What’s better than one Kutter Crawford start of seven scoreless innings leading to a Red Sox shutout victory? Two of them, back-to-back, to cap off the right-hander’s excellent first half and cement Boston’s 11th shutout of the season, 5-0 over the Kansas City Royals. After coming off a seven-inning start on a mere 68 pitches at Yankee Stadium last Sunday, Crawford followed with a similarly brilliant performance at Fenway on Saturday. Over seven innings, he held the Royals to two hits, four strikeouts one walk – Royals leadoff man Adam Frazier worked an 11-pitch at-bat to draw Crawford’s lone walk in the sixth, the first he’d issued in his last 23 innings – and a hit batsman.
He threw 96 pitches, 76 for strikes. “I try to go out there and challenge myself, try to see how many competitive strikes I can throw,” the right-hander said. Immediate run support certainly helped.
Seth Lugo entered the contest leading the Majors in ERA, but the Red Sox pounced immediately. After stranding Jarren Duran (406-foot leadoff double) and David Hamilton (walk) in the first, Boston took a 1-0 lead in the second when Dom Smith singled and scored from first on Reese McGuire’s double to the right-field corner. They added another three runs in the third, when Masataka Yoshida and Rafael Devers collected back-to-back singles and touched home on Wilyer Abreu’s ground-rule double just inside the Pesky Pole.
“Everyone was really locked in from the very beginning,” Devers said .