Friday night felt like a movie at Fenway Park, and Ceddanne Rafaela was the main character for the Boston Red Sox.
Rafaela hit a walk-off blast over the Green Monster to give Boston its eighth-straight victory. The 24-year-old center fielder sat back on a down-and-in slider from Tampa Bay Rays closer Pete Fairbanks and lifted the Red Sox to the apex of their season so far.
Rafaela is in a special zone right now. Over the last seven games, he’s 12-for-27 (.444) with four home runs, four doubles, 14 RBI, and eight runs.
Red Sox All-Star third baseman Alex Bregman, who returned to the lineup on Friday, didn’t hold back in praising Rafaela after the game.
“I feel he’s been one of the best players in baseball over the last month and a half, two months, doing it in every phase of the game,” Bregman said, per MassLive’s Christopher Smith.
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Bregman is partially to credit for Rafaela’s hot stretch, as a new report from The Athletic’s Jen McCaffrey revealed earlier on Friday.
“Ceddanne Rafaela’s .989 OPS since late May coincided with cage work he did with Alex Bregman,” McCaffrey wrote. “He hears Bregman’s voice in his head at the plate.”
Per McCaffrey, Rafaela said of Bregman that, “Every time he comes talk to me I just go do what he says and something good happens.”
Rafaela is now batting .271 with a .791 OPS, 13 home runs, 46 RBI, and 12 stolen bases to go along with elite defense. His All-Star snub is suddenly all the more glaring.
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If the Red Sox end up making the playoffs, it may end up being this win streak — defined most memorably by Rafaela’s big moment — that turned the 2025 season around. Boston leapfrogged the Rays in the American League East standings with the victory and are now 4.5 games back of the division lead entering Saturday.
