After another bullpen collapse reminiscent of early-season struggles, the Red Sox can bounce back and take the series Sunday against the Mariners to close out a 10-game West Coast road trip.
Kutter Crawford will make the second start of his career, again out of necessity. He first took the ball against Cleveland in September during a Sox COVID outbreak, and will make another spot start Sunday as Alex Cora tries to scrape through the weekend without Garrett Whitlock and with the bullpen having seen heavy usage through the first two games of the series.
The Mariners will close the series behind reigning American League Cy Young winner Robbie Ray, but the lefthander has rarely been at his best this season. Ray has allowed at least three earned runs in six innings or fewer in each of his last five starts, posting a 6.11 earned run average in that span.
Lineups
RED SOX (31-29): Refsnyder CF, Devers 3B, Martinez DH, Bogaerts SS, Story 2B, Verdugo LF, Dalbec 1B, Arroyo RF, Plawecki C
Pitching: RHP Kutter Crawford (1-1, 8.44 ERA)
MARINERS (27-32): Winker LF, France 1B, Rodriguez CF, Crawford SS, Suarez DH, Frazier 2B, Toro 3B, Trammell RF, Torrens C
Pitching: LHP Robbie Ray (5-6, 4.97 ERA)
Time: 4:10 p.m.
TV, radio: NESN, WEEI-FM 93.7
Red Sox vs. Ray: Arroyo 1-6, Bogaerts 3-13, Bradley Jr. 0-2, Dalbec 2-11, Devers 3-9, Martinez 2-13, Plawecki 5-11, Story 9-30, Verdugo 4-17, Vázquez 1-12
Mariners vs. Crawford: Has not faced any Seattle batters
Stat of the day: Rafael Devers’s 3.0 WAR ranks fourth among AL batters according to Baseball-Reference.com.
Notes: The Red Sox have jokingly called J.D. Martinez “Ichiro” in recent weeks, during a three-plus-week stretch in which the slugger raised his average from .325 to .351 despite not hitting a single home run. Martinez broke out of his power outage with homers in the first two games of the series. Martinez’s homerless drought — which spanned 92 plate appearances and 78 at-bats — was his longest since 2014 ... Ray is 2-2 with a 4.28 ERA in seven career appearances (six starts) against the Red Sox, including a 7-3 loss on May 20 in Boston in which he allowed four runs on five hits in six innings. All of the runs came on a grand slam by Trevor Story ... The Mariners earned their first win in six tries against the Red Sox this season by scoring twice in the bottom of the ninth Saturday ... Nate Eovaldi was sent to the 15-day IL Sunday with lower back inflammation, retroactive to June 9.
Amin Touri can be reached at amin.touri@globe.com.