After Michael Wacha pitched 5 1/3 innings of one-run ball against his former team, the Boston Red Sox held on for a 6-5 win over the visiting St. Louis Cardinals on Friday night.
Boston had a 6-1 lead with two outs and nobody on in the ninth inning before five consecutive St. Louis batters reached base, four on hits. Tanner Houck struck out Paul Goldschmidt with a runner on second to end the game and earn his third save.
Xander Bogaerts went 3-for-4 with a run while Rafael Devers (2-for-3) and Trevor Story each drove in two runs for Boston, which has won 12 of its past 15 games and four of the past five.
Wacha (5-1), facing off against longtime teammate and mentor Adam Wainwright, allowed just six hits and one walk while striking out five. Wacha and Wainwright both started twice against the Red Sox during the 2013 World Series.
Tommy Edman, Nolan Arenado, Dylan Carlson and Harrison Bader all had two hits for the Cardinals, who have lost back-to-back games.
In his first regular-season start in Boston, Wainwright (5-5) was charged with four runs on seven hits in 6 1/3 innings. He fanned five and walked one.
The Red Sox wasted little time against Wainwright as Jarren Duran ripped a leadoff triple to straightaway center field and scored when J.D. Martinez grounded into a double play two batters later.
Arenado knotted the score a half-inning later, depositing a leadoff homer over the top of the Green Monster. Boston second baseman Trevor Story robbed Bader of a hit in the third.
After making a highlight with the glove, Story sent a one-out, two-run single through the right side to put Boston in the lead in the fourth. A Martinez leadoff single and a Bogaerts double set the table for the go-ahead runs.
The Red Sox boosted the lead to 6-1 in the seventh with an RBI single from Jackie Bradley Jr. and a two-run single from Devers.
Wacha escaped the fifth inning without any damage after Carlson and Bader hit one-out singles.
The Cardinals were finally able to get back on the board on Bader’s line-drive triple to center in the ninth. After Houck replaced Austin Davis with runners on the corners, Edman hit a run-scoring double and Brendan Donovan added a two-run double to extend the game before Goldschmidt whiffed.
–Field Level Media
