Four HRS power Red Sox
ANAHEIM, Calif. — In 2019, a loaded Red Sox team fell flat on its face in a season-opening West Coast swing. The team won just three of 11 games, and the defending champions spent the rest of the year scrambling to make up ground — a pursuit that ultimately failed.
Mindful of that history, the Sox took pains to be ready for another season-opening traverse by the Pacific Ocean. The team departed from the typical early-morning schedule of spring training, instead shifting to play more night games and do more mid- to late-day work in hopes of achieving a well-calibrated start to the season.
At least for the pitchers, those efforts seemingly paid off. On Sunday afternoon, the Sox concluded a season-opening 7-3 road trip with another strong pitching performance, with Tanner Houck delivering six shutout innings to lead the team to a comfortable 12-2 victory over the Angels prior to a cross-country flight for Tuesday’s home opener at Fenway Park.
The Sox allowed two runs or fewer in six of their first 10 games, and head home with a 1.49 ERA — the team’s lowest through 10 contests since the start of the Live Ball Era in 1920, as well as the lowest mark in the big leagues.
While the pitching staff excelled throughout the trip, Sunday’s victory at Angel Stadium featured a balanced effort by both the lineup and pitchers — with an early offensive eruption setting the stage for an easy getaway.
After a sluggish start, the Red Sox offense was jumpstarted in unexpected fashion. With one out in the top of the third inning, nine-hole hitter David Hamilton — making his first start in place of the injured Trevor Story — got on top of an elevated fastball and lined it over the fence in right for a solo homer, Hamilton’s first of his big league career.
That launch put the Sox ahead, 1-0, and awakened the rest of the lineup. Two batters later, Rafael Devers obliterated a hanging splitter from Angels starter Chase Silseth, his majestic launch clearing not only the fence in center but the well-manicured shrubbery behind it, landing a projected 435 feet from home.
Tyler O’neill then joined the Home Run Derby, lining a Silseth fastball over the fence in left to make it back-to-back homers. The roundtripper was O’neill’s team-leading fifth of the year, and marked the second time during the series that the Sox flexed with a three-homer inning.
The three-run lead offered a comfortable backdrop for Tanner Houck’s second start of the season.
So, too, did the fact that the Angels lineup featured seven righthanded hitters.
Despite imprecise locations in the first three innings, Houck managed to avoid hard contact with his signature sinker/slider combination.
He allowed a pair of baserunners in each of the first three frames, but stranded or eliminated all of them by eliciting groundballs and other weak contact.
The righthanded contortionist then gained the feel for his mix in the fourth and fifth innings, carving the Angels with four strikeouts in a pair of perfect frames.
The Sox then blew the game open with a four-run sixth inning against the Angels bullpen, a rally keyed by catcher Reese Mcguire’s three-run homer to right against lefty reliever José Suarez. It was Mcguire’s second homer of the series (surpassing his 2023 total of one), and marked just the third left-on-left homer of his career — and his first since 2019.
Houck preserved the touchdown advantage with a scoreless sixth inning, punctuated by a strikeout of Miguel Sanó on a wiffleslider.
In two starts this year, Houck has logged 12 scoreless innings with 17 strikeouts and two walks.
He’s the first Red Sox pitcher to open a season with back-toback starts of at least six shutout innings with six strikeouts.