<\/p>\n
Too often this season the Boston Red Sox have struggled to battle back late, and lost winnable games; they entered Wednesday night\u2019s series finale in Kansas City 2-23 when trailing after the sixth inning.<\/p>\n
But in the top of the seventh, Jarren Duran homered late for the second consecutive game and the Red Sox came back to win 4-3 to sweep the Royals.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just a good all-around win for us,\u201d Duran told NESN\u2019s Jahmai Webster on the field postgame.<\/p>\n
Connelly Early pitched into the seventh despite a first-inning solo shot by future Hall of Famer Salvador Perez and the fifth-inning two-run blast by Elias Diaz. Early is getting hit hard of late, though; he didn\u2019t give up a single home run in his first seven big-league starts dating back to his September 2025 debut, but he\u2019s allowed nine over his last seven starts. Wednesday marked his third multi-homer outing this year.<\/p>\n
Early allowed three earned runs on six hits, walked one, and struck out five over 6 1\/3 innings. He threw 93 pitches, 63 for strikes, and racked up 13 swing-and-misses.<\/p>\n Royals starter Michael Wacha was a good pitcher when he was a rookie facing the Red Sox in the 2013 World Series, and he reinvigorated his career pitching for Boston in 2022. He\u2019s since dominated the Sox, including a 1.10 ERA over his last four starts against them (including Wednesday).<\/p>\n Red Sox hitters bailed Wacha out of nearly every jam they created for him. The 14-year MLB veteran held the Sox to one earned run and one unearned run on six hits, walked two and struck out eight over six innings. Wacha matched his season-high 105 pitches, 69 for strikes, and got 16 swing-and-misses.<\/p>\n The Red Sox went in order in the top of the first but then put Wacha in a bind. Willson Contreras led off the second with his first triple of the season and only his second three-bageger since August 2022. Contreras was the first of four consecutive Boston batters to reach to begin the inning. Ceddanne Rafaela reached on a fielding error by second baseman Nick Loftin, Nick Sogard tied the game with an RBI single, and Marcelo Mayer walked to load the bases with no outs.<\/p>\n Carlos Narv\u00e1ez\u2019s first-pitch double play put Boston on top 2-1, but also put two outs on the board, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa lined out to end what moments earlier looked like a veritable threat.<\/p>\n The Red Sox tallied 11 hits, their season-high fourth consecutive game with at least nine knocks, drew three walks and struck out 10 times. But they stranded a pair of runners in the third, and wasted Sogard\u2019s leadoff walk in the fourth and Rafaela\u2019s one-out double in the sixth. In total the Red Sox were 2 for 11 with runners in scoring position and left eight men on base.<\/p>\n Opponents have scored first against the Red Sox 25 times this season. Wednesday marked just the fifth time the Red Sox came back to win.<\/p>\n \u201cBats kind of came to life this week, which was really nice to see,\u201d interim manager Chad Tracy told reporters postgame.<\/p>\n Top right-handed Red Sox relievers Justin Slaten and Garrett Whitlock were unavailable after back-to-back appearances Monday and Tuesday, so Tracy sent fellow righty Greg Weissert out to relieve Early in the seventh. Weissert has struggled this season \u2013 he entered Wednesday\u2019s game with a 4.86 ERA over 19 games, including two blown saves \u2013 but he held the Royals scoreless for the next 1 1\/3 innings, which Tracy described as \u201chuge\u201d on a night when the bullpen was depleted.<\/p>\n Jovani Mor\u00e1n closed out the Royals Tuesday night, and recorded the final out of the eighth on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Duran\u2019s blast on Tuesday night put the Red Sox up enough for veteran closer Aroldis Chapman to get the night off. No such luck for Chapman on Wednesday, though the Red Sox looked poised to add on when Duran led off the ninth with his first triple of the season, which extended his streak of reaching base safely multiple times to a season-high four consecutive games.<\/p>\n \u201cI was getting roasted by everybody that Willson and Masa (Yoshida) both had a triple here and I didn\u2019t, so it was just good to get that one off the books so they can\u2019t roast me anymore,\u201d Duran said.<\/p>\n Royals righty Alex Lange quickly retired Masataka Yoshida and Wilyer Abreu, though, and Duran became the final out trying to score on a ball that skipped away during Contreras\u2019 at-bat.<\/p>\n It looked dicey when Starling Marte led off the bottom of the ninth with a single and advanced to second on a passed ball by Narv\u00e1ez, but Chapman retired three in a row after Marte to complete the sweep.<\/p>\n Chapman has converted his last 27 consecutive save opportunities dating back to last July 26, tied with Atlanta\u2019s Raisel Iglesias for the longest active streak in the majors. It\u2019s the third longest streak in franchise history since saves became an official stat in 1969, behind Koji Uehara\u2019s 31-save streak between July 9, 2013 and June 16, 2014, and Tom Gordon\u2019s record 54 from April 19, 1998 through May 31, 1999.<\/p>\n The Red Sox are 22-27, including 14-13 on the road. They\u2019ve won four of their last five games.<\/p>\n After an off-day Thursday, they return to Fenway Friday to host the Minnesota Twins for the weekend. Rookie left-hander Payton Tolle will start the series opener at 7:10 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.bostonherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Too often this season the Boston Red Sox have struggled to battle back late, and lost winnable games; they entered Wednesday night\u2019s series finale in Kansas City 2-23 when trailing after the sixth inning. But in the top of the seventh, Jarren Duran homered late for the second consecutive game and the Red Sox came […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2425962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[345064,357713,475493,411191,43627,311237,25866,423154],"class_list":["post-2425961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-aroldis-chapman","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-connelly-early","tag-jarren-duran","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-michael-wacha","tag-mlb","tag-willson-contreras"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Jarren-Duran-homers-late-for-2nd-game-in-a-row.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2425961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2425964,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425961\/revisions\/2425964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2425962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2425961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2425961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2425961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}