Payton Tolle barely gave the Athletics a chance to breathe Friday night, and the Red Sox made sure the scoreboard told the full story.
The 23-year-old left-hander was brilliant over six innings at Fenway Park, striking out a career-high 14 while allowing just two hits, one run and no walks in Boston’s 13-1 rout. He needed only 84 pitches to get through six, with 61 of them landing for strikes, and he piled up 24 swinging strikes along the way. Of the 20 batters he faced, 70% ended up back in the dugout via strikeout.
Boston summed it up perfectly afterward with two words on social media:
“Just electric.”
Tolle’s night was in command from the start. He retired the first 12 hitters he saw, punching out nine of them before Tyler Soderstrom finally broke up the perfect-game bid with a solo homer to lead off the fifth.
That was the only real blemish. Max Muncy added Oakland’s lone other hit off the lefty, and Tolle kept the Athletics from ever stringing anything together.
He struck out at least two batters in every inning he worked and finished the second, third and sixth with strikeouts of the side. The official scoring line was as lopsided as it gets: only four outs came on balls in play, with just two groundouts and two flyouts. Everything else was a strikeout.
For Tolle, the control mattered as much as the punchouts. He didn’t issue a walk for the first time since June, and his 14-strikeout performance blew past his previous career high of nine, set against the Baltimore Orioles on July 20. The win pushed him to 7-6 and trimmed his ERA to 3.20.
Boston’s bats made sure the night never tightened up. Jarren Duran got the scoring started with a two-run homer in the second inning, his 16th of the season. Jake Rogers and Wilyer Abreu followed with RBI doubles in the same frame to make it 5-0, and the Red Sox kept stacking runs from there with four more in the fourth, two in the sixth and two in the seventh.
Abreu went 2-for-2 with a double, a walk and three RBIs. Duran finished with two RBIs, while Caleb Durbin and Masataka Yoshida also drove in two runs apiece. Boston ended the game with 15 hits and went 7-for-12 with runners in scoring position, all while playing without All-Star first baseman Willson Contreras for a second straight game.
Raymond Burgos took over for Tolle to start the seventh and finished the job with three perfect innings. He struck out two and recorded his first save. Together, Tolle and Burgos held Oakland to two hits, no walks and 16 strikeouts.
The outing also fit into a strong stretch for Tolle in his first full season. He now has 124 strikeouts in 107 innings, and after recording seven punchouts in each of his previous two starts against the Athletics and Los Angeles Dodgers, he doubled that total Friday while getting through six innings in fewer than 90 pitches.
The win was Boston’s ninth in a row, and it came at the end of a busy stretch for the club. The Red Sox had shut out the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday and then survived a 13-inning game Thursday before Tolle gave the bullpen a much-needed breather. Boston improved to 64-51, moved into a tie with the New York Yankees in the AL East, and remained 4.5 games behind the division-leading Tampa Bay Rays.
Against the American League’s worst team, Tolle delivered exactly the kind of start a contender wants: fast, clean and overwhelming. The Red Sox scored 13 runs. He only needed one.
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