McAdam: Red Sox come off the ropes and make a statement

HOUSTON - Usually, the safe baseball metaphor is road racing, as in the oft-repeated mantra: "It's not a sprint, it's a marathon."

But as the Red Sox readied to leave Minute Maid Park and fly back to Boston, having swung themselves to a convincing 9-3 victory over the Houston Astros and thus gaining a series split with the world champions, Rick Porcello opted for the Sweet Science.

"I think these last two games were big for us,'' said Porcello, who went 6.2 innings and earned his eighth win of the season. "It's early June, but we dropped the first two games and we felt like we needed to punch back a little bit. We had a tough time with them last year -- the last series and then going into the postseason -- and we definitely took a couple of punches in the first two games. So, it was good.''

Understand, the Red Sox were not raising any belts in the air and declaring themselves The Greatest. But across the clubhouse, there was the sense that they had withstood the best the Astros -- and the disabled list -- could dish out and still went home knowing they had given a good account of themselves.

On Saturday morning, they had already lost two games and two regulars (Mookie Betts and Dustin Pedroia), which is hardly the way they wanted to start things.

Then, they went out and won a game started by Justin Verlander on Saturday, then hammered Charlie Morton, who entered Sunday night with a tidy 2.26 ERA.

"We swung the bats great,'' marveled Porcello, who was gifted a 2-0 lead before he even took the mound in the first inning. "To put up the run we did against Charlie Morton and the season that he's having was huge.''

And it wasn't just how many the Sox scored, but also, who was producing them. The loss of Betts and Pedroia has tested the Red Sox depth, and in the early going at least, the Sox have shown they have enough to withstand the loss of manpower -- in the short-term anyway.

Andrew Benintendi has, improbably, performed almost as well in the leadoff spot in the last week as Betts had in the first two months. After cranking a two-run homer as part of the comeback effort Saturday, he came out swinging again Sunday, roping a double to start the game and scoring on Mitch Moreland's homer three batters later.

In the fifth, Benintendi homered himself, once more reaching the second deck in right, giving him seven homers in his last 18 games.

Eduardo Nunez, who had lost the starting job at second when Pedroia returned, shifted to third to give the slumping Rafael Devers a breather and came up with three hits and two runs scored. And Brock Holt, relegated to bit part until recently, contributed what may have been the biggest hit of the night, cracking a two-run triple to deep center and opening up the game in the sixth.

Even Blake Swihart, who had almost been the subject of a missing person's alert as recently as a week ago, delivered a big run-scoring single.

"To not have those two guys (Betts and Pedroia) is tough,'' said Porcello, "but we had other guys step up. That's kind of the mark of a good team. When you play 162 games, no team is going to stay healthy the entire year. We all have to step up when we lose guys and everyone did that.''

Call it pride or survival instincts, but the Red Sox seemed intent on making a statement here, especially after absorbing the disappointment of the first two losses and the subsequent loss of manpower.

"They have a good team, but we do, too,'' noted Mitch Moreland, whose first-inning homer set the tone. "They have to throw to us -- that's the way they looked at it ...We're a really good team."

Maybe the Red Sox got sick of hearing about how they'd been outclassed by the Astros -- starting last September -- and decided they needed to take the fight back to the Astros. Maybe they were sick of apologizing for a record that featured the most wins of any team in the game.

Call it what you will -- "punching back,'' or simply answering a challenge.

"We came here and we competed,'' said Alex Cora with a hint of defiance. "We know we're a little bit banged up, but guys stepped up. The energy was great. We faced four of the best righties in the big leagues and we did a good job with them.

"We know that team is going to be around in October and where we want to be, we probably have to go through them.''

As of now, that assignment seems less imposing than it did a few short days ago.