Crisis averted, people.

After two consecutive losses at home to the Yankees (83-66) where the bats were nowhere to be found (one of which being a combined two-hitter from New York), the Red Sox (82-68) exploded out of the gates on Sunday, dropping a 6-piece on the Yankees in the top of the first inning.

On the strength of that early output as well as six strong innings for Garrett Crochet (16-5, 2.63 ERA), Boston avoided a sweep at Fenway Park by beating the Yankees 6-4 on Sunday Night Baseball.

With manager Alex Cora telling the media just one day prior that the conversation around his team playing in October should shift to a convo about them winning ballgames down the stretch in September, it’s as if his team heard the message loud and clear.

What could have been a disastrous result for the Red Sox on Sunday ended up being a reminder of what this team can be if everything is clicking on all cylinders, even without Roman Anthony in the lineup.

Here’s nine takeaways from Boston’s big win on Sunday:

1. The offense is, in fact, capable of hitting with RISP

We’ve gone over the runners in scoring position hitting numbers on numerous occasions at this point. There’s no need to belabor the point.

If you’ve watched this team play baseball in 2025, you know this is a major problem. And to be honest, it’s actually worse than the numbers would tell you, as some hitting categories are being propped up by Boston’s occasional offensive explosions - like what we saw in Sacramento early last week.

But in the first inning on Sunday night, the Red Sox fared just fine with RISP, going 3-5 with 5 RBI as a part of the six-run inning that ended up being enough offense to get the W:

- RBI single from Alex Bregman as Jarren Duran scores from third, 1-0 BOS

- RBI single from Nathaniel Lowe as Bregman scores from second, 2-0 BOS

- RBI double from Romy Gonzalez as Trevor Story scores from second, 3-0 BOS

- Sacrifice fly for Mastaka Yoshida as Lowe scores from third, 4-0 BOS

- Ground out to second for Rob Refsnyder as Gonzalez scores from third, 5-0 BOS

With the way Boston was batting guys in, it looked like this team was going to put up well into the double digits on the scoreboard in front of a national TV audience.

And if you listened to Cora postgame on the matter, you’d think the problems were basically solved:

2. …but remember, there’s 9 innings in a baseball game.

And with that, Boston would go 0-4 the rest of the game with RISP.

So on its surface, a .333 batting average with 5 RBI with RISP sounds like a good place to be.

But again, this goes back to not just focusing on the number and actually acknowledging the full scope of the situation.

After an explosion of runs in the first, Boston went the next seven innings of baseball without doing diddly-squat.

On days where they don’t have Crochet pitching, they won’t be able to rest easy with a 6-0 lead after the first inning. Baseball games are long. A lot of things can happen, especially when playing good teams in the postseason.

The first inning on Sunday was a good reminder of what this offense’s ceiling can be without Anthony, but the rest of the game was a harsh reminder of that same offense’s floor.

3. Crochet Day on full display

Here’s the big guy’s line from Sunday:

6.0 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 1 BB, 12 Ks, allowing home runs in the 4th and 5th innings

Crochet tied a season high in strikeouts, just one shy of his career high of 13 set with the White Sox last June against the Mariners.

His eight starts with at least 10 Ks this season ranks second in all of baseball behind Tigers ace Tarik Skubal (13-5, 2.26 ERA), who’s hit that mark 10 times already.

He recorded his 20th quality start this season, which is good for second-most in the AL and is the most by a Boston starter since Chris Sale in 2017 (23 during his first season in Boston).

And if you needed any more evidence that the man is having a historically great season, he owns the second-lowest ERA of any Red Sox pitcher through their first 30 games with the club in the live-ball era (since 1920), trailing Dave Ferriss’s 2.55 ERA in 1945 (min. 150.0 IP).

Of course, who could forget that magical season for Ferriss, who went on to finish fourth in AL MVP voting with a 21-10 record that included 26 complete games across 264.2 innings pitched (he was somehow better in 1946, if that’s even possible).

