​LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JULY 31: Wilyer Abreu #52, Jarren Duran #16 and Ceddanne Rafaela #3 of the Boston Red Sox celebrate after the final out of the ninth inning after defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium on July 31, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Getty Images) | Getty Images The trade deadline is Monday. Tonight was about winning a baseball game in Los Angeles against the best lineup in the National League. Mission accomplished.Ranger Suarez was decent enough. He went 4.2 innings, got into a jam, and left, not completely unscathed but with two down. Not a disaster—the kind of start where a pitcher does what he can and trusts the bullpen to handle the rest. Well, at least that’s the hope. Oh, Jovani Morán. He came in with men on, and the Sox actually caught a break first—Rafaela wisely nabbed Kiké Hernández overthinking things at second base, the Dodgers challenged, and the call stood. Very nice gift. Two down and one less base runner. Then Shohei Ohtani, the most dangerous hitter on the planet, doing what Ohtani does, scorched a two-run shot off him. The inning was spiraling, Boston on the wrong end of a 4-3 deficit in the fifth inning in Dodger Stadium with a murderer’s row still raring to go. The Dodgers lineup is definitely intimidating on paper.Then Brayan Bello walked out of the bullpen.Four innings. Three hits. Zero earned runs. Fifty-eight pitches. Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Kyle Tucker—the whole parade came through and Bello held every single one of them. The “saving the bullpen” angle alone is a story: Weissert didn’t throw a pitch. Whitlock didn’t throw a pitch. Chapman didn’t throw a pitch. Bello went out and protected the entire relief corps on a west coast late-night road game before the deadline. Bullpen Bello has been a revelation.Brayan Bello as SP* 8 games* 35.2 IP* 10.35 ERABrayan Bello as RP* 7 games* 39.0 IP* 0.69 ERA— Foolish Baseball (@FoolishBB) August 1, 2026The seventh inning showed the Dodgers what the 2026 Red Sox have been all about.Five runs. The Sox batted around. Rafaela hit the go-ahead bomb—a beautiful shot into the left-field bullpen, and at this point Rafaela coming up in giant moments is just in his DNA. Yoshida followed with a silly backspinning single that hugged the third base line. Durbin dropped a perfect bunt and left Max Muncy to eat his throw. Bases loaded, Andruw Monasterio—who has quietly become an extra base hit machine in this lineup—drove in two more with a double to the left-field corner. A 4-3 deficit swiftly became an 8-4 lead and Dodger Stadium had nothing to say about it.The small ball was part of the story, but it isn’t the only thread. Go back to the third inning—Yoshida brings home two runs on a bouncer that Freddie Freeman completely misread, caught in that in-between hop and just not having an answer for it. Boston cashed those runs immediately. This team doesn’t need you to hand them someth