The Red Sox have won nine straight in honor of Teddy Ballgame, and in that span, we’ve seen Brayan Bello and Garrett Crochet pitch their first career complete games. Crochet’s came in an exclamation point of an end to his first half in Boston, as he finishes with a 2.32 ERA and 129.1 IP. His dominance was on display when he decided to use his sweeper 26% of the time (it’s been his fourth-most used pitch over the rest of the season) just for fun en route to allowing three total base runners and striking out nine.
He got some help along the way from some, shockingly, good Red Sox defense, with Trevor Story making another highlight play for the second day in a row and Abraham Toro and Carlos Narvaez combining some picture-perfect bunt coverage to keep the Rays off the board and, ultimately, erase what would’ve been a game-tying run.