BOSTON - Christian Encarnacion-Strand has already turned his Orioles stint into a fast-moving little jolt of offense, and Wednesday’s first game of a doubleheader at Fenway Park was his loudest statement yet.
The Orioles still dropped the opener, 6-3, to the Red Sox, but Encarnacion-Strand was the one Baltimore hitter who kept forcing the issue. In his third game with the club, and his second straight after being promoted to replace the injured Blaze Alexander, he went 3 for 4 with a home run and two singles. It was his second consecutive game leaving the yard, and the kind of night that made the rest of the lineup’s struggles feel even heavier.
Boston, meanwhile, kept doing what Boston has been doing all month. The win pushed the Red Sox to 15 straight, tying a franchise record.
Encarnacion-Strand’s day had a funny little twist in between games: he said he needed a nap and couldn’t stop to talk long about what he’d done in Game 1. After the way he’d swung the bat, he had earned the rest.
“Different uniform, change of scenery,” manager Craig Albernaz said. “When you get traded for, it means the other organization wants you, which is always a great feeling to have. ...
CES is looking great right now. The at-bat quality is awesome.
Obviously, we know the damage is in there.”
Baltimore’s problem in the opener wasn’t hard to spot. Dean Kremer was hit immediately, and Boston stacked together four singles among its first five batters before Jarren Duran ripped a two-run triple to finish a four-run first inning. That early punch put the Orioles in a deep hole before they could settle in.
Kremer said his “pitch execution was actually pretty good, minus the one to Duran. That was just a changeup that was left up. Everything other than that was pretty much executed to my liking, to our liking.”
He went six innings and gave up a sacrifice fly and a solo homer to Ceddanne Rafaela as the Red Sox kept control.
Baltimore finally got on the board in the third, and it came with a little help from the sun. Pete Alonso doubled, then Tyler O’Neill sent a high fly ball into shallow center with two outs. Rafaela lost it in the glare, and Alonso scored on what was basically a gift double.
Encarnacion-Strand kept the Orioles alive after that. In the fourth, he crushed a first-pitch sinker 424 feet. In the sixth, after Coby Mayo doubled, he came through again with an RBI single off the Green Monster.
“It’s great that he’s here and helping us,” outfielder Taylor Ward said. “Hopefully he can keep it rolling.”
The production fits the version of Encarnacion-Strand that first flashed in 2023, when he hit 13 home runs in 63 games for the Reds and posted an .805 OPS. But injuries and inconsistency knocked him off track over the next three seasons with Cincinnati, and in April he was designated for assignment before being traded to the Orioles for cash.
He spent much of 2025 and 2026 grinding in Triple-A for Cincinnati and Baltimore, with everyday at-bats in Norfolk helping him get back into rhythm.
“I think injuries had a role in that,” he said Monday of his decline. “I feel like, when you get injured and you’re not playing every day, it just gets hard. But other than that, I don’t know, the league does learn you and you have to make adjustments, but it’s kind of hard to make adjustments when you can’t be on the field because you’re injured.”
He added: “I feel like getting healthy again at the end of last season, it wasn’t the place I wanted to be, in Triple-A, and I wasn’t playing the best, but getting those at-bats and getting those reps was huge. And this year I’ve been able to get all the at-bats and get the reps, so I’m just rolling along.”
The Orioles, though, have lost some momentum around him. After seven straight wins, they’ve now dropped two in a row to Boston. They did salvage the series later Wednesday with a 5-1 win in the nightcap, and Encarnacion-Strand didn’t get a hit in that one, though he did lay down a sacrifice bunt.
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