Here’s what Red Sox’ Brayan Bello said after allowing 5 Orioles home runs

Bello has a team-worst 9.00 ERA through six starts.

Brayan Bello said Friday was the worst start of his career. AP Photo/Nick Wass

April 24, 2026

2 minutes to read

Friday was a continuation of an ugly stretch of baseball for the Boston Red Sox.

Coming off being swept by the New York Yankees at Fenway Park, the Red Sox fell to the Baltimore Orioles 10-3 on the road in their series opener.

The storyline of Boston’s fourth straight loss wasn’t its stagnant offense, surprisingly. It collected 10 hits on the night, one of which was a solo home run by right fielder Wilyer Abreu in the second inning.

Rather, the main takeaway was Red Sox starting pitcher Brayan Bello’s abysmal outing. He allowed three home runs in the first inning alone (on just 13 pitches) and went on to give up two more in his 3.1-inning start.

The Red Sox finding themselves in a first-inning 4-0 hole made the game feel insurmountable. It was much of the same for Boston, which has already seen its fair share of awful first innings by its starters through just 26 games.

Bello’s final line was a rough one: 3.1 innings, 13 hits (five being home runs), eight earned runs, a walk, and two strikeouts on 85 total pitches (54 strikes). His ERA climbed to 9.00 through six starts on the season (22.0 innings), which is a team-worst.

Bello was asked after the game if Friday marked his most difficult outing to date. He said it was.

“I would say so,” Bello said via a translator postgame. “A lot of hard contact, a lot of home runs. I wasn’t able to throw a scoreless inning, so I will say so.”

Bello handed it to the Orioles’ offense, though. It finished the night with a season-high 20 hits.

“They had a good game and there’s nothing you can do about it right now,” Bello said.

Bello, 26, got hit hard, as his stat line suggests. The right-hander spiked the rosin bag between batters at one point, which prompted manager Alex Cora to visit him on the mound for a chat, but not to remove him from the game. It’s a rare sight to see Cora take a mound visit without making a pitching change.

Bello expressed appreciation that Cora came out to talk to him. Bello said Cora helped calm him down as he struggled to get batters out.

“Yeah, a lot,” Bello said when asked if the meeting was positive. “I think that when I get that walk, I lost the confidence a little bit, but he came right out and reinstated that confidence back on and just motivated me to keep going.”

Cora said he wanted to talk to Bello on the mound in an attempt to save the pitcher’s confidence.

“The reason I went to the mound, it’s like, ‘We don’t need to put the head down, right? We’re here to compete, be prepared, we go out there with our best. Regardless of the situation, you gotta keep competing.’ And he actually did. I give him that, but we gotta figure it out.

“He was getting hit hard, very hard. … [The meeting] was more about, ‘Hey man, we gotta keep going. We need you. We need Brayan Bello to be good.’”

Bello also threw his glove at a bubblegum container in the dugout in frustration once he was taken out of the contest in the middle of the fourth inning.

When Brayan Bello got to the dugout, he spiked his glove off the bubble gum container a few times.

Haven't seen him lose it like that in a while. Just horrendous vibes. pic.twitter.com/KK7nZGJ9VQ
— Tyler Milliken (@tylermilliken_) April 25, 2026