Payton Tolle will start Monday night for the Red Sox when they open a four-game series against the Athletics in west Sacramento. Boston arrives with momentum that has turned a routine road stop into a test of how far the run can stretch.
The Red Sox finished their 10-game homestand with a 6-1 win over the Blue Jays, then kept going by going 8-2 coming out of the All-Star break. They are now on a seven-game road trip that also includes the Dodgers, and they have won 17 of their last 19 games. That kind of surge has changed the way every game is being framed, because Boston is no longer just surviving a trip away from home; it is carrying the kind of record that makes one starter after another part of the conversation.
Tolle is getting the ball after throwing 5⅔ innings and allowing four runs and eight hits in a 6-5 win over the Orioles on July 20. This is also a matchup he has seen before. He is 0-0 with a 3.60 ERA in two appearances against the Athletics, including one start, and several of their hitters have already taken a few swings against him. Lawrence Butler is 1-2 against him, Nick Kurtz is 1-3, Tyler Soderstrom is 0-2, Colby Thomas is 0-1 and Jacob Wilson is 0-2.
Jack Perkins starts for the Athletics, making his eighth start of the season. He has not faced any Boston batters, but he is coming in with more recent trouble than comfort. Last Tuesday, he took a no-decision against the Diamondbacks after giving up three runs and five hits over five innings, and in his previous two outings he allowed a combined 10 runs and nine hits, including four homers, in 6⅔ innings in a pair of losses.
That gap in form is the real edge entering the series opener. Boston has won six consecutive series for the first time since June 2022 and sits behind a 25-7 run since June 19, while the Athletics were 38-38 on that date and have since dropped 23 of 29 games to fall 17 games below.500. Andruw Monasterio, hitting.478 during an eight-game hitting streak, is a reminder that someone on the other side can still change the mood of a night, but the larger picture favors the Red Sox, who have spent the last few weeks turning every stop into an extension of their season rather than a pause in it.
Monday night starts the first of four chances for the Athletics to slow that charge before Boston moves deeper into the road trip. If the Red Sox keep doing what they have been doing, the next question is not whether the trip matters, but how much damage they can do before they leave California.
