BOSTON — It’s been too quiet on the offensive front for the Red Sox of late.

They entered Saturday averaging 2.8 runs per game over 10 contests since the Rafael Devers trade. Baseball’s last team to be shut out, the Red Sox weren’t held scoreless by anyone until May 31 in Atlanta. In 10 games post-Devers, however, they’ve been shut out twice, including a 9-0 Toronto Blue Jays drubbing in Friday’s series opener.

Baseball is beautifully, maddeningly unpredictable, though.

So it was a welcome change of pace when the Red Sox scored three runs in each of the first three frame, knocked Toronto starter Chris Bassitt out of the game after two innings (plus three batters in the third), and beat the Blue Jays by a whopping 15-1.

The road to ending Boston’s longest losing streak since 2022 began with two quick outs in the bottom of the first. The third batter, Abraham Toro, was the charm. He waited out a 10-pitch at-bat before lining one to left-center for a two-out single.

The next two at-bats were over in the blink of an eye. Carlos Narváez rocketed a first-pitch single through the right side of the infield, nearly clipping Toro’s ankle as he raced to second. Wilyer Abreu wrapped his first pitch fair inside the Pesky Pole for a three-run homer.

It was the ice-breaking, floodgate-opening, table-turning hit the Red Sox badly needed.

Boston loaded the bases on a Trevor Story walk, Romy Gonzalez single, and Nick Sogard hit-by-pitch before Ceddanne Rafaela grounded into a force-out to end the inning, but in the bottom of the second, they picked up right where they left off and never let up.

Save for Jarren Duran, who was hitless, reached base three times on a pair of walks and a hit-by-pitch, and scored twice, every member of the lineup contributed at least two hits to the grand total of 18. It was Roman Anthony’s first career multi-hit game by the fifth inning, and his first three-hit game by the eighth. Gonzalez had the other three-hit performance, including a 446-foot homer to the batter’s eye. Toro’s magic number was two: two hits, two walks, two runs and two RBI.

In a welcome change of pace, it was the opponents’ turn to look lost at the plate. The Blue Jays collected six hits to the Red Sox’s 18.

While Toronto cycled through five pitchers, including catcher Tyler Heineman pitching the eighth, Lucas Giolito gave the Red Sox seven innings. He yielded one unearned run – from his own error – on six hits, walked one and struck out five on 105 pitches (72 strikes).

After his start against the Giants last weekend, Giolito told reporters he felt like his sixth and final inning had been his best of a “grinder outing.” He hadn’t found his “rhythm” until then, a frustrating thing for a pitcher whose day was over after that inning despite an 83-pitch count.

This time, Giolito was back out for the seventh, and finished it.

Over seven starts between his April 30 Red Sox debut and his June 4 start, Giolito pitched to a 6.42 ERA (though his FIP was 4.78) and averaged 3.4 earned runs per game.

In four starts since, he’s allowed six runs total, only two of them earned, over 25 innings. Each outing has been at least six innings.

The eighth inning saw left-hander Chris Murphy take the mound for the first time since September 2023.

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