ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – As Taj Bradley pitched perfectly through the first three innings, it looked like the Red Sox’s struggles at Tropicana Field – they entered the series having lost 15 of their last 16 games in the Rays’ house – would continue.

But by some unwritten rule, games between these two American League East rivals must always be unconventional and chaotic, and that was very much the case when the Red Sox shut out the Rays 5-0 on Monday night. It was their first shutout at the Trop since Sept. 1, 2021.

In nine innings that took just two hours and eight minutes to play, the Red Sox managed to incur the rare positional violation, Tanner Houck joined some elite company in the club record books, and Rafael Devers made franchise history.

The positional violation came in the bottom of the second when Jonathan Aranda ground a ball just to the right of second base. David Hamilton and Ceddanne Rafaela both dove, and Rafaela was able to grab the ball and make the throw for the out at first.

Only, Rafaela had been standing to the right of second base when Houck had thrown the pitch, verboten under the shift-restriction rules that took effect last year. The Rays successfully challenged the call, and because Houck had already thrown three balls in the at-bat, the automatic ball put Aranda on first with a walk.

After throwing a career-high 112 pitches when the Rays were at Fenway Park last week, Tanner Houck shut them out for seven innings on Monday. They managed just two hits and one walk, and struck out five times. He got the Rays 1-2-3 in six of seven frames. Justin Slaten pitched the remaining two innings, a strong bounce-back performance after struggling in St. Louis on Saturday night.

“Tanner was amazing, Slaten did an amazing job, we were able to reset,” Cora said. “(Houck) threw 112 in the last one… and he faced the same team and he dominated. He threw strikes, he kept them off-balance, we played good defense behind him.”

“Last outing, too many free passes,” he said of his previous start (also against the Rays) on May 15, when he allowed three runs, one earned, on five hits, walked three, hit a batter, and struck out seven, but only went 5.2 innings, snapping a streak of five starts of at least six. “That was the focus in-between outings, just getting back in the zone and filling it up with all my pitches and just trusting the stuff. I felt like I accomplished that pretty well tonight.”

According to the club’s media relations, Houck is the 11th Red Sox pitcher in the Live Ball Era (since 1920) to record a sub-2.00 ERA over his first 10 starts of the season, and the first since Clay Buchholz in 2013. He’s gone at least 5.2 innings in each start, and at least six in eight of them.

“That’s what horses do,” Cora said. “They understand where we’re at bullpen-wise, and you gotta go seven, and he did.”

Bradley struck out eight of nine batters faced over a perfect first three innings. He’d end up going a full seven, but the second time through the lineup was a rude awakening. Jarren Duran led off the top of the fourth with his Major League-leading eighth triple of the season and quickly scored on Wilyer Abreu’s double, giving Boston a permanent advantage.

Then, history. On the second pitch of his second at-bat against Bradley, Devers sent a fastball soaring into the left-field stands, making him the first player in Red Sox history to homer in six consecutive games.

“He’s a freak,” Houck said with a smile. “I mean, that guy can hit any pitch at any time. To see what he’s done, I mean, he’s just an incredible player.”

Devers is the first Major Leaguer to achieve this feat since Mike Trout in 2022, a tidbit that made the Red Sox slugger smile.

“I’m very proud to be in that conversation with him,” he said via translator Carlos Villoria Benitez. “He’s a future Hall of Famer, superstar, and to be in that same level with him is pretty nice.”

But despite making history, neither Devers nor Cora is satisfied.

“He’s not there yet, I don’t think he’s there yet, probably if you ask him, he’s not there yet,” Cora said. “He knows he needs to be more consistent, and that’s what we’re trying to accomplish.”

“It’s impressive. I’m not taking away from what he’s doing,” the Sox skipper added. “He understands that there’s more there, consistency and all that stuff, but the accomplishment is amazing. Six days in a row hitting homers? Shoot, I can’t recall how many days in a row I got hits when I played.”

“Yeah, I’ve been only hitting one hit per game, and that’s not me,” Devers agreed. “I like to get more singles and I feel like I’ve been missing a lot of pitches, so for me to be myself, I need to get more hits per game instead of just one per game. Of course, they are very important hits, but at the same time, I’m not up there yet.”

The Red Sox only tallied seven hits, but they made them count. In the fifth, Rafaela’s fifth home run of the year plated another two runs. Thanks to the dominant pitching and defense, Boston had more than enough.

For Devers, hitting a historic home run wasn’t even the best part of his night. It was the successful turning of a 6-5-3 double play in the bottom of the seventh, which erased Josh Lowe’s leadoff single and cemented Houck’s shutout start.

“The double play, for me, was a very important play,” he said. “And at the same time, we’ve been making a lot of errors, we haven’t been communicating as well, and for us to make that play in that situation, it was huge.”

Devers has been known as a bat-first player throughout his career. He has a tendency to make extremely complicated plays look effortless, while it’s often the more basic outs that trip him up. But the in-game results belie how hard he works to improve defensively, including practicing that exact type of play every day.

“They work on that every single day, and it never happens,” Cora said. “Finally, they had a chance.”

The Red Sox are back at .500. They lead the Majors with seven team shutouts, two more than they had all last season.

“It was fun,” their manager said. “A well-played baseball game.”

Surgery a possibility for Whitlock

The elbow soreness Garrett Whitlock felt after his rehab start last week could sideline him for a prolonged period of time.

“There’s damage on the ligament, so there’s a possibility that he’s gonna get surgery,” Cora updated after Monday’s game.

Whitlock will fly to see Dr. Jeffrey Dugas in Alabama this week to determine next steps.