June 30, 2025: Boston’s Wilyer Abreu hits inside-the-park home run and grand slam in same game

During the seven-run rally the Boston Red Sox mounted in the first inning of their home game against the Cincinnati Reds on June 30, 2025, right fielder Wilyer Abreu grounded out, second to first. He led off the bottom of the second inning and grounded out to first base, unassisted.

It was Abreu’s third time up when he made a mark on offense, as he led off the fifth inning with an inside-the-park home run to right field. In the eighth, Abreu put the game out of reach with a grand slam to deep right-center, doubling the Red Sox’ four-run lead in their eventual 13-6 win.  He was the first player to hit a grand slam and an inside-the-park homer in the same game since 1958, and only the second in the long history of the Red Sox franchise.

The Reds had come to Fenway Park for a three-game series, which opened on a Monday night. Fifty years earlier, Cincinnati had beaten the Red Sox in the seven-game 1975 World Series. In 23 interleague games between the two teams from 2005 through 2024, Boston had won 17 times. The Cincinnati Enquirer noted that Boston’s regular-season success against the Reds was the second-best record of any team against a single opponent, behind only the Seattle Mariners’ 21-6 record against the Reds.1

Both clubs were in fourth place in their respective divisions in 2025. With seven losses in their last eight games, the Red Sox were eight games behind the first-place New York Yankees in the American League East Division, while the Reds were five games behind the front-running Chicago Cubs in the National League Central Division.

Red Sox manager Alex Cora started left-hander Garrett Crochet, who was 7-4 with a 2.06 ERA. All seven of his wins were on the road; Crochet was 0-3 at Fenway, with his teammates scoring a total of six runs in the three losses. After a deep fly-ball out to begin the game, Crochet struck out the next two batters. 

Terry Francona, manager of the 2004 and 2007 World Series champion Red Sox, was piloting the Reds after a season of retirement.2 The 66-year-old Francona’s starter was 22-year-old right-hander Chase Burns, in just his second major-league game. Selected second overall in the June 2024 Amateur Draft, Burns had debuted against the Yankees on June 24 and given up three runs in five innings in Cincinnati’s eventual 11-inning walk-off win. Burns struck out eight Yankees in that game, including five in succession – the first five batters he faced in his major-league career.

In Boston, Burns recorded only one out before he was knocked out of the box. His first seven pitches resulted in a base on balls for left fielder Jarren Duran. Rookie Roman Anthony, starting at DH, hit a grounder to second base, but Matt McLain’s throw to shortstop Elly De La Cruz was off target and the Red Sox wound up with runners on first and third. First baseman Abraham Toro lined a single to left, driving in the first run of the game.

Catcher Carlos Narváez doubled off the Green Monster halfway up the wall in left-center, producing another run. After Abreu grounded out, Trevor Story hit a three-run homer to straightaway center field, two or three rows deep in the bleachers, his 12th home run of the season. It was a 5-0 game.

Rookie third baseman Marcelo Mayer doubled high off the wall in left. David Hamilton singled to center, to the right of a diving McLain; Mayer was waved home and scored. On Burns’ first pitch to center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela, Hamilton stole second. On Burns’ seventh pitch to Rafaela, the batter worked a walk.

Francona had seen enough. He brought in a veteran reliever, left-hander Brent Suter. Duran struck out. Anthony grounded a single to the right of diving first baseman Christian Encarnacion-Strand. Hamilton scored, and the Red Sox had a 7-0 lead. Toro walked. Narváez lined out to second base.

After the lengthy half-inning, Crochet picked up where he had left off, with two more strikeouts bracketing a 5-3 groundout. He pitched another clean inning in the third.

Center fielder TJ Friedl’s infield grounder to open the Reds’ fourth inning made it 10 outs in a row for Crochet, but then Cincinnati rallied. McLain doubled to left-center, and De La Cruz reached on an infield single to short. Next up was the DH, Austin Hays, who had slugged .534 in 36 career games at Fenway Park as a Baltimore Oriole before signing with the Reds as a free agent in January 2025. Hays tripled to the triangle in center, the ball glancing off Rafaela’s glove to score McLain. The third Reds run of the inning came on the next pitch when left fielder Spencer Steer grounded out, third to first.

The Reds made it 7-4 the following inning with three consecutive singles—the third one off the left-field scoreboard by McLain. They might have scored more, but the swift De La Cruz slipped getting out of the box and was the second out of an inning-ending double play. 

