Johnson fired six scoreless innings, allowing three hits and one walk while striking out six for short-season Lowell on Tuesday.
Johnson, whose pro career started in 2012 at Lowell, continues his comeback from an anxiety issue, which is chronicled by the Boston