Red Sox 3, Blue Jays 0: Brayan Bello Does The Damn Thing

The Sox needed a big win. Bello delivered.

The Sox and Blue Jays met on Wednesday night with the hometown boys desperately needing a win to stay in the playoff race. Was tonight’s game a “must-win?” Great question! The good news is that yes, the Red Sox won, because Brayan Bello was that dude. In his best start… well, ever, he went eight shutout innings and basically stamped this game as, to this point, a career-defining effort.

The game was all Bello, straight from the start. Yes, Wilyer Abreu had an early single to give the Sox a 1-0 lead…

… but who cares about a 1-0 lead? Well, we do, when Bello, wearing his One Piece cleats, could not be denied:

You can imagine where it goes from here. In what was definitively his best start of the season, Bello went eight strong with eight strikeouts and just one walk before Tyler O’Neill gave the team some breathing room with a two-run donger in the direction of the name of this website:

The only question remaining was whether Bello, at 97 pitches, would come out for the ninth. Friend of the program Lisa had this to say:

Apparently Alex Cora disagreed, because Kenley Jansen came out for the ninth.

The good news is that Jansen retired the side in order, and the Twins were tied with the Braves at the time of publication, so maybe the Sox made up some ground and maybe they didn’t, but they sure as shit didn’t lose any. It wasn’t a perfect game in the technical sense, but you’d be hard pressed to dream up a better one.

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