The Houston Astros took an early 7-0 lead on Wednesday evening, and held off the Boston Red Sox 7-4 at Fenway Park to complete a three game sweep. Houston, who moved to the American League in 2013, swept Boston at Fenway Park for the first time ever.
Jon Singleton got the scoring started for Houston with an RBI groundout in the second inning. Former UMaine product Jeremy Péna kept it going with a ground-rule RBI double, and Martin Maldonado made it 3-0 with an RBI single. The Astros (77-58) doubled that advantage in the third on an RBI groundout by Chas McCormick, and a two-run single by Michael Brantley in taking control of the game. Down 7-0 in the sixth inning, Boston made some noise. Connor Wong reached on an error to score Luis Urias, Cedanne Rafaela doubled in Triston Casas, and Justin Turner along with Rafael Devers both had RBI groundouts to slice it to a three run deficit. Adam Duvall tried to keep the rally going with his two-out double off the monster in leftfield, but Rob Refsnyder grounded out to strand him at second base. The Sox also had two men on base with two outs in the seventh, but Hector Neris came on to pitch and struckout Rafaela to kill that rally. Chris Martin and Kenley Jansen both worked a perfect 1.0 inning out of the bullpen to keep the hosts within striking distance, but the bats couldn’t do enough dropping five out of six games on the homestand against the two legitimate World Series contenders in the Dodgers and Astros. There were no homeruns in the contest, ending a streak of 18 straight games where Boston had hit at least one over the wall.
Kutter Crawford (6-7) suffered the loss on the mound only going 2.2 innings giving up six runs on seven hits with one walk and one strikeout. Six relievers combined to only allowed one run on five hits the rest of the way. Casas had three of the seven hits on the day, as Boston falls to 69-65 on the season. Brantley, Péna, Maldonado, and Alex Bregman had two hits a piece for Houston. Framber Valdez (10-9) picked up the win on the hill allowing four runs (two earned) on five hits with no walks and five strikeouts in 6.0 innings. Ryan Pressly got his 29th save. The Red Sox are now 7.0 games out of the final American League wildcard playoff spot, with just 28 games left to be played in the regular season. They’ll open up a three game weekend series in Kansas City starting Friday night at 8:10 against the Royals. Lefthander James Paxton (7-4, 3.99 ERA) will toe the rubber in game one for Boston, while Kansas City hasn’t yet announced a starter.
Story by Chris Lessner
