March 27, 2025: Wilyer Abreu homers twice on Opening Day as Red Sox beat Rangers

Boston Red Sox right fielder Wilyer Abreu was just 1-for-20 in spring training in 2025.1 He missed much of the preseason with a gastrointestinal virus. His first spring appearance was at Fort Myers, Florida on March 16; he was 0-for-2 in that game. A day later—and 10 days before the Red Sox March 27 season opener with the Texas Rangers— his wife Kelly gave birth to twin boys, Noah and Noe.2 He played in only six spring training games.

The one Grapefruit League hit the 25-year-old Abreu had was a solo home run during a 14-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays at Port Charlotte, Florida on March 22. When the team traveled to Monterrey, Mexico for exhibition games on March 24 and 25, Abreu remained in Fort Myers. Others who stayed behind, in order to get a few more at-bats in minor-league games, were Rafael Devers, Trevor Story, Ceddanne Rafaela, and Carlos Narváez. They rejoined the team in Texas on March 26.

Abreu was one of the bright stars the Red Sox hoped would for a shine in 2025 and beyond. A native of Maracaibo, Venezuela, he had been signed by the Houston Astros in 2017 and traded to the Red Sox in August 2022, in the deal that sent catcher Christian Vázquez to Houston.3 After playing out the rest of the 2022 season with Boston’s Double-A team in Portland, Abreu spent most of 2023 with Triple-A Worcester. His major-league debut was on August 22, 2023, and he went 2-for-3. He hit .316 in 28 games.

Abreu’s official rookie year was 2024, and he earned a Gold Glove in right field as well as placing sixth in the American League Rookie of the Year voting. He hit .253, with 15 homers and 58 runs batted in.

By Opening Day 2025, the health problems he suffered earlier in springtime had subsided. The Boston Globe’s Julian McWilliams wrote on the morning of the season opener: “Abreu is a magnet to the ball in right field and plays the game all out, much like teammate Jarren Duran.”4

The Red Sox had won exactly half their games in 2024, 81-81, finishing third in the AL East Division, 13 games behind the New York Yankees. The Rangers, defending their 2023 World Series championship, had gone 78-84, third in the AL West Division, 10½ games behind the first-place Astros.

The starting pitcher for manager Bruce Bochy’s Rangers was veteran right-hander Nathan Eovaldi. The 35-year-old Eovaldi had spent five seasons (2018-2022) with the Red Sox, earning a World Series championship ring in 2018. He had worked in six postseason games that year, with a 1.61 ERA over 22⅓ innings. He’d been an All-Star with the Red Sox in 2021 and the Rangers in 2023, when he received his second World Series ring. This was his fifth Opening Day start, three with Boston (2020-2022) and one with Texas in 2024.

Eovaldi disposed of the Red Sox in the top of the first inning on two groundouts, bracketing a strikeout of Devers.

Garrett Crochet was a 25-year-old left-hander starting his first game for manager Alex Cora and the Red Sox. He’d begun as a reliever with five games for the Chicago White Sox in 2020, working 54 games with a 2.82 ERA in 2021, but then missing all of 2022 after undergoing Tommy John surgery. Converted to a starter in 2024, he was 6-12 (3.58) for the last-place White Sox. Still, he pitched well enough to be their representative to that year’s All-Star squad and be named the AL Comeback Player of the Year—and to attract the attention of the Red Sox, who traded four players for him that December. 

Crochet pitched around a two-out nine-pitch walk to Wyatt Langford for a scoreless first.

Eovaldi faced three Red Sox in the second and struck out all three, capping the inning with a strikeout of second baseman Kristian Campbell in his first major-league at-bat.

In the bottom of the inning, an eight-pitch walk to first baseman Jake Burger, acquired in a December 2024 trade with the Miami Marlins, put the Rangers’ first batter on base. One out later, Burger took second base when Josh Jung’s hit struck the right-field wall for a single. Burger then scored when Kevin Pillar—half a decade removed from his 30-game stint with the 2020 Red Sox—singled up the middle. Crochet cracked down and got the next three. 1-0, Rangers.

Abreu led off Boston’s third with a single to the right of Burger at first. When catcher Connor Wong singled to center, Abreu ran first to third, then scored on a forceout, short to second, by Raffaela. Eovaldi retired the next two batters, but the score was tied, 1-1.

The Rangers took the lead again in the fourth, 2-1, on the strength of hits by two offseason free-agent signings. Pillar, a Los Angeles Angel in 2024, dropped a single into left-center, and catcher Kyle Higashioka, previously with the San Diego Padres, doubled off the base of the wall in deep center.

With one out in the fifth, Abreu re-tied the game slugging a solo home run some 15-20 rows deep into the seats right field, estimated at 415 feet.5

Marcus Semien singled to lead off the fifth for Texas, but a 3-6-3 double play and a groundout, third to first, left the score 2-2.

As he had done in the second inning, Eovaldi struck out the side again in the sixth, all three Ks on swinging third strikes. With nine strikeouts, Eovaldi had tied a Rangers team record for Opening Day strikeouts.6 He had pitched a very strong game, with just three hits allowed and no bases on balls. 

Garrett Whitlock relieved Crochet and allowed just a harmless two-out single.

Robert Garcia took over from Eovaldi and struggled, with a two-out walk, a balk, and then another walk (to Abreu on nine pitches). Thirty-eight-year-old Chris Martin, with the Red Sox in 2023 and 2024, relieved Garcia and struck out Wong to strand the runners.

