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David Ortiz celebrates his first of two solo blasts.
BOSTON – The Red Sox spent September distancing themselves from the Rays in the American League East. One more win and they’ll rid themselves of Tampa Bay for good.
Boston pounded David Price early on during Game 2 of the American League division series, then hung on for a 7-4 win that left the Rays on the brink of elimination in the best-of-five series.
Price helped pitch the Rays into the postseason with his complete-game effort against the Rangers in Game 163 earlier this week, but the lefthander was knocked around for seven runs in seven-plus innings on Saturday.
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John Lackey allows seven hits, four runs and three walks over 5 1/3 innings.
David Ortiz hit a pair of solo home runs against Price, while Jacoby Ellsbury had three hits and three runs scored and Dustin Pedroia drove in three runs.
“Just the one word that we’ve continually tried to drive home is the word ‘relentless,’” Red Sox manager John Farrell said before the game. “And I think that’s played out whether it’s in a given game, a given series, over the course of the (first) 163 (games this season).
“It’s that overall relentlessness that I think has become a trait for this group.”
That relentlessness was certainly on display in Game 2 as the Red Sox scored in three of the first four innings to build a four-run lead.
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Dustin Pedroia drives an RBI double against David Price into left field.
The Rays fought their way back into the game against John Lackey, who gave up four runs over 5 1/3 innings in his first postseason start since 2009, when his Angels fell to the Yankees in the ALCS.
Boston’s bullpen did the job over the final 3 2/3 frames, getting a pair of huge double plays in the seventh and eighth innings, the former with the tying runs on base and the latter with the tying run at the plate.
The series shifts to Tropicana Field, where Clay Buchholz and the Red Sox will try to close out the Rays on Monday night. Alex Cobb, who beat the Indians in the wild card game this week, starts for Tampa Bay.
The Red Sox jumped out to a quick lead, scoring a pair of runs in the first inning on a Pedroia sac fly and a solo home run by Ortiz, who had been homerless in 42 career plate appearances against Price.
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David DeJesus slides homeduring their two-run fifth inning.
Delmon Young cut the lead in half with his own sac fly in the second, but the Red Sox answered with two more runs in the third, the first on Ellsbury’s double. Shane Victorino broke up a potential inning-ending double play with a hard slide into second base later in the inning, allowing Ellsbury to score to give Boston a 4-1 lead.
Stephen Drew drove in a run with a triple off the Green Monster in the fourth against Price, who looked nothing like the ace that dominated the Rangers in the play-in game last Monday.
The Rays wouldn’t go away, cutting the lead to 5-3 in the fifth on James Loney’s two-run double. Lackey walked Evan Longoria to put the tying run on base with two out, but Ben Zobrist looked at strike three to end the threat.
Pedroia pushed the lead back to three runs with an RBI double in the fifth as Price continued to get hit hard. The Red Sox peppered one rocket after another off the big wall in left, collecting eight hits and two walks over the first five frames against the former AL Cy Young winner.
Price retired the Red Sox in order in the sixth and seventh to give the Rays a chance to come back, but the double plays induced by Craig Breslow in the seventh and Junichi Tazawa in the eighth helped Boston maintain its two-run edge.
Ortiz stretched it to three runs with a towering shot down the right-field line off Price to open the Boston eighth, sending the sellout crowd of 38,705 into a frenzy. It marked the first two-homer postseason game of Ortiz’s career, the first by a Red Sox player since Pedroia hit two against the Rays in Game 2 of the 2008 ALCS.
Koji Uehara closed it out with a flawless ninth, sending the Fenway faithful home with the expectations of being back here for the ALCS next week.
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