Jonah Cox cleared Fenway Park's Green Monster in the second inning. The San Francisco Giants could not hold the 3-0 lead that homer created.
The Associated Press reported that Cox's solo shot capped an early Giants burst before the Boston Red Sox scored five unanswered runs and completed a three-game sweep with a 5-4 win on Sunday. ESPN's box score lists Cox at four at-bats, one run, two hits, one RBI, one home run, zero walks, and one strikeout, with a .255/.255/.489 line.
The scoring play puts the blast in the second, nobody out, 384 feet to left-center off Jake Bennett, for a 3-0 lead. It was Cox's second major-league home run.
NBC Bay Area's Alex Pavlovic wrote that Cox had struck out in nine consecutive plate appearances over four games, sat Saturday against a left-hander, then "looked a lot more like the player who forced a midseason call-up." The Monster drive was his first home run off an actual pitcher; his first big-league homer came at Wrigley Field off Chicago Cubs catcher Carson Kelly.
Cox added a single to center and a 350-foot flyout in the seventh that, Pavlovic wrote, "would have been a homer in half the league's ballparks."
How a 3-0 lead became 5-4
Bryce Eldridge's single scored Rafael Devers in the first and Victor Bericoto singled home Willy Adames for a 2-0 lead, ESPN's scoring summary shows, before Cox went deep. Nick Sogard answered in the bottom of the second, a 415-foot homer off Matt Wilkinson on a 3-2 fastball, the AP wrote. Ceddanne Rafaela drove in a run in the third.
Connor Wong's RBI double, which a review confirmed after the ball skimmed the Monster, tied the game in the fourth. Mickey Gasper doubled home Wong, and Rafaela singled home Gasper for 5-3.
Wilkinson (0-1) lasted 3.2 innings, seven hits, four earned runs, two strikeouts, and no walks in his second big-league outing, ESPN shows. Bennett (8-6) worked seven innings, seven hits, four runs (three earned), six strikeouts, and one walk. Aroldis Chapman earned his 29th save. San Francisco finished with eight hits, four runs (three earned), and went 2-for-4 with runners in scoring position.
NBC Bay Area wrote that Wilkinson's velocity and command dropped in the fourth and that Wong's fly first looked like an inning-ending catch by Bericoto until a replay showed the ball had skimmed the Monster. Wilkinson was charged with five hits at 100-plus mph, four of them extra-base hits, that account said. Tyson Guerrero threw a scoreless eighth before Chapman.
