The Red Sox played . . . a normal game tonight? Yeah, we can call it that. After the endlessly depressing pantsing at the hands of the Blue Jays, the thrilling Pablo Reyes Game, the once again depressing blowout the next night, and a baseball going through the damn Monster after that, the Red Sox finally played a normal game. There was no opener or bulk reliever; no late inning heroics; no mind-numbingly stupid base running errors.
Instead, James Paxton put in a solid starter’s night of work, pitching into the sixth while not quite dominating but keeping the Royals at bay.