G4: Red Sox 8, Blue Jays 4

Red Sox   - 003 131 000 - 8 11  1
Blue Jays - 202 000 000 - 4  7  1

Another rough beginning for a Boston starter - and another come-from-behind victory. On Saturday afternoon, the Red Sox wiped out two Toronto leads, improving their record to 3-1 and making roughly 45,000 Blue Jays fans sad.

More than half of Boston's 11 hits were for extra bases: five doubles and one triple. Dustin Pedroia led the way with three hits and two RBI. Rusney Castillo saw his first action of the season and responded with a single, double, and a run scored. Xander Bogaerts scored twice and Hanley Ramirez drove in two runs.

Rick Porcello (6-7-4-1-7, 105) allowed a pair of two-run home runs to Jose Bautista, but otherwise kept the home team off the board. Koji Uehara (7th) and Robbie Ross (8th/9th) pitched three perfect innings of relief.

Down 2-0, the bottom of the Red Sox order got things going in the third. Castillo singled to left and Blake Swihart walked. An errant pickoff attempt by R.A. Dickey moved the runners to second and third. Mookie Betts struck out, but Pedroia's groundout scored a run. Bogaerts sliced an opposite field ground rule double to right to bring Swihart in and then X scored (giving Boston a 3-2 lead) when Shaw sliced an opposite field ground rule double to left.

After Bautista's second shot gave the Jays a 4-3 edge, the bottom of the order again got to work. With one out, Brock Holt reached on a strikeout-passed ball. Castillo doubled him to third and Swihart's sacrifice fly to left brought Holt home, tying the game.

In the fifth, Pedroia singled and Bogaerts walked. Ramirez's line drive to right bounced over Bautista's head and rolled to the wall for a two-run triple. Hanley then scored on a passed ball. Boston scored its final run when Betts singled and came home on Pedroia's sixth-inning double.

Rick Porcello / R.A. Dickey

Betts, RF
Pedroia, 2B
Bogaerts, SS
Shaw, 1B
Ramirez, DH
Sandoval, 3B
Holt, LF
Castillo, CF
Swihart, C

Who does David Ortiz think should replace him as Boston's 2017 DH? Edwin Encarnacion.

Joe Kelly, on the comeback:

That was pretty fun to watch. [Holt] thought it was going to be a double, he told me, and it ended up going out of the ballpark. To see a team win like that, and obviously I didn't pitch like I'm capable of, to come together and pick me up when I wasn't at my best was pretty fun to watch. And easily a game like that last year we would have lost.

David Price will get an extra day of rest and start the home opener against Baltimore next Monday.

Also (thanks to Elias):

Colorado rookie Trevor Story has hit six home runs in his first four games. Story is the first player in history to hit home runs in each of his first four major-league games, the first to hit as many as six homers over his first four big-league games, and the first major-leaguer to hit six home runs over the first four games of a particular season.

Ross Stripling, in his major-league debut for the Dodgers, pitched 7.1 no-hit innings last night before being removed after 100 pitches. Los Angeles ended up losing the game. It was the first time in major-league history that a starting pitcher was taken out with a lead and a no-hitter intact in the eighth inning or later. (Cincinnati's Bumpus Jones remains the only pitcher in history to throw a no-hitter in his major-league debut, against Pittsburgh on October 15, 1892, when pitchers threw from a box, with the front of the box 50 feet from home plate and the back 55 feet, 6 inches.)