It was a career night for the Boston Red Sox rookie lefty as he carved through the Tampa Bay lineup.
BOSTON-- There's magic in the Fenway Greens as the Boston Red Sox improved to 9-0 when wearing their Green Monster-inspired city connect jerseys with a 2-0 win over the Tampa Bay Rays, propelled by a career night from rookie starter Connelly Early.
It was an exciting start to the night at Fenway as the Red Sox celebrated the 125th anniversary of the first Boston home game, with all six living alumni whose numbers were retired throwing out a ceremonial first pitch.
Early has struggled in his first seven starts of the season. After not allowing a home run in his first seven major league starts, he had allowed five in his last four appearances, causing both his ERA and FIP to balloon to 3.79 and 4.90, respectively. After posting a 1.9 walks per nine innings in 2025, control problems began plaguing Early in 2026, walking 4.3 batters per nine innings.
Early ran into trouble in the third inning, allowing the first two batters of the inning to reach via single, before hitting Ray's leadoff man, Yandy Diaz, to load the bases for the heart of the Tampa order. After striking out right fielder Ryan Villade, all 35,052 in attendance held their breath as star third baseman Junior Caminero dug into the box. Caminero pounded a first-pitch change-up into the ground, a tailor-made double-play ball for his counterpart, Caleb Durbin, who started the turn and got Early out of the lone Rays threat of the evening. "From that moment, we had all the momentum," Early told reporters, "huge spot in the game, to get out of that with no runs allowed is huge," he continued.
The Boston offense capitalized on that momentum as Wilyer Abreu launched one into the Boston bullpen to give the Red Sox a 1-0 lead, which they would not relinquish.
It was smooth sailing from there for Early, who would go on to have the best start of his career, pitching a career-high seven innings, with eight strikeouts in the second shutout appearance of his major league career, walking only one batter.
"He was incredible," interim manager Chad Tracy said after the game, "controlling counts...he had plenty in the tank left...just a really, really good outing," he continued.
The Red Sox will look to carry that momentum into the third game of the four-game set against the Rays, which is slated for Saturday afternoon. Fellow rookie lefty Payton Tolle will look to build off the best start of his career on Monday in Detroit. He'll get the start for Boston, opposite Nick Martinez for Tampa. First pitch from Fenway Park set for 4:10 p.m. ET.
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