Nick Sogard’s grounder to second base scored Nate Eaton from third in the bottom of the 10th inning to give the Boston Red Sox a 5-4 victory over the visiting Athletics on Wednesday night.
Sogard pinch-hit for Ceddanne Rafaela with one out and runners on second and third.
The Athletics (71-81) had runners on first and third with no outs in the top of the 10th but failed to score. Zack Kelly then struck out Darell Hernaiz and got Zack Gelof to pop out before Chris Murphy (3-0) entered and fanned Nick Kurtz.
Michael Kelly (4-4) pitched the bottom of the 10th as the Athletics’ five-game winning streak ended.
Rob Refsnyder homered for the Red Sox (83-69), who won even though they went 3-for-17 with runners in scoring position and stranded 13 baserunners.
Boston remained a half-game behind the Houston Astros (84-69) in the battle for the second American League wild card. The Cleveland Guardians (80-71) are 2 1/2 games behind the Red Sox.
Jarren Duran had three of Boston’s 10 hits. Masataka Yoshida added two hits and two RBIs, and Trevor Story contributed two hits and an RBI.
The Athletics received three hits from Jacob Wilson and three RBIs from Hernaiz.
Story scored on Yoshida’s two-out single to give the Red Sox a 1-0 lead in the first inning, but the Athletics made it 1-1 when Lawrence Butler came home on a Hernaiz sacrifice fly in the top of the second.
Boston regained the lead when Refsnyder led off the bottom of the second by hitting his ninth home run of the season.
The Athletics went up 4-2 by scoring three runs in the fifth. Butler’s bases-loaded walk tied the game, and Hernaiz followed with a two-run single.
It was 4-3 after Yoshida’s second single of the game drove in Rafaela in the fifth, and Boston tied the game when Story knocked in Nathaniel Lowe in the sixth.
