San Francisco Giants at Boston Red Sox

Sonny Gray took the ball for Boston looking like the best pitcher in the American League this year, and Logan Webb — the one reliable arm left on a Giants staff in full teardown mode — was standing across from him trying to keep it close.

The bigger story walked to the plate in a road grey uniform. Devers hadn't set foot in Fenway since the trade that sent him to San Francisco, and the Boston crowd let him hear it from his first at-bat on. He said all the right things about moving on before the game; his old ballpark had other ideas.

San Francisco came in buried in a rebuild, and Friday was another data point in that story — a Giants team stripped down at the deadline trying to survive a division that's left them behind, against a Red Sox club that's still very much playing for something.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
SF	0	0	1	3	0	0	0	0	0	4	7	0
BOS	0	0	5	0	0	1	0	0	—	6	11	0

It didn't take long for Boston to answer. Willson Contreras turned around a mistake for a three-run homer in the third that broke a 1-0 Giants lead built on Bryce Eldridge's RBI single. Drew Gilbert answered with a two-run shot in the fourth to keep San Francisco within a swing, but Devers himself went deep an inning later — a solo shot in his return at-bat that did nothing to change the scoreboard. Gray worked into the game's final stretch before handing it to Aroldis Chapman, who closed it out in the ninth.

Both bullpens are running thin down the stretch, which will matter more than one Friday night result. Boston's missing key relief arms while it nurses Garrett Crochet back from the injured list, and San Francisco's pen has been gutted by shutdowns and rehab assignments all August. Neither club is playing with a full deck, and it showed in how quickly this one got away from the tighter, low-scoring version it looked like early.

Sources