BOSTON — In what had become the worst-kept secret around the Red Sox over the past few days, Payton Tolle will make his 2026 debut for Boston in the series finale against the Yankees.
Tolle gets the nod after the Red Sox reshuffled their rotation, pushing Brayan Bello to Friday’s opener in Baltimore. The move also gives Garrett Crochet and Connelly Early an extra day of rest.
Boston needed another starter after losing Sonny Gray to a right hamstring injury on Monday, which landed him on the injured list.
Boston will turn to Tolle in hopes of salvaging the series against New York, a series in which the offense has shown little life, managing just one run on a Jarren Duran RBI single Wednesday night.
The Red Sox have totaled just one run on nine hits through the first two games, both losses. They rank 26th in MLB with 90 runs, averaging 3.75 per game, and sit dead last in home runs with just 13 this season.
“I’d say we’re putting pressure on ourselves,” Duran said. “I think that we’re just trying to do too much. We’re trying to dig ourselves out of a hole. But at the end of the day, I mean, we’re not really in a hole. It’s still early.”
With a loss, the Red Sox would sink even deeper into the American League East basement. Boston enters six games behind its archrival, the Yankees, and firmly in last place.
The team knows it’s struggling and is searching for anything to spark some life across the roster.
“We still have so much time to just play baseball,” Duran said. “And I feel like that’s when we’re at our best, is when we’re just playing. We are really young and it’s just getting through those bumps and bruises. I remember I took my bumps and bruises coming up playing in the big leagues. We’ve got some young guys that are in here for the first time and it’s just one of those things. It’s just baseball. We’re going to get through it together.”
All eyes are now on Tolle, who hasn’t pitched in a Triple-A game since April 12, when the WooSox were home against the Columbus Clippers. He went five scoreless frames, allowing three hits and a walk with six strikeouts.
In three starts for Worcester this season, Tolle is 2-0 with a 3.00 ERA, notching 19 strikeouts while walking just four in 15 innings.
Tolle returns to the big leagues, having last pitched in the postseason against the Yankees, to face Walpole, Mass. native Cam Schlittler, who has been carving up lineups since the beginning of the season.
Schittler enters Thursday’s series finale 2-1 with a 1.95 ERA with 36 strikeouts a 0.76 WHIP in 27 2/3 innings. The last time he was on the mound to face the Red Sox, it was Game 3 of the American League Wild Card round, when he dominated Boston’s lineup, tossing eight innings of shutout ball and struck out 12 batters.
Tolle can’t worry about who is opposing him on the mound, he’ll need to deal with a Yankees’ lineup that has pounded the ball the last two games. Both Amed Rosario and Giancarlo Stanton have been a problem for the Red Sox’ pitching in this series. Stanton is 4-for-8 in the series with three doubles, one homer, three RBI, and 10 total bases. Rosario drove in four runs on Wednesday, which included a three-run homer in the first inning off Ranger Suárez.
This will be a different Tolle than what Red Sox fans saw last season and the Yankees did in the postseason. The big lefty has one year of professional ball under his belt and has seen growth in his development since he was drafted in the second round of the 2024 MLB Draft out of TCU.
Tolle spent this offseason refining his pitch mix, looking to improve his secondary offerings, to play off his already lethal fastball that tops out at 100 mph and sits regularly around 96 mph. He threw his fastball 64.1% of the time in the majors last season and after opposing hitters saw him once through the lineup, they were able to expose his secondary offerings.
One area of emphasis has been his sinker, a pitch he’s worked to develop as another weapon to play off his fastball and round out his arsenal.
“We know that big league Payton has to have those pitches, and the way that they've been going right now, I feel like just getting more feel for them,” Tolle said to Boston Sports Journal this week at Polar Park. “I feel like I’ve shown it in the past two games of getting the changeups in zone and it really giving hitters trouble.
“Another thing that’s nice, is having the sinker being a third pitch," he added. "That can be thrown in zone, instead of just the fastball and slider/cutter from last year.”
Red Sox pitching coach Andrew Bailey believes Tolle’s pitch mix will translate at the big league level and isn’t concerned about his ability to handle a starter’s workload. He’s especially encouraged by the development of Tolle’s sinker.
“When we first approached him with the development of the sinker idea of this offseason, it's really about accentuating what he does well,” said Bailey before the game on Wednesday. “We know he has elite extension, elite four-seam; how do we tap into that a little bit more to give hitters a different look?
“A lot of people tend to go off-speed pitches," Bailey added. "There's another unlock here, potentially, if we can, we can master the two-seam to kind of tunnel off the four-seam and the cutter and just go the opposite direction and then take some ease off of the curveball and on the change-up,” added Bailey. “We know we want to use those in the bottom of the zone and maybe grab a strike here and there, but really just tap into what he does well to give him another weapon.”
Tolle believes the adjustments he’s made have him ready to face big league batters.
“It’s not my first year coming up,” said Tolle. “Being able to be there last year, the same coaches, same group of players, it creates better conversations, better questions to be asked, and forces me to be better.”
The left-hander hasn’t pitched in a minor league game in 11 days and is eager to get back on the mound against live hitters. It’s unclear if the Red Sox will put him on a pitch or innings limit, but if Tolle can provide at least six innings in the series finale, it would be a significant boost for Boston, which remains undefeated this season when a starter goes six or more.