CLEVELAND -- For about five minutes in the sixth inning of the Red Sox’s 9-1 win over the Guardians, it looked like Connor Wong had finally broken his year-and-a-half-long homerless streak and given Boston a 3-1 lead.
He did everything that comes with a Boston Red Sox home run. He jogged around the bases. He walked through Boston’s dugout with the team’s celebratory Wally head on for the first time in his career. He got ready to go out and catch in the bottom of the inning.
But all of that changed after replay review overturned the call and showed that Wong’s homer had hit off the yellow padding atop Progressive Field’s 19-foot wall.
“[The explanation] was that it hit on the top of the yellow pad,” interim manager Chad Tracy said. “Tough because I know he hasn’t had one in a while.”
It’s been 629 days, to be exact, as his last homer came on Sept. 8, 2024, via a solo home run against the White Sox. The reversal of the call confirms that it’s going to be at least 630 days between home runs for the Red Sox catcher.
That most recent one came prior to the Red Sox adopting the Wally head as their home run celebration, meaning Saturday’s game was his first time wearing it (even if it came on a double).
“It sucks that it was taken away, but we got the win, so it’s fine,” Wong said.
Luckily for his team, that singular run still ended up being enough for the Red Sox, who have split the first two games of the series in Cleveland.
The Red Sox tied the game at 1-1 in the fourth inning against Guardians starter Parker Messick on a Caleb Durbin sacrifice fly before tallying their second run on Wong’s aforementioned RBI double.
Wong’s near-homer traveled a Statcast-projected 380 feet and would have been a home run in every park but Progressive Field and Globe Life Field.
“I still think it was a homer, I wish I could challenge it myself,” Wong said. “It is what it is.”
He added on late in the game with a two-run single that came as part of Boston's sixth-run ninth inning that put the game away.
“Any time you get a win feels good, but it feels even better when you contribute offensively,” he said.
About two hours before the start of the game, Tracy discussed the team’s catching situation, where he said that Mickey Gasper will get most of the starts against right-handed pitchers, while Wong and Carlos Narváez will split time against lefties.
Wong is no stranger to sporadic playing time, as Saturday marked just the seventh game he’s started this month.
“Really good performance from a guy who hasn’t had a lot of at-bats, and he had some quality ones today,” Tracy said.
Wong also did his job behind the plate, as starting pitcher Sonny Gray allowed just one run over six innings before Tyron Guerrero, Justin Slaten and Danny Coulombe finished the game off with three shutout innings.
The Guardians scored their lone run against Gray five pitches into the contest via back-to-back doubles from Travis Bazzana and José Ramírez to open the game, but the right-hander allowed just two more hits the rest of the way.
“It just felt like we needed to make an adjustment,” Gray said. “It felt like we were getting away with it in the first three innings. They were all looking to yank everything, so being able to make the adjustment of everything was nice.”
Things started to teeter in the seventh inning when the Guardians had runners on second and third with two out after a Bazzana double, but Slaten entered the game and was able to get Ramírez to ground out to end the threat.
That set up their explosive ninth inning that included a bases-loaded walk to Masataka Yoshida, Wong’s single and a three-run homer from Jarren Duran.
“The crooked number is always good,” Tracy said.
Duran and Wong were two of four Red Sox to record multi-hit games alongside Isiah Kiner-Falefa (two singles) and Durbin, who had a sixth-inning single and an eighth-inning RBI double.
“He’s getting the ball up off the ground, and he’s got some big hits in big spots,” Tracy said of Boston’s third baseman, who’s been struggling throughout the year. “He’s swinging the bat better.”