Third straight win gives Red Sox 8½ game lead
BOSTON » The Red Sox fan who brought a broom to Fenway Park to cheer Boston on to a sweep of the rival Yankees will have to wait one more day.
Still, he was lucky to have it on Saturday, using it to retrieve J.D. Martinez’s home run ball from the light stanchion above the Green Monster.
“It’s been a lot of fun pitching with these guys behind me,” said Nathan Eovaldi, who pitched eight scoreless innings to help the Red Sox beat New York for the third game in a row and expand their lead in the AL East to season-high 8½ games with a 4-1 victory.
“We’ve been able to score runs early in the ballgame, which makes it a little easier pitching,” said Eovaldi, who has pitched 15 shutout innings for Boston since he was acquired from Tampa Bay last month. “And the defense is amazing.”
Mitch Moreland started in place of hothitting Steve Pearce and hit a homer of his own, and Martinez hit his major league-leading 33rd of the year for the Red Sox, who go for a four-game sweep on Sunday night with David Price scheduled to face Masahiro Tanaka.
“This is a huge series for us,” said Eovaldi (5-4), who pitched eight innings of three-hit ball, striking out four and walking one.
One night after Rick Porcello threw an 86-pitch, one-hit complete game, Eovaldi started with three no-hit innings and left after eight with a 4-0 lead. Closer Craig Kimbrel held on through a shaky ninth inning to send the Yankees to their season-high fourth straight loss.
“There’s no question that they’ve established themselves right now as the best team in this league,” New York manager Aaron Boone said. “That said, if you walk through our room right now, to a man, we know we can absolutely play with them. We know that when we’re at our best we can beat them. We acknowledge who they are right now. There’s no denying the season that they’re having.”
Chance Adams was called up from Triple-A for his big league debut and took the loss despite allowing just three hits — two of them homers — for three runs. He walked one and struck out two in five innings.
“I was just trying to control the nerves and stuff,” he said.
WHITE SOX 2, RAYS 1 » Tim Anderson scored when Matt Duffy committed a throwing error on Leury Garcia’s two-strike bunt in the ninth inning, and Chicago beat Tampa Bay for its third straight win.
Anderson led off the ninth with a double off Yonny Chirinos (0-4). Garcia then bunted a 0-2 pitch toward third, and Duffy threw wildly toward first.
INDIANS 3, ANGELS 0 » Corey Kluber pitched a three-hitter for his first shutout this season and new arrival Leonys Martin homered again for Cleveland, leading the Indians to a win over Los Angeles.
Kluber (14-6) matched zeros for five innings with Felix Pena (1-3), who carried a nohitter into the sixth inning before Martin hit a leadoff homer. Martin has two homers in just three games since coming to Cleveland in a trade with Detroit.
It was the seventh career shutout for Kluber, and the performance eased any concerns the Indians had about the two-time Cy Young Award winner. Kluber had lost two of his three previous starts and he received an injection in his right knee before the AllStar break. He walked one, hit a batter and struck out seven.
METS 3, BRAVES 0» Kevin Gausman was outpitched in his Braves debut by a blossoming Zack Wheeler, and New York won to stop Atlanta’s five-game winning streak.
Rookie second baseman Jeff McNeil went 4 for 4, and Austin Jackson had an RBI infield single as the Mets halted a four-game skid. They improved to 4-11 against Atlanta this year and won for only the 10th time in their last 34 home games.
Pitching against his hometown team, Wheeler (6-6) matched a season high with nine strikeouts over seven innings of threehit ball and extended his shutout streak to 17 innings.