It feels like the Red Sox are making some sort of history every night at this point. On Friday, it was Payton Tolle's turn. The 23-year-old rookie turned in the most dominant performance of his young career, striking out 14 Athletics in just six innings while allowing two hits, one run and no walks.
The Boston offense turned in its own dominant performance, again, pummeling A's pitching en route to a 13-1 final and a ninth straight win. The Red Sox have now scored 12 or more runs in three of the last four games. They've done it in back-to-back games for the first time since 2016.
But what Tolle did was even more impressive in this one. As relayed by WEEI, NESN and ESPN play-by-play voice Mike Monaco, he became the youngest pitcher to record 14 strikeouts in a game since the late Jose Fernandez of the Marlins in 2014, and the youngest Red Sox pitcher to do it since Roger Clemens' 20-strikeout game in 1986.
It wasn't just the total number of strikeouts, though. It was how efficiently he got them. According to OptaSTATS, since pitches were first tracked in 1988, Tolle is the only pitcher in all of baseball to record 14 or more strikeouts while throwing fewer than 85 pitches.
"It doesn't get much better than that," Red Sox interim manager Chad Tracy said after the game. "He was electric. He looked really, really good."
Chad Tracy on Payton Tolle’s 14-strikeout performance: “It doesn’t get much better than that. He was electric.” pic.twitter.com/Ark66DBJua
— WEEI (@WEEI) August 8, 2026
Tolle's catcher, Jake Rogers (making his first start as a Red Sox), said the performance reminded him of Tarik Skubal, whom Rogers caught regularly in Detroit during Skubal's first Cy Young season in 2024.
"That's how it felt tonight. It felt kind of like when me and Skub were on the run in '24," Rogers said. "It was like I could call anything and they were gonna have weak contact or swing and miss."
Tolle had everything working right from the start, as evidenced by a first inning in which he flirted with 100 mph and sat the A's down 1-2-3 on 11 pitches with two strikeouts.
It only got better from there. He struck out the side in the second, and again in the fourth. Through four innings, Tolle had nine strikeouts and hadn't allowed a single baserunner.
He lost the perfect game on the first batter of the fifth. Tyler Soderstrom won an ABS challenge to overturn a called third strike, and took advantage of his second life by hitting a home run into the bullpen.
Tolle responded by quickly retiring the next three batters, with two more strikeouts mixed in. He gave up a leadoff single in the sixth, and then struck out the next three. Sensing that his night be done with the game already out of hand, the sold-out Fenway Park crowd serenaded the lefty with chants of "Tolle! Tolle!" as he walked off the mound.
"That's a first for me. That was pretty cool, not gonna lie," Tolle said of the chants.
At 84 pitches, Tolle certainly could have kept going. A first career 15-strikeout game was easily within reach. In days of old, this was the kind of strikeout pace that would get you dreaming about that magic number 20 that only four pitchers have ever gotten to. But, Tracy had a bigger picture to keep in mind.
"If the score was a lot closer, you might try," Tracy said. "But with the score the way it was and what we're trying to do to take care of those guys, too, it felt like that was enough."
Offensively, the contributions came from everyone Friday. All nine starters had at least one hit, and all nine had at least one run scored or one RBI. Wilyer Abreu (who left the game after fouling a ball off his shin, but is expected to be fine) had three RBIs, while Caleb Durbin, Masataka Yoshida and Jarren Duran all had two.
The postgame came with the additional good news that new catcher Adley Rutschman will start what's expected to be a quick rehab assignment on Saturday in Worcester.
What new history could possibly be in store on Saturday? Well, here's one: the Red Sox will be going for their second 10-game winning streak of the season, something no Red Sox team has ever done. They could also become just the second team in MLB's divisional era (since 1969) to have a 15-game winning streak and another 10-game winning streak in the same season. The last team to do that was the Royals in 1977.
