BALTIMORE -- For eight innings on Saturday afternoon at Camden Yards, the Red Sox were already having a good time, riding Garrett Crochet’s rebound performance and a bunch of timely hits from an offense that had struggled mightily for most of the season, and particularly of late.
In the ninth inning, that good time turned into a full-fledged party. And an historic one at that.
For the first time in club history, the Sox smashed as many as three homers in the ninth inning of a game. And for just the second time -- and first since May 7, 2017 against the Twins -- Boston scored 10 runs in the ninth inning of this 17-1 romp of the Orioles.
The fun facts would have stuck out on any day. But considering the recent misery the Sox had gone through entering Saturday, including a four-game losing streak in which they scored a total of six runs, this was pure therapy.
Three homers in one inning?
Consider this: The Red Sox had gone 19 games without hitting multiple home runs, their longest streak within a season since a 20-gamer in May of 1993.
The first homer in Saturday’s ninth was the definition of a party starter -- the first grand slam in the career of Andruw Monasterio.
“I mean, we need them all, but to really blow it open there [was huge],” said Crochet. “What a game from Mona. Pretty selfless of him to hit that grand slam and get the position player in there [to pitch] and get the rest of the guys hot too.”
Ah, yes, the position player. With the Orioles down 12-1, manager Craig Albernaz called on Weston Wilson for the fourth pitching appearance of his career.
In his 25 pitches, Wilson averaged 50.1 mph. Caleb Durbin was just trying to keep it together when he fouled off Wilson’s 0-1 eephus pitch. Then he was trying to avoid the embarrassment of striking out.
Durbin stayed back on the ball and launched another eephus -- this one at 44-mph -- for his first home run as a member of the Red Sox.
“You can kind of get a little tense when it's 0-2 against the position player thinking, ‘Oh crap, I don't want to strike out here.’ But I think I felt a little silly on the [foul] swing,” said Durbin. “That's kind of why I was laughing. I was able to kind of make up for it on that next one.”
Nobody needed the comic relief more than Durbin, who had perhaps been the poster child of Boston’s early-season slump at the plate. Acquired on the eve of Spring Training, Durbin came into the day with a .148 average, no homers and seven RBIs.
But he set the tone for his day with a two-out RBI double that snapped a scoreless tie in the second.
“Just the whole offense was clicking, honestly,” said Durbin. “Honestly, I think it was just one of those games where you just feed off each other, and that's a big part of it. They say hitting is contagious. And you kind of saw that today.”
Unfortunately for the Red Sox, it had been contagious in the other direction for most of the first 26 games. But perhaps Game No. 27 signified a change in momentum.
Willson Contreras completed the trifecta of homers in the ninth -- and the 10-run barrage that inning -- with a three-run rocket.
It marked the highest-scoring inning for the Red Sox since they put up 13 runs in the eighth inning on May 23 last year at home vs. none other than Baltimore.
“Today's a great step in the right direction, scoring 17 runs,” said Durbin. “That's huge for us, especially because we’ve been scuffling a little bit the last couple games. So it was big for us. But I think we're excited about the future. You know that at the end of the day, there’s so much baseball in front of us, and we're really excited for that.”