Each team had a single in the eighth; the Rangers single came off Red Sox reliever Aroldis Chapman, a 16-year veteran who had signed as a free agent after spending 2024 with the Pittsburgh Pirates. It was the 797th appearance of Chapman’s career, all in relief. The score remained tied.

Veteran right-hander Luke Jackson relieved Martin in the top of the ninth. Leadoff batter Triston Casas was out on a called third strike, but Story worked a nine-pitch walk. With Campbell at bat, Story stole second. Two pitches later, Story took third on Campbell’s first big-league hit, a single that took an unexpected hop and glanced off third baseman Jung’s glove.7

Abreu took Jackson’s first pitch for ball one. He hammered the next pitch for a three-run homer into the Rangers bullpen in right-center, some 394 feet away from the plate.8 It was his second home run of the game. He was 3-for-3 with three runs scored, and the Red Sox led, 5-2. Abreu had scored the first run, then driven in the next four of the five runs.

Justin Slaten took over from Chapman, charged with getting the three outs the Red Sox needed to win the game. The former Rangers farmhand struck out Jung on three pitches, got pinch-hitter Joc Pedersen to line out to center, and then got Higashioka to fly out deep to center to end the game.9

“A very special start for me,” Abreu said postgame. “Even better when you can start the season with a win like this.”10

Writing for Lone Star Ball, billed as “A Texas Rangers Community,” Christopher Fittz remarked that Abreu “lit up the Rangers at The Shed last year as well. Abreu, who had three hits total today, has now hit five home runs in five career games in Arlington.”11 Indeed, Abreu had homered once on August 2, 2024, and driven in two, then homered twice with four RBIs on August 4, helping win the two games 11-6 and 7-2.12

With his two home runs on Opening Day, Abreu joined a small group of other Red Sox batters who had done so. The first was Ted Lepcio (April 12, 1955), followed by Lenny Green (April 12, 1965), Carl Yastrzemski (April 10, 1968), Carlton Fisk (April 6, 1973), and Dustin Pedroia and Hanley Ramírez (both in the same Opening Day game on April 6, 2015). 

Abreu finished the 2025 season with 22 home runs and 69 RBIs. The Red Sox came in third in the AL East at 89-73, then lost to the Yankees in the AL Wild Card round, two games to one.13

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Keith Thursby.

Photo credit: Wilyer Abreu, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, Stathead.com and highlights of the game on YouTube.com.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TEX/TEX202503270.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2025/B03270TEX2025.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scNmIodkvXw

Thanks to Jason Scheller for supplying Dallas-Fort Worth area newspaper coverage.

Notes

1 Ian Browne, “Abreu honors twin sons, powers Sox with pair of HRs on Opening Day,” MLB.com, March 27, 2025. https://www.mlb.com/news/wilyer-abreu-two-homers-red-sox-win-opening-day-2025.

2 Peter Abraham, “Smashing Start,” Boston Globe, March 28, 2025: C1.

3 On August 1, 2022, Abreu and Enmanuel Valdez were traded to the Red Sox for Vázquez.

4 Julian McWilliams, “Wait is Over: Meet Red Sox for Opening Day,” Boston Globe, March 27, 2025: C2.

5 Browne.

6 Four Rangers pitchers had also struck on nine batters on Opening Day: Nolan Ryan in 1991, Colby Lewis in 2012, Matt Harrison in 2013, and Lance Lynn in 2020. Lawrence Dow, “Texas Rangers lose at home on Opening Day, 5-2, to the Boston Red Sox,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 27, 2025. https://www.star-telegram.com/sports/mlb/texas-rangers/article302754994.html. Accessed January 17, 2026. See also Tribune News Service, “Rangers fall to Red Sox on opening day,” Longview (Texas) News Journal, March 28, 2025: 1B.

7 “Kristian Campbell’s First MLB Hit,” MLB.com, March 27, 2025, https://www.mlb.com/video/kristian-campbell-singles-on-a-ground-ball-to-left-fielder-wyatt-langford?q=3%2F27%2F2025%20bos&cp=CMS_FIRST&qt=FREETEXT&p=0.

8 “Wilyer Abreu’s Go-Ahead Home Run (2),” MLB.com, March 27, 2025, https://www.mlb.com/video/wilyer-abreu-homers-2-on-a-line-drive-to-right-center-field-trevor-story?partnerId=web_video-playback-page_video-share.

9 The Rangers had selected Slaten in the third round of the June 2019 amateur draft, then lost him to the New York Mets in the December 2023 Rule 5 Draft. The Mets traded Slaten to the Red Sox after drafting him, and he debuted in the major leagues with Boston in 2024.

10 Abraham.

11 Christopher Fittz, “Opening Day Ruined by Red Sox as Rangers Fall 5-2,” Lone Star Ball, March 27, 2025. https://www.lonestarball.com/2025/3/27/24395499/opening-day-ruined-by-boston-red-sox-as-texas-rangers-fall.

12 The first of the two homers on August 4 came off Nathan Eovaldi, the day after Abreu’s grandmother had died. “Abreu broke down crying in the clubhouse last season. This time it was all smiled and laughter.” He “joked that once [he had] hit the first homer, he needed another one to make both babies happy.” Peter Abraham, “Smashing Start.” In his other career game in Texas, he had been a pinch-runner on September 20, 2023, and not had a plate appearance.

13 The Rangers went 81-81 in 2025, third place in the AL West.