, 2019, and according to the Red Sox he also had the most strikeouts by a Red Sox pitcher aged 23 or younger since Roger Clemens’ 20-strikeout game on April 29, 1986.

Per Baseball Reference, Tolle also became the only Red Sox pitcher to ever rack up 14 or more strikeouts in fewer than seven innings.

With Friday’s win the Red Sox are now one victory away from becoming the 12th team in the divisional era (since 1969) to record multiple win streaks of 10 games or more in the same season, according to MLB.com. The last club to accomplish the feat was the Chicago Cubs back in April and May, and the only team to have one of those streaks go for 15 or more games as well was the 1977 Kansas City Royals, who won 10 straight between Aug. 16-27 and then 16 straight between Aug. 31 and Sept. 15.

Another win this weekend would also extend Boston’s streak of consecutive series victories to 10, one shy of the franchise record of 11 consecutive series wins set by the 1912 club.

Jake Bennett (7-4, 2.90) will look to help make that happen by out-pitching A’s left-hander Gage Jump (4-7, 4.59). First pitch is scheduled for 4:10 p.m.