Red Sox’ Payton Tolle on great start: ‘I feel like I look cool in the rain’

After first pitch was moved up by 30 minutes (to 6:10 p.m. ET) to avoid potential trouble later in the night, Tolle retired the first 12 Tigers he faced in short order, carrying a perfect game bid into the fifth inning. Riley Greene spoiled any chance at history with a rocket double to lead off that inning, but Tolle escaped unscathed. In the sixth — through little fault of his own — the affable lefty found trouble.

With rain pouring down in downtown Detroit, Tolle seemed to lose his grip on a first-pitch slider that hit Colt Keith, then walked Jahmai Jones with one out. With Matt Vierling batting, catcher Carlos Narváez tried to pick Jones off first by throwing down — but he, too, lost control of a slippery ball and airmailed Contreras. With two men in scoring position, Vierling hit a grounder at third baseman Andruw Monasterio who made Boston’s second throwing error in a matter of minutes and allowed both runs to score when his bid home was off the mark.

Suddenly down 2-0 while allowing just one hit, Tolle escaped further damage as the crowd was told to seek shelter during a period of heavy thunder and lightning at the ballpark. While the entire first deck was cleared out, the Red Sox put up a five-run inning, riding an opposite-field three-run homer by Jarren Duran to take a 5-2 lead. Tolle emerged for the seventh — marking his longest MLB appearance — and pitched a shutdown inning, retiring three batters on seven pitches.

“It gave that extra jolt of, ‘We’re here and we’re still in this,’” Tolle said about the offensive outburst. “Big swings, and I was able to take the momentum into the bottom of the inning.”

By the time Tolle was done pitching, the rain had gotten to biblical levels at Comerica. Umpires halted play one pitch into the top of the eighth, leading to a 28-minute delay as Tolle’s night ended and Garrett Whitlock entered after play resumed.

“I was thankful they kept letting me go,” Tolle said. “I thought there for a second when they told fans to go up there underneath the structure, like, ‘Are we about to call this thing?’

“I heard some of the thunder rumblings out there. I was like, ‘Let me get back out there.’ I don’t know if they pushed it or what they did, but I was happy to get out there.”

Knowing he was pitching on May 4, Tolle said he felt like he was pitching on Kamino, an aquatic planet in the Star Wars universe.

“I think it’s fun pitching in the rain,” Tolle said. “It’s not the best conditions, but I think it’s fun. I feel like I look cool, like Star Wars, Kamino. That’s a whole thing. But just having fun with it.”

The weather mattered little considering how Tolle threw the ball in his third big league start of 2026.

“I felt great. I flooded the zone well, had a good gameplan going in,” he said. “Was able to recover well this week and go out there and have a good week.”

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