Orioles Vs. Red Sox: Boston Walks Off As Adrian Gonzalez Plays Hero

You might have thought, when the Baltimore Orioles took a 6-0 lead on the Boston Red Sox Monday night in Fenway Park, it meant the Red Sox had lost all the momentum they built up with their weekend sweep of the Yankees. You would've been wrong. Way to be wrong, stupid.

The Red Sox rallied from that 6-0 deficit and walked off over the Orioles 8-7 when Adrian Gonzalez plated both Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia with a one-out double in the ninth.

That early deficit? The Orioles built it against Daisuke Matsuzaka, who left after a laborious 4-1/3 innings. Derrek Lee drove home the game's first run with a double in the first, and Vladimir Guerrero brought home the second on a grounder. An RBI single by Matt Wieters made it 3-0 in the third, and the O's scored twice more in the fifth, chasing Matsuzaka after his seventh walk of the game.

Baltimore's lead went to 6-0 in the sixth when Adam Jones knocked an RBI single off reliever Scott Atchison. At that point, even though the Orioles' bullpen was due to take the game over, things were looking dreary for the hosts.

But back they came. The Red Sox put up a five-spot in the bottom of the sixth against Mike Gonzalez and Jeremy Accardo to narrow the score to 6-5. The relievers weren't helped by a pair of errors behind them, but they still allowed five hits, with the big knock a two-run double by Kevin Youkilis.

After escaping the sixth, the O's got a little insurance in the seventh when Mark Reynolds led off with a home run, but that homer was canceled out by Jason Varitek's RBI single in the bottom half to make it 7-6. Jim Johnson narrowly escaped without surrendering the tying run.

That score held through a tenuous bottom of the eighth and into the bottom of the ninth, when closer Kevin Gregg emerged from the Orioles' bullpen to nail things down. He couldn't nail things down. After retiring the first batter he faced, Gregg issued consecutive walks to Ellsbury and Pedroia to put the tying and winning runs on base. He then started Adrian Gonzalez off with a low curveball, but Gonzalez attacked the first pitch and drove a towering opposite-field fly off the Monster. The ball hung up plenty long enough to allow both runners to score, and the Red Sox walked off with their fourth straight win.

The Red Sox are now 21-20, better than .500 for the first time this season. They're in a three-way tie with the Yankees and Blue Jays for second in the AL East, three games behind the Rays. The Orioles, meanwhile, fell to 19-21.

Tuesday matches up Zach Britton against John Lackey's replacement, Tim Wakefield.