Brayan Bello gave Boston four innings and handed it to rookie Jedixson Páez, who turned around and gave them five more. Combined: nine innings, seven hits, zero Cubs runs—nine innings they were lucky to get in, with the rain circling Fenway all afternoon.
David Peterson matched Bello through five for Chicago. Neither team did much with what they had. The Cubs were making contact. They were just finding gloves.
Then came the eighth. Peterson was gone, Javier Assad got yanked, Ryan Rollison was in, and Wilyer Abreu doubled to right to score two. Assad took the loss.
Final: Red Sox 2, Cubs 0.
The Sox came into this doubleheader wanting to keep the bullpen from taking a beating before the final regular season game. Páez going five innings as a rookie—quietly one of the better pitching performances of the day—was exactly the kind of thing they needed. They sweep the Cubs and head to Tropicana Field to finish the 2026 regular season out.
Jedixson Páez — Five innings. Zero runs. He came in after Bello in the fifth and just kept going—through a Cubs lineup with its own playoff stakes, through whatever the weather was doing, through the innings where any mistake ends a shutout. The rookie threw the longest outing of the two-man combo and walked away clean. That’s the headline here. Beyond impressive for a spot call-up.
Brayan Bello — Four solid innings to set the table. He’s been one of the better starters in the AL since August and this was him doing his job—keeping the game zero when it needed to stay zero, letting Páez take it from there. Honestly starter Bello is acquiring reliever Bello’s powers and I trust him a little more.
Wilyer Abreu — Three hours of scoreless baseball, and when the game finally broke open, it broke on his bat. Two runs, eighth inning, that was the whole night.
The Red Sox offense — Four hits in nine innings. They won really because Wilyer’s double was the whole ballgame, and the timing couldn’t have been better. But two runs against a team they’ll never see again isn’t exactly what you want to carry into a playoff series at Yankee Stadium. They’ll need more than that next week.
Wilyer’s double in the eighth. Three hours of scoreless baseball, a rookie pitcher on the mound, rain somewhere overhead—Abreu stepped in and ended the whole thing with one swing.
