The Red Sox didn’t just steady the ship—they punched the throttle. Garrett Crochet overpowered the Athletics with 10 strikeouts in seven shutout innings, and Boston stacked timely hits for a 7-0 win Monday night in West Sacramento, California. Trevor Story and Carlos Narváez each homered, and the lineup piled on enough support to make it a stress-free night.
Boston, now 80-65, has back-to-back wins after a three-game skid and remains in a strong spot in the AL wild-card race. They’re sitting second in that chase, one game behind the Yankees (80-63). In the division picture, Boston holds third in the AL East, three games back of the Blue Jays (82-61).
Crochet resets the tone after rough outing
This was the response a contending team wants from its front-line arm. Crochet (15-5) needed 101 pitches to finish seven crisp frames, allowing only three hits and zero walks. He stayed in attack mode, got ahead in counts, and didn’t give the A’s many comfortable swings. One start after getting tagged for four homers and a season-worst seven runs by Cleveland, he came out clean and in control.
The numbers speak loud: 10 strikeouts, no free passes, and traffic kept to a minimum. That let Boston’s offense play from in front and let the game flow on Crochet’s terms. His pace never wavered, and his location didn’t drift. You could feel the difference from his previous outing—this was a start built on first-pitch strikes and an unwillingness to nibble.
From there, the bullpen made it look routine. Zack Kelly handled the eighth, Chris Murphy took the ninth, and both delivered perfect innings to lock down a three-hitter. The defense matched the pitching with a tidy, low-drama night—no extra chances, no openings for Oakland to crawl back in.
Lineup balance and playoff context
This wasn’t a one-swing night. Story and Narváez did go deep, both finishing with two hits, but the tone was balance and pressure. Jarren Duran, Alex Bregman, and Masataka Yoshida each stacked two hits and an RBI, giving Boston production up and down the order. That kind of lineup length matters in September, when every at-bat chips away at opposing pitching plans.
It was the first meeting between these clubs this season, and they’ll see plenty of each other over the next couple of weeks—five more games are on the slate, with the last matchup set for September 18 in Boston. For a team chasing position in both the division and the wild card, these head-to-heads can swing a race. Keep winning these, and the standings start looking a lot different.
Zooming out, the math is straightforward. The Yankees are a game ahead in the wild-card stack. Toronto holds the AL East lead by three over Boston. There’s not a lot of margin for error, but there’s also opportunity—especially when a rotation anchor like Crochet is resetting the tone after a stumble.
Oakland didn’t have many answers. Darell Hernaiz’s double and singles from Max Schuemann and Jack Wilson were the lone bright spots at the plate. The A’s slipped to 66-79 with the loss and have now dropped two straight and seven of their last ten. They never found the extra-base spark beyond Hernaiz’s liner, and Boston never gave them the freebies that often change a shutout into a nail-biter.
Boston’s approach was simple: put the ball in play, keep innings alive, and avoid the big miss. The homers from Story and Narváez provided clean separation, while run-scoring knocks from Duran, Bregman, and Yoshida kept the pressure up. That’s the formula you want behind a dominant start—no let-up, no window for a rally.
The schedule favors focus more than flash from here. The teams still have five head-to-heads this month, and those games will either cement Boston’s spot or complicate it. If Crochet’s reset becomes the new normal and the lineup keeps stacking multi-hit nights, Boston’s push gets real traction. If not, the margin tightens quick.
- Pitching line: Crochet — 7 IP, 3 H, 0 BB, 10 K, 101 pitches; Kelly and Murphy — 2 perfect innings to finish it.
- Power and production: Story and Narváez — solo homers; Duran, Bregman, Yoshida — two hits and an RBI each.
- Standings snapshot: Boston 80-65; second in AL wild-card, one behind the Yankees (80-63); third in AL East, three back of the Blue Jays (82-61).
- Oakland’s offense: Three hits total — Hernaiz double; Schuemann, Wilson singles.
The series continues this month with five more meetings, the last on September 18 at Fenway. Boston just turned in the exact template it needs in September: a frontline starter in command, a lineup working in layers, and a bullpen that makes the end look easy. Now the challenge is repeating it, night after night, with the standings in plain sight.
