WooSox end Buffalo series with 5-3 win, Portland’s Brannon answers with a 465-foot homer

Worcester’s Triple-A affiliate, the WooSox, closed its series against the Buffalo Bisons with a 5-3 win on Sunday at Polar Park, winning its fourth straight and taking five of six games over the weekend. The Red Sox system’s night-long theme was simple, it started at the plate early and it finished with late-inning pitching after Worcester built a cushion in the middle innings.

Worcester scored quickly, grabbing a 1-0 lead seven pitches into the game. Braiden Ward, the leadoff hitter, started the run with a ground-rule double, and after singles and a walk loaded the bases, Matt Lloyd delivered a two-run single to push the score to 3-0. Buffalo answered with two runs in the second inning, including a solo homer by Willie MacIver and an RBI single by Carlos Mendoza, but Worcester added insurance in the second when Ward recorded an RBI double to make it 5-2.

On the mound, Michael Sansone earned the win by keeping Buffalo’s comeback at bay. He worked five innings and surrendered two runs on four hits, with one walk and five strikeouts. After Sansone left the game, Worcester’s bullpen took over, with Osvaldo Berrios pitching a scoreless sixth and Kyle Keller retiring the side in the eighth. Seth Martinez did allow a solo home run in the seventh, but Wyatt Olds finished the job in the ninth, striking out the final two Bisons to secure his first save of the season.

The victory pushed Worcester to a 32-28 record and reinforced what the club is trying to do during the first half. The recap framed the next challenge as a road test, a 13-game road trip beginning with a trip to Rochester and Lehigh Valley, and a reminder that the postseason math is still in motion. Worcester trails the first-place Rochester Red Wings by 4 1/2 games with 13 games left in the first half, which means even “routine” series have added weight over the final couple of weeks.

A day earlier in the organization’s Double-A ranks, Portland’s Portland Sea Dogs were making their own case for momentum. In a 3-1 win over the Hartford Yard Goats on June 7, Brooks Brannon joined the scoring with a late homer that cleared the Maine Monster. The game included a rain delay, but Brannon’s eighth-inning shot, measured at 115 mph off the bat and 465 feet to left field, extended Portland’s lead to 3-1 and effectively settled the outcome.

Portland’s starting pitching set the tone as well. RHP Gage Ziehl allowed just one run over six innings, striking out eight, while Ronald Rosario tied the game earlier with a solo home run and Ahbram Liendo drove in runs to keep the Sea Dogs ahead. Reidis Sena logged the save by holding Hartford hitless in the ninth.

Brannon’s power has also shown up in his broader production. His 2026 line is an OPS of 1.012, putting him over the 1.000 threshold that hitters generally view as a benchmark for elite combined on-base and slugging production. Even without any single stat doing all the work, Sunday’s homer added to a season track record that has teams in the Red Sox development pipeline watching for consistency, not just one-off distances.

The follow-through will be the real story for both clubs. Worcester now heads to Rochester, a matchup that the franchise framed as part of its first-half run at a top opponent, while Portland continues its schedule road swing to Reading after closing out the Hartford series. For Boston’s player development evaluators, the immediate question is whether the same two ingredients seen in these recaps, early baserunners and late game pitching, keep showing up when opponents tighten up.