Boston avoids sweep

HOUSTON — Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora was asked after a 4-1 win over the Astros if he uses the two recent series against Houston as a measuring stick for how good his team is.

“No, I don’t,” Cora said with a grin. “If I say that, then they’ve got bragging rights.”

Rafael Devers homered off Justin Verlander, and the Red Sox capitalized on two Houston errors to avoid a three-game sweep Sunday.

The banged-up Astros lost for just the fifth time in 22 games and finished the regular season 4-2 against the Red Sox, who beat them 4-1 in the ALCS last season on the way to a World Series championship.

“You see the scores,” said Cora, the Astros’ bench coach for their 2017 title before heading to Boston. “I know it’s early and I know where they’re at and I know where we’re at. We just both match up well. There are no secrets. It’s all execution. There were certain days where we didn’t execute, and today, they made some errors and we took advantage of that.”

Eduardo Rodriguez (5-3) held Houston to one run and four hits in six innings, improving to 5-1 in his last eight starts.

It was exactly the bounce-back outing he was hoping for after allowing six runs over five innings in a loss to Toronto last time out.

“It feels really good,” Rodriguez said. “I’ve been working these past four days on how I’m going to pitch, the game plan and everything, and it worked pretty good.”

Devers’ solo shot to center field in the fourth gave the Red Sox a 2-1 lead. It was Devers’ seventh homer of the season and fourth in six games.

Boston extended its lead to 3-1 during a sloppy fifth inning for the AL West leaders. A one-out double by Eduardo Nunez was followed by errors from second baseman Yuli Gurriel and third baseman Alex Bregman on back-toback plays, allowing Nunez to score.

“We didn’t play well, and we missed an opportunity to sweep those guys and really just misfired on a day where (Verlander) pitched well enough to keep us in the game and win,” Houston manager AJ Hinch said. “I think we allowed ourselves to play a little mentally tired, a little physically tired. We’re beat up a little bit, so it wasn’t our day.”