“He wasn’t locked in. That’s the bottom line. Now he’s locked in,” said Cora. “He’s staying on fastballs, using the whole field, not chasing pitches, hitting the ball the other way. That’s locked in … Now, he’s very dangerous.”
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Devers (.288/.380/.576 with 13 homers) is off to one of the best starts of his career, a development that owes in no small part to a more disciplined approach that resulted in a career-low 31 percent chase rate entering Wednesday. Yet he also still possesses an absurd ability to demolish pitches nowhere near the strike zone, a notion he reinforced by golfing a Spencer Schwellenbach slider several inches below the zone over the Wall for a homer to put the Sox ahead, 1-0, in the second inning.
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“It’s almost annoying to watch him flip balls over the Monster like it’s nothing,” deadpanned teammate Jarren Duran.
It was the fifth homer of the year for Devers on a pitch out of the strike zone, giving him the second most “chase homers” in baseball this year. (Orioles slugger Anthony Santander is pacing the league with six.)
The Sox quickly added on. Tyler O’Neill, in his first game off the injured list, singled to center, advanced to second on a Dominic Smith walk, and scored when David Hamilton laced a 96-mile-per-hour Schwellenbach fastball off the base of the Wall in left-center for an RBI double. Two batters later, Reese McGuire’s sacrifice fly increased the Sox’ lead to 3-0.
Pivetta would need no more.
The righthander dominated for the second straight outing, complementing a well-located mid-90s fastball with his Spin City array of curveballs, sweepers, sliders, and cutters. The result was an Atlanta team that was unbalanced and overmatched.
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“He had everything working,” said Cora.
Pivetta allowed just one hit — an Austin Riley leadoff single in the fourth — over seven innings in which he struck out nine, walked two, and garnered a season-high 18 swings and misses in 91 pitches. Pivetta allowed just one runner to reach second base (Riley in the fourth) and retired the final 10 batters he faced. The outing was the second straight in which the righthander struck out nine.
“It’s just what I expect myself to do every single time,” said Pivetta (3-4, 3.40 ERA). “I threw a lot of strikes, made pitches that I need to make. It was easier as the game went on with guys getting on base, giving me some time to relax. I just focused on competing in-zone and allowing my stuff to work.”
Though unnecessary, the Sox offense continued to pile on. They tallied three runs in the fifth, a rally kickstarted by Duran’s one-out triple.
“My legs are tired,” Duran said after becoming the first Red Sox player with nine triples in the team’s first 62 games since Nomar Garciaparra in 2003.
Enmanuel Valdez followed with an RBI double. After Devers was intentionally walked with two outs, O’Neill added a two-out RBI single and Smith drove in Devers with a double to make it 6-0.
The game became more lopsided two innings later, when Devers went with a 98-m.p.h. fastball on the outer half of the plate from lefthanded reliever Ray Kerr and again drilled the ball into the Monster Seats for a two-run homer — the first time in his career that Devers has hit multiple opposite-field homers in a game.
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Of his 13 homers this year, four have been to the opposite field, eight have been to the middle third, and just one has been pulled. Wednesday’s performance represented the essence of Devers’s approach.
“That’s the type of hitter I am,” Devers said through a translator. “I know that if I try to pull the ball, the timing is gonna go off, so I try to hit the ball up the middle.”
Duran, evidently determined not to have to sprint, drilled a solo homer to right in the eighth to account for the final score. Red Sox relievers Zack Kelly and Brad Keller each contributed a hitless inning to close out the one-hitter — the AL-leading eighth shutout of the season by the Sox.
The victory brought the Sox back to a familiar place. : a .500 record. At 31-31, the Sox have an equal number of wins and losses for the 14thtime this year — with hopes of escaping the breakeven point over the course of four games against the MLB-worst White Sox in Chicago this weekend.
“We’ve just got to play better baseball,” said Cora. “That’s the bottom line.”
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him @alexspeier.
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