Red Sox score season-high 10 runs at home in long-awaited Fenway frenzy

BOSTON – At last, the comforts of home were felt by the Red Sox. And not a second too soon.

When Mickey Gasper, Ceddanne Rafaela and Wilyer Abreu scraped the Green Monster on three consecutive pitches for doubles in a furious, fifth-inning sequence, Fenway felt alive in a way that has been infrequent this season.

Though the doubles by Gasper (.090 expected batting average) and Abreu (.010) were hardly rockets, and rather misplayed by Nicky Lopez, who had moved from second base to left field to start the inning, they also represented a team getting some breaks from the quirky dimensions of its home park – and finally taking advantage of them.

For the Red Sox, Friday night’s 10-1 victory over the Rangers snapped a streak of five straight home series that opened with a loss.

Believe it or not, it was the first time the Sox put double-digits on the board at home, and third overall this season.

“I think it’s not that cold anymore and they’ve been crushing balls the other way too, and now the balls are getting to the wall,” said Rafaela. “It’s not about hitting doubles at Fenway Park. It’s about winning games. It doesn’t matter where. The fans want to see us win here, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Wall ball, something the best Red Sox teams have turned into an art form, has been largely absent from the repertoire this season. Perhaps Friday was the start of something.

“To see some balls get driven that way was nice,” said interim manager Chad Tracy. “Just to see balls get driven like that in general, balls finding gaps, hitting some home runs, it was awesome.”

By winning either of the final two games of this series, Boston would win its first set at Fenway since taking the April 8 rubber match against the Brewers.

Yeah, it has been a while for a team that has underachieved as a whole (28-39), and glaringly so (11-21) at a Fenway that hasn’t been friendly enough in ‘26.

But the clock is ticking, and the Sox know it.

During Thursday’s off-day, club president/CEO Sam Kennedy said in a radio interview that “unless things change dramatically," the Red Sox might have to detour from the preferred buyer’s lane and shift to sellers prior to the Aug. 3 Trade Deadline.

There was no dramatic change in the way Sonny Gray (8-1, 3.03 ERA) performed.

The 36-year-old veteran (one of the bright lights for the Sox this season) set the tone by scattering five hits and a run over six innings while walking none and punching out seven.

The Sox didn’t just spray Fenway doubles. They hit a quintessential Fenway homer – and two other long balls that would have cleared the fence in many ballparks.

The solo blow by Willson Contreras in the first inning would have been gone at just one other MLB park – Wrigley Field. And that’s one of the reasons chief baseball officer Craig Breslow traded for him in the offseason, thinking his right-handed-hitting pull power would play at Fenway. For Contreras, it was his team-leading 14th homer of the season, and sixth at Fenway.

“Obviously, the way he plays the game, his leadership with the guys, you look at the numbers and you start watching them stack up,” said Tracy. “Heck of a season. He’s just a very, very important part of the middle of our order.”

Another important piece is Abreu (3-for-4, two doubles and a homer), who mashed a Statcast-projected 421-foot home run to center in the seventh that was gone in 28 out of 30 parks.

Rafaela, perhaps the team’s most consistent hitter this season, used the Monster to his advantage with a 374-foot shot that was gone in half (15) of the parks in the game.

The buy-sell answer won’t come for a while. But the Sox hope a resurgent offense can lead the club back to contention.

“It’s not part of our job [to decide] if they are going to be sellers or buyers. That’s something that we can’t control,” said Abreu. “Of course if we’re losing, that will probably happen, but at the same time we’ve got to do our jobs and play the game that we know how to play and keep working and keep improving every day, and we’ll see what happens at the Deadline.”