After Cincinnati’s Suter put up scoreless innings in the second and third, lefty Joe La Sorsa threw an uneventful fourth. Abreu led off the fifth, and on La Sorsa’s two-strike pitch, he hit a drive to center. As the Boston Globe reported, the ball “somehow banged off the mesh just below the railing that connects the Red Sox bullpen to the 420-foot marker, then sprang over [Friedl’s] head.”3

Friedl slipped, and Abreu, who had celebrated his 26th birthday six days earlier, circled the bases for his first career inside-the-parker. The Red Sox lead was 8-4.

“As soon as I tried to plant and stop to play it off of that corner, my left foot slipped out,” Friedl said afterwards.4

The Reds had a quick answer in the top of the sixth. Hays led off by homering into the center-field bleachers, his seventh of the season and eighth lifetime at Fenway Park. Crochet rebounded by striking out his eighth and ninth batters of the game and getting a popup to second base.

When the Red Sox batted in their half of the sixth, the leadoff batter homered for the third half-inning in a row. This time Jarren Duran hit one down the line in right, high and deep and just fair past the Pesky Pole. It restored Boston’s four-run lead at 9-5.

With two outs and Narváez on first base, Francona had Connor Phillips replace La Sorsa. Abreu flied out to deep center.

Greg Weissert relieved Crochet to start the seventh inning. Though he hit the first batter and walked the fourth, the Reds went scoreless. 

The only batter to reach base in Boston’s seventh was Mayer, who singled but was caught stealing by catcher Tyler Stephenson.

Veteran righty Jordan Hicks, who had come to Boston in the deal that sent Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants on June 15, made his Red Sox debut with a perfect eighth.

In the bottom of the eighth, with Phillips still pitching, Rafaela led off with a double. Duran walked. Roman Anthony took a called third strike. Toro walked, loading the bases with one out. Narváez struck out on three pitches.

Phillips threw the next pitch right over the plate, too, but Abreu hit it into the Red Sox bullpen. It was his first grand slam of the year, and Boston had broken the game open at 13-5.

Jose Trevino—regularly a catcher—replaced Phillips, walked the first batter and struck out the next.  

In the top of the ninth, Jorge Alcala, who had been traded to Boston by the Minnesota Twins about three weeks earlier, became the fourth Red Sox pitcher.  Encarnacion-Strand singled to left. Santiago Espinal struck out. On a wild pitch, Encarnacion-Strand took second base. He tagged and went to third on a fly ball to right field, then scored when Matt McLain singled to the pitcher. It was 13-6, but De La Cruz hit a routine fly ball to left to end the game.

Crochet booked his first career Fenway Park win despite giving up five runs–tied for the second-most he surrendered all year. He finished the season with an 18-5 record and 2.59 ERA and was second in the AL Cy Young Award voting to Tarik Skubal of the Detroit Tigers.

Abreu became the first batter to hit a grand slam and an inside-the-park homer in the same game since Roger Maris with the Kansas City Athletics in 1958. Only six players had accomplished the feat through June 2026, with Jim Tabor of the Red Sox also pulling it off on July 4, 1939—a game in which he collected two grand slams and an inside-the-park homer.5

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Victoria Monte and copy-edited by Mike Eisenbath.

Photo credit: Wilyer Abreu, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and highlights of the game on YouTube.com. Thanks to John Snyder for providing Cincinnati Enquirer coverage.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS202506300.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2025/B06300BOS2025.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paUw6IL87Ss

Notes

1 Gordon Wittenmyer, “Red Sox rout Burns, Reds in top prospect’s first bad start,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 2, 2025: D3.

2 Francona had managed the Red Sox from 2004 until he was fired after the 2011 season. He then managed the Cleveland Indians/Guardians from 2013 through 2023.

3 Alex Speier, “Smashing good time,” Boston Globe, July 1, 2025: C1, C3.

4 Wittenmyer. Friedl added, regarding the triangle area in center field to the left of the Boston bullpen, “I don’t know how many games it would take to get comfortable here, but there’s so many quirks in the outfield and the wall and corners. Just the way it bounces off the wall, and there’s a ladder on the wall – there’s a bunch of things where it can bounce in every different direction.”

5 Maris had done so on August 3, 1958. The four players who preceded Maris with the same feat were: Tabor, Charlie Gehringer for the Tigers on August 4, 1930 (winning the game with a walkoff slam in the 12th), Everett Scott for the Yankees in the first game of a July 4, 1923, doubleheader, and Jocko Fields for Pittsburgh of the Players’ League on June 5, 1890. Tabor actually hit two grand slams as well as an IPHR in the 1939 game – the second game of a doubleheader. He homered in the first game as well, a day in which the Red Sox scored 35 runs, 17 in the first game and 18 in the second. Unsurprisingly, they swept the Philadelphia Athletics at Shibe Park, 17-7 and 18-12, despite clearly their pitching staff not having its best day.