A 6-2 win built on three pitches and sealed by nine straight outs

Start with process, not the final margin. Chicago's offense did more work later, but Tanner Houck's part of this game was decided in an absurdly small sample: two Alex Bregman plate appearances, three total pitches, two home runs, three earned runs. The first came on Houck's first pitch to Bregman in the first inning, a 92.6 mph sinker that Bregman hit 417 feet to left-center. The second came in the third, after a called-strike sweeper, when another sweeper was driven 402 feet to left.

That matters because it strips away the lazy version of this loss. Houck was not slowly bled out across traffic and long innings. He was hit twice by the same hitter, and every run charged to him came there. In a game that finished 6-2, Boston spent the rest of it trying to recover from damage that had already been compressed into three pitches. When a starter gives up all of his runs that way, the issue is not volume. It is how little margin existed once Bregman touched the ball.

Boston's problem did not end when Houck exited. Bregman reached base in all five of his plate appearances: two homers, a single, a walk, and a ninth-inning double. He finished 4-for-4 with four RBIs and three runs scored, which means one hitter authored most of what Chicago ultimately needed on the scoreboard.

The useful distinction is that this was not just two ambush swings early. Against Patrick Sandoval, Bregman still singled in the fifth, walked in the seventh, and then opened the ninth scoring with a run-producing double. Boston did real stabilizing work in the middle innings, and Bregman still kept reappearing in the leverage points of the game. That is why his line matters analytically, not cosmetically. A loud box-score night can be padding. Reaching five times while creating the early lead and then starting the ninth-inning separation is game control. Chicago had other contributors, but the Red Sox never got to reset the night around him.

Braxton Garrett's outing is the part of this game a box score can flatten if you let it. He worked five innings in relief, allowed one run, and did it without looking dominant in the clean, aesthetic sense. Boston put men on. Boston forced him into stressful counts. What Garrett provided was the more valuable thing in this specific game: containment.

The second inning was the biggest test. Boston loaded the bases with one out on two singles and a hit by pitch, yet got only Andruw Monasterio's run-scoring fielder's choice before Roman Anthony struck out looking. After Chicago moved back ahead 3-2, Garrett then got inning-ending double plays in both the fifth and sixth. Jahmai Jones erased a walk in the fifth. Caleb Durbin erased a walk and a single in the sixth. That sequence is why the early Bregman damage held its full value. Garrett did not need to miss every bat. He needed to keep Boston from turning traffic into a crooked inning, and over 70 pitches he did exactly that.

Patrick Sandoval is the reason this game still looked alive well past the third inning. He entered in the fourth, stranded two inherited runners, and then supplied four scoreless innings while Boston trailed 3-2. For a club already down because of Bregman's damage against Houck, that was the only way to keep the night structurally intact.

The final score can blur that work. Chicago did not keep extending the margin through the middle innings. Sandoval carried the one-run game through the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth, even with Bregman reaching on a fifth-inning single and a seventh-inning walk. The ninth is where the line finally broke: Miguel Amaya singled, Tyrone Taylor singled, Bregman doubled home a run, Gabriel Arias added a sacrifice fly, and Sandoval's 4.2-inning relief appearance ended with three earned runs charged to him. Boston had fallen behind earlier; Sandoval is why the deficit did not feel permanent until the ninth.

Once Chicago handed the ball from Garrett to Jacob Webb and then Colin Rea, Boston got no reopening at all. Webb handled the seventh on 10 pitches. Rea took the eighth and ninth for a six-out save. Between them, the Cubs retired all nine Red Sox they faced over the final three innings, with no hits and no walks.

That is the closing detail that turns a tense one-run middle game into a clean 6-2 result. The late offense was not erased by one dramatic pitch with traffic on the bases. It was erased by the absence of traffic altogether. Rea alone threw 15 strikes in 20 pitches across his two innings. The last six outs were not an adventure; they were a formality. In a game whose real work was done by Bregman's early damage and Garrett's damage control, the final three innings mattered because they removed randomness. Boston never got the extra runner that makes a small lead wobble.