Eight innings of nothing, then everything
Blade Tidwell struck out a career-high seven in 5 2/3 shutout innings and Boston barely laid a glove on him. The Red Sox managed a runner in scoring position once before the eighth. Then the ninth arrived overnight at Fenway Park and San Francisco lost a game they had controlled since the first inning.
Caleb Durbin drew a leadoff walk off Sam Hentges. Eli White singled up the middle with one out to end the shutout bid. Nick Sogard followed immediately with a game-tying double to left. Bases loaded, one out, Wilyer Abreu at the plate.
Abreu hit a low liner that Giants first baseman Bryce Eldridge stopped with a diving stab. His throw home pulled catcher Andrew Knizner’s foot off the plate as he reached for the force. White slid in behind him. Boston 3, San Francisco 2.
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Adames and Knizner had already done the damage
Willy Adames opened the scoring with a two-out solo shot over the Green Monster in the first. The shot pushed him past the 20-homer mark for a sixth straight season, a run of consistency that rarely gets talked about outside the Bay Area. Knizner, batting ninth, doubled the lead in the third with a leadoff blast to deep centre, his first of the year.
The two of them combined for five of San Francisco’s eight hits. Patrick Sandoval escaped a bases-loaded third with a strikeout and a ground ball, and Adames kept the pressure on with a hard single into the left-field corner between two walks.
San Francisco had one last chance to bury it. In the top of the ninth they loaded the bases on a single and two walks before Sogard threw himself at an Eldridge liner and caught it at second base. Nobody in the ballpark knew yet how much that catch was worth.
The bullpen work that made it possible
Wyatt Olds recorded four outs for the first win of his career. Hentges dropped to 1-6. Dylan Smith deserves a line too: he inherited a bases-loaded, no-out mess in the eighth and got out of it without conceding, which is the only reason three runs in the ninth were enough.
Boston had watched back-to-back homers drag the Giants back into Friday’s series opener. Two nights, two late swings, and the ledger now reads differently.
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