The Red Sox broke out of their recent skid with a blunt answer Monday night, beating the Arizona Diamondbacks 11-1 behind Ceddanne Rafaela’s three doubles and a lineup that kept stacking runs. It was the kind of one-sided game that can steady a week’s worth of noise, and it came with Brayan Bello delivering four and two-thirds relief innings to keep Arizona from ever getting back in it.
That is why Dbacks vs Red Sox was the search everyone was making after the final out. Boston scored in six consecutive innings and went 6 for 13 with runners in scoring position, turning a game that started as a tight early lead into a blowout by the end. Caleb Durbin walked to open the second, scored on Eli White’s RBI single and watched Nick Sogard follow with an RBI double for a 2-0 edge. Durbin added another RBI single in the third, and Rafaela kept the pressure on with an RBI double in the fourth.
The fifth inning pushed the game out of reach. Willson Contreras drove a solo homer for his 25th of the season, a new career high, and the Red Sox added three more runs to make it 7-0. The inning also turned on mistakes in the field, with Corbin Carroll dropping a line drive from Adley Rutschman on the warning track and Ryan Waldschmidt misplaying a ball hit by Durbin. Andruw Monasterio added a sacrifice fly and Mickey Gasper chipped in an RBI groundout as Boston kept finding another way to score.
That matters because the Red Sox had spent the previous week being criticized for slipping back into the ugly first-half habits they had worked so hard to leave behind. Chad Tracy said the offense had been grinding over the last week or so, and Monday’s response was the cleanest possible rebuttal. “It was great to see,” he said, adding that there were contributions everywhere up and down the lineup. Rafaela was 5 for his last 21 before the game and had drawn only one walk since the All-Star break, so three doubles felt like more than a hot night; it looked like a hitter snapping out of a spell.
Bello’s outing carried its own significance. Since being called back up to the majors after his June demotion, he has allowed three earned runs over 27 1/3 innings in seven relief appearances, and he said he expected a stretch like this to come. He gave up three hits, one run and one walk while striking out three, and after the game his season ERA sat at 4.69. He did run into trouble in the sixth after loading the bases with one out, but he retired 10 straight Arizona hitters before that and escaped with the game still under control. For a club looking for something that lasts, the bigger question is whether this was the night the offense turned the corner or just the night it finally looked like itself again.