You could even say Crochet has been Ferriss-esque since June 1, going 12-1 with a 3.02 ERA, allowing just 39 runs across 116.1 innings pitched. Over that span, he’s amassed 151 Ks, and the Red Sox have won 15 of those 18 starts.

His 240 strikeouts lead all of baseball.

Special.

4. Cora’s confident in Crochet’s durability

With Crochet admitting himself last week that he felt like he hadn’t been the best version of himself of late, both fans and media alike had speculated that the reason for that was the wear and tear he’s put on his throwing arm in 2025, with this being by far the largest workload of his young major league career.

But for Cora, Sunday’s performance for Crochet was all the evidence he needs to say his horse is going to be just fine down the stretch.

Don’t you worry about his workload, people! Here’s what he said at the podium:

5. Romy Gonzalez remains on f’ing fire

Gonzalez’s RBI double in the first inning on Sunday extended his career-long and active MLB-leading hitting streak to 14 games.

His numbers over that period of time:

.434 AVG (23-53), 6 R, 2 2B, 1 HR, 10 RBI, 1 SF

As Gonzalez said about himself earlier in the season, the man is “tremendously locked in” right now.

And even after missing a couple days with soreness in his left knee, the 29-year-old hasn’t missed a beat since returning to the lineup.

In all likelihood, if I told you before the season started that Romy Gonzalez was going to become one of their most reliable hitters in the lineup, your response almost certainly would have been, “Who?”

What a revelation this guy has been as one of baseball’s best mashers of left-handed pitching.

6. Ceddanne Rafaela, on the other hand…

…is slumping in a major way.

After finding his groove at the dish while playing center field every day just before the All-Star break, it looked like Rafaela was going to be this team’s MVP this year. He was among the major catalysts of Boston’s 10-game winning streak mid-summer, and was looking like he was worth every penny of the extension he signed with the team last year.

Then, right around the time he was asked to start mixing in at second base (whether Cora likes to admit it or not), he got incredibly cold at the plate.

And while his services in the infield seemingly aren’t needed moving forward (you never know), he hasn’t been able to recapture the magic.

Here’s what one of my favorite new accounts on Twitter had on Rafaela’s struggles, which continued on Sunday night (0-4, 1 K):

7. Wilyer Abreu nugget

Yesterday, I gave you video of Abreu getting some outfield work in pregame, with Cora telling us he thought the Gold Glover was probably less than a week away from returning from his calf injury.

Today, my WEEI colleague Rob Bradford had this nugget for you from the postgame locker room:

8. Super Troopers Fenway field trip

The boys from Broken Lizard were at Fenway Park on Sunday night, and they randomly gave my radio station a shoutout on Twitter from the stands:

This, of course, got my many millennial coworkers excited:

Super Troopers is an elite throw-a-flick-on-with-the-fellas-while-drinking-beers type of movie, even if Super Troopers 2 hurt my feelings.

But that’s on me for letting myself get too excited.

9. The home stretch is officially upon us

Boston is off on Monday. But when they’re back to business on Tuesday, it’ll be the first of their 12 final games of the regular season:

- Three at home vs. Oakland (70-80)

- Three on the road @ Tampa (73-76)

- Three on the road @ Toronto (87-62)

- Three at home vs. Detroit (85-65)

With how close things are in the American League, no tickets to October are guaranteed at this point for Boston.

Three of those four series are against teams that play you hard (TB/TOR/DET), two of which being teams above you in the AL hierarchy this season. And if we’re being honest, the A’s did just walk it off against you as recently as Wednesday. They have young talent and could easily steal a game if you’re not locked in.

I don’t think this team is going to miss the playoffs, but I’m not willing to put money on that hunch.

Too many tough baseball games left to play, with a lot of teams around them also looking to make their push for the postseason.

Stay tuned.

Tom Carroll is a contributor for Roundtable, with boots-on-the-ground coverage of all things Boston sports. He's a digital content producer for WEEI.com, and a native of Lincoln, RI.