There’s a certain kind of beating where everything goes right for one side and nothing goes right for the other, and you don’t need a spreadsheet to tell you which team showed up ready to play. The Boston Red Sox opened their post-All-Star Break schedule Friday by shutting out the Tampa Bay Rays 10-0 in the first game of a doubleheader, and the final score actually flatters how lopsided the thing felt.
Jake Bennett earned the win, moving to 5-3 on the year, working into the seventh before handing things off to Alec Gamboa — who threw three innings of relief and was credited with a save in a 10-run game, which is the kind of quirk that makes baseball box scores look like they were assembled by a committee. Griffin Jax took the loss for Tampa Bay, falling to 5-7 after getting hammered for seven earned runs on eight hits over five innings. He struck out six and walked one, but when you’re leaving pitches over the plate with runners on, strikeouts are just window dressing. The film doesn’t lie.
Boston struck early. In the second inning, Caleb Durbin singled and Masataka Yoshida doubled to put two runners in scoring position. Jarren Duran’s sacrifice fly brought home the first run, and Carlos Narvaez followed with an RBI single to make it 2-0. Yoshida added a leadoff home run in the fourth, his swing looking like a man who spent the break studying film and came back with a plan.
Then came the sixth, and that’s where the wheels came off for Tampa Bay the way a trailer axle comes apart on a potholed county road. Durbin was hit by a pitch to start the inning. Yoshida singled. Romy Gonzalez walked to load the bases. Duran singled to plate two. That was the end of Jax’s afternoon. Chris Roycroft came in from the bullpen and the bleeding continued — Narvaez singled in a run, Tsung-Che Cheng drove home another, Anthony Seigler grounded into a double play that scored one, Ceddanne Rafaela doubled to bring in yet another, and Durbin capped the rally with his second RBI single of the frame. Seven runs. Nine batters. By the time the Rays walked off the field, it was 9-0 and the inning had taken on the rhythm of batting practice.
A highlight circulating on r/baseball showed the Red Sox dropping down back-to-back bunts that the Rays couldn’t field, tacking on two more runs — the kind of small-ball execution that turns a bad day into a humiliating one. Narvaez added a solo home run in the seventh off Roycroft to push the lead to 10, and that was that.
Tampa Bay’s offense managed scattered baserunners — a Jonathan Aranda walk in the first, a Junior Caminero single in the fourth that confirmed his All-Star Game injury wasn’t lingering, a Nick Fortes hit-by-pitch in the sixth, a Taylor Walls double in the eighth — but never put together a sustained threat. The Rays went 1-2-3 in five separate innings.
By the eighth, Tampa Bay turned to position player Ben Williamson on the mound, and he gave up a single to Wilyer Abreu on a 44-mph “Eephua” pitch — the kind of lob that looks like it should come with a laugh track. Williamson still worked a scoreless frame, making him arguably the Rays’ most effective pitcher of the afternoon. When your infielder is your best arm, it’s already too late.
The Rays will try to salvage the doubleheader in the nightcap. Whatever adjustments they make between games, they’d better start with fielding ground balls and end with hydrating.
Sources:
- Yahoo Sports — Rays bats fall silent in second half return: Red Sox 10, Rays 0
- r/baseball — [Highlight] The Red Sox bunt in back-to-back at bats
- CBS Sports — Game Tracker: Rays vs. Red Sox, July 18, 2025