On Sunday in St. Louis, all the Red Sox wanted to do was avoid a sweep.

They did just that and then some, salvaging the series with an 11-3 trouncing of the Cardinals.

From start to finish, it was the kind of victory Boston has been needing like oxygen. The Red Sox entered the series finale on a four-game losing streak and a season-worst two games under .500 after not falling below the line since March 30, when they went 1-2 to begin their 2024 campaign.

The Boston bats have struggled mightily to hit with men on base, but Sunday was a refreshing departure from that troubling norm (not unlike their finale victory in Minnesota exactly two weeks prior). The Red Sox tallied 14 hits – including three home runs, three doubles, and a triple – and four walks, and were 5-for-17 with runners in scoring position, only leaving six men on base.

Tyler O’Neill stole the show early on. Moments after telling the new Roku broadcast how much he was “enjoying being home for a couple days,” the outfielder drove his point home, literally. The former Cardinal demolished a 439-foot home run – his 11th of the season – which soared into the stands at 110.2 mph and gave Boston an immediate 1-0 lead in the first. (They improve to 18-8 when scoring first, and 15-11 when they hit at least one homer.)

The Red Sox continued hitting with men on base in the top of the fourth. When Cooper led off with a single and scored from first on Romy Gonzalez’s double to increase Boston’s lead to 3-0, they knocked Matthew Liberatore out of the game.

After relying heavily on their bullpen in recent games, the Cardinals needed Liberatore to give them innings. Instead, he only went three innings (facing two batters in the fourth) before St. Louis manager Oli Marmol made a call to the ‘pen.

The chaos only intensified, however, when Chris Roycroft took over. Vaughn Grissom’s lineout to right advanced Gonzalez to third, and though the Cardinals were able to tag him out on Ceddanne Rafaela’s fielder’s choice, the inning continued. Rafaela then stole second and reached third on a throwing error by catcher Pedro Pagés and scored one what was originally ruled a sun-soaked error by third baseman Nolan Arenado and later changed to Jarren Duran’s seventh triple of the season. He’s the first Red Sox player with that many triples in the team’s first 47 games of the season in 89 years (Joe Cronin, 1935), and he alone has more triples than the entire Tampa Bay Rays (5), Toronto Blue Jays (3), and New York Yankees (3) rosters.

Nick Pivetta, on the other hand, dominated in his 201st career game. He had a perfect game until Lars Nootbaar’s one-out solo home run in the fourth; undeterred, Pivetta regained his form immediately, and wouldn’t give up another hit in his six innings. The right-hander didn’t issue a walk, either, and struck out eight, bringing him within three of his 1,000th career punchout.

Pivetta needed just 72 pitches to get through his two-thirds of the contest, and with the Red Sox already leading 9-1 after the sixth – including plating multiple runs in the fourth, fifth, and sixth frames – Alex Cora saw no need to overtire his starter.

In the sixth, Rafael Devers entered rarified territory by homering in his fifth consecutive game. His 404-foot two-run blast not only extended his homer streak to a new career-high, but matched the franchise record for consecutive games with a home run; the 27-year-old slugger joins Jimmie Foxx (1940), Ted Williams (’57), Dick Stuart (’63), George Scott (’77), Jose Canseco (’95), and Bobby Dalbec (2020) in the record books.

The Cardinals made a brief rally attempt in the seventh, scoring two runs off Greg Weissert, but that was all they’d get. Cam Booser and Chris Martin pitched the final two frames and together, racked up five strikeouts while holding St. Louis to one hit. They finished the day with six hits and15 strikeouts, and failed to draw a single walk.

Boston’s starting nine routed their hosts, but the subs didn’t waste chances to put the game even further out of reach. Dom Smith went 1-for-3 with a team-leading three runs batted in, and Wilyer Abreu had a multi-hit game as Cooper’s pinch-hitter. In the top of the ninth, David Hamilton’s homer and Smith’s ground out (scoring Wong) put Boston’s run total in the double digits.

All in all, a much-needed reset button.

Now to see if they can inflict the same kind of pain on the Rays in Tampa.