Payton Tolle came within one hit of a perfect game and still left with something close to a statement. The Red Sox rookie retired 16 straight batters before Spencer Jones spoiled the bid with a bloop single to left in the sixth inning, but Tolle finished seven scoreless innings in a 6-1 win over the New York Yankees on Friday night.
That is the kind of start people notice because it happened against the Yankees, and because it came from a pitcher who woke up Friday with body aches and a fever. Tolle said he knew he was not feeling right but decided to pitch anyway, then went out and threw 88 pitches, 61 for strikes, with 11 swings-and-misses. He allowed one hit, walked two and struck out seven.
The outing also fit a pattern that has been rare in Boston. The Red Sox got their ninth straight quality start, a run they had not matched since 2013. That matters because it has given the club steady innings while the offense did enough early to make the game manageable. Wilyer Abreu tripled in the first inning and scored on a Willson Contreras single, and Tsung-Che Cheng later drove in a run with a groundout in the second.
For Tolle, the performance was almost a sequel to what he did against the Yankees in April, when he struck out 11. This time, he was perfect through 16 batters and through five innings on 51 pitches before the night began to tilt. The loss of perfection came on a soft single rather than a loud swing, and after that he worked through a longer final stretch, adding the two walks as his command and velocity started to waver. Chad Tracy said Tolle was “awesome,” adding that he pounded the strike zone, stayed ahead in counts, used his secondaries well, landed curveballs and worked the cutter effectively.
Tolle said he paused on his walk back to the dugout and took it in, knowing it might be his last batter. That is the part that lingers now: even on a night when he did not feel well enough to trust his body fully, he still gave the Red Sox seven scoreless innings and the kind of start that can steady a rotation. The larger question is whether Boston can keep building on that run, because the wins are coming in a season that has offered too little momentum for too long.
