Rafael Devers hit two homeruns, and the Boston Red Sox hit a half dozen of them Friday night in rolling to an 8-3 victory over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field to start the second half of the season like they ended the first.
Devers opened the scoring in a game Boston never trailed hitting a leadoff homerun to right centerfield in the top of the second inning off Chicago starter Kyle Hendricks. With one out, Adam Duvall made it 2-0 when he wrapped a 1-2 pitch around the leftfield foul pole for a solo shot. They doubled the advantage in the third when Justin Turner hit a sacrifice fly, and Devers followed by demolishing another solo homer to right that traveled an estimated 408 feet. Mike Tauchman got the home team on the board off Brayan Bello in the last of the third inning with an RBI double, before Triston Casas for the Red Sox and Cody Bellinger for the Cubs exchanged solo homeruns in the fourth. Bellinger hit his second solo longball in the sixth to slice it to 5-3, but the Sox put it away when Turner hit a two-run homerun in the seventh and Yu Chang led off the ninth with a 418 foot bomb to left to finish the scoring. Boston (49-43) now has a six game win streak and has gone 9-1 in their last 10 games.
Bello (7-5) got the win on the hill allowing three runs on eight hits with no walks and five strikeouts in 6.0 innings. Kenley Jansen earned his 20th save with a three pitch strikeout as he was called on in the ninth inning with the bases loaded and two outs. Devers had three hits and two RBI, while Jarren Duran, Masataka Yoshida, and Casas had two hits each. Turner knocked in three runs. Hendricks (3-4) took the loss for Chicago giving up five runs on eight hits with no walks and five strikeouts in 4.2 innings. Christopher Morel had three hits, while Bellinger and Tucker Barnhart had two a piece. Bellinger drove in two of their three runs with his two solo homeruns, as the Cubs record falls to 42-48. Game two of the weekend interleague series is Saturday at 2:20 p.m., with James Paxton (5-1, 2.73 ERA) taking the ball for Boston against Marcus Stroman (9-6, 2.96) for Chicago.
Story by Chris Lessner
