Red Sox reactions: Payton Tolle (8 shutout innings), Caleb Durbin (5 RBIs) snap skid in Toronto

TORONTO — Instant reactions to the Red Sox (65-56) avoiding a four-game sweep in Toronto with a quick-moving 7-0 win over the Blue Jays on Thursday afternoon:

1) The Red Sox got back in the win column for the first time since Friday. All it took was a unique, dominant performance from Payton Tolle and Caleb Durbin’s second clutch grand slam in 10 days.

The win prevented the Sox from suffering their season-high sixth loss in a row. They avoided being swept in a series for the first time since mid-June (also against Toronto).

Boston’s pitching staff now has 12 shutouts this season.

• BETTING: For Friday’s game between the Red Sox and the Pirates, the over/under is set at 8 total runs on DraftKings. Our complete DraftKings Sportsbook review will show you how to navigate through their app. Also, make sure to check out our Red Sox vs. Pirates prediction to view our expert takes.

2) Tolle had a career-high 14 strikeouts in his last start on Friday against the A’s — then was effective in a completely different way against Toronto. He got plenty of soft contact, limited damage and did his best Greg Maddux impression on the way to eight shutout innings in which he allowed two hits, walked two batters and struck out only four.

Tolle cruised through five shutout innings on 52 pitches without recording a strikeout, then finally got one when he caught Charles McAdoo looking for the second out of the sixth. He had two more in the seventh and punctuated his outing by getting Myles Straw to chase an outside pitch to finish the eighth.

After getting 24 swings-and-misses last time out, Tolle got just six of them Thursday. That mattered little.

3) The big swing of the day came from Durbin in the eighth inning. The Sox were hanging on by a thread with a 1-0 lead they attained in the top of the first until a rally against Chase Lee seven innings later.

After Ceddanne Rafaela and Wilyer Abreu hit back-to-back singles to start the inning, Willson Contreras took the rare step of laying down a sacrifice bunt. Toronto then intentionally walked Masataka Yoshida to load the bases and Durbin made them pay with a 99.7 mph, 384-foot shot to left.

Durbin hadn’t hit a big league grand slam before last Tuesday, when he had one against the White Sox. He now has a pair of them in short order.

Durbin finished the day 3-for-5 with a career-high five RBIs. He also reached on an error.

4) How rare were those developments in the eighth? Contreras’ sacrifice bunt was his first since 2019 and Yoshida had never been intentionally walked before.

5) Long before the grand slam, the Red Sox took an early lead with a two-out rally against Max Scherzer in the first. Abreu worked an eight-pitch walk, then Contreras — who has had a few good swings in the last two games — drove him home with a hard-hit double into the right field gap.

With the way Tolle pitched, that looked like it might have been enough, even before the eighth.

6) It took Tolle a bit to get settled, as his velocity was down a couple ticks in the first inning and he allowed three of the first six batters he faced to reach (two walks and a single). From there, he was in cruise control. Two 5-4-3 double plays started by Caleb Durbin helped get him get through the second and the third. From the third inning on, he retired the final 17 batters he faced — and 21 of the last 23.

It looked like a shutout (or at least, a complete game) was on the table all day, but with Boston monitoring Tolle’s workload, he was pulled at 91 pitches (61 strikes). Greg Weissert returned from the minors to pitch the ninth with a seven-run lead.

7) The Red Sox had an effective two-out approach all day, even after the first-inning rally. They loaded the bases in the fourth but couldn’t score, then had three more two-out hits in the next two innings.

The nightly runners in scoring position stat? 2-for-7 with nine left on base. Durbin had both hits (the grand slam and a ninth-inning single). Yoshida drove in a run with a sacrifice fly, too.

8) Rafaela had his second boneheaded baserunning blunder in 24 hours — and this one was worse than Wednesday’s. With two outs in the fifth, he placed a line-hugging grounder over the third base bag, then tried to take second for a double. Shortstop Andrés Giménez went to corral it quickly and his throw beat Rafaela by about 20 feet.

9) There was a quick scary moment in the top of the ninth when Jays reliever Lazaro Estrada drilled Rafaela in the left hand with a 91 mph fastball. Rafaela spiked his helmet in pain, but after a visit from Tracy and a trainer, stayed in the game. It appears he’s OK.

10) Chad Tracy’s team is done playing the Blue Jays this year and will be glad that’s the case. The Red Sox went just 4-9 against a Toronto team that is now five games under .500. The Jays took three of four series between the clubs.

The Red Sox are 19-22 against American League East teams.

11) The Red Sox will fly to Pittsburgh late Thursday ahead of their sixth-ever trip to PNC Park. They’ll start a three-game series against the Pirates — who lost 12 of 15 games before routing the Marlins today — on Friday evening.

Here’s the series schedule:

Friday, 6:40 p.m. ET — LHP Jake Bennett (7-5, 3.17 ERA) vs. RHP Bubba Chandler (5-8, 4.26 ERA)

Saturday, 7:15 p.m. ET — RHP Sonny Gray (14-3, 2.79 ERA) vs. RHP Jared Jones (2-4, 5.03 ERA)

Sunday, 1:35 p.m. ET — LHP Patrick Sandoval (1-1, 3.30 ERA) vs. RHP Paul Skenes (9-11, 3.88 ERA)

Read the original article on MassLive. Add MassLive as a Preferred Source by clicking here.