Athletics 4 - 7 Red Sox
Final
  for this game

Red Sox score seven in eighth, sweep A's

Jun 8, 2015 - 1:47 AM Boston, MA (SportsNetwork.com) - Xander Bogaerts' two-run double highlighted a furious eighth-inning rally and gave the Boston Red Sox a sweep of the Oakland Athletics with a stunning 7-4 victory on Sunday.

The Red Sox were treading water and trailed 4-0 heading into the game-changing eighth, which began with Rusney Castillo taking Kendall Graveman deep to put the hosts on the board.

Graveman had retired 13 straight to that point and nearly caught Castillo looking at strike three prior to the homer, but Bob Melvin curiously decided to pull the rookie with his pitch count at 101.

The decision backfired emphatically as the Red Sox batted around against the bullpen and pushed across six more runs to come out victorious.

"Graveman pitched great," Melvin said. "We had our best guys rested, but it just didn't work out."

Red Sox manager John Farrell chimed in with quite an understatement when he said, "We put together a very good inning," in the postgame press conference.

"We had contributions from a lot of guys. ... This was a momentum builder for us," Farrell added.

Castillo capped the inning with an RBI single, and Steven Wright (3-2) earned the win with 3 1/3 scoreless innings behind an ineffective Clay Buchholz.

Mark Canha went 3-for-4 with an RBI and two runs scored for the A's, who came into the series having won four straight and six of seven overall.

Melvin used four relievers behind Graveman, with Evan Scribner giving up three straight singles to bring in another run on Hanley Ramirez's base hit.

Drew Pomeranz yielded a sacrifice fly to David Ortiz for the first out, and Pablo Sandoval kept the inning alive with a two-out single off the wall against closer Tyler Clippard (0-3).

Bogaerts followed with a double that brought in the tying and go-ahead runs, and Alejandro De Aza and Castillo tacked on RBI hits to finish the flurry.

Tommy Layne threw a 1-2-3 ninth to post his first save since 2012.

The A's pounded out 11 hits but only managed four runs, three coming in the second inning. Canha doubled off Brock Holt's glove to knock in a run, Josh Reddick came in on a wild pitch and Eric Sogard added an RBI single.

Back-to-back doubles off the Green Monster by Canha and Josh Phegley in the fourth preceded Buchholz working out of a bases-loaded, no-out jam to keep it a 4-0 game.

Game Notes

Graveman allowed just six hits while walking two and striking out six ... Buchholz was charged with four runs on 10 hits over 4 2/3 innings ... This was Boston's first sweep of the season ... The Red Sox won the season series 5-1.






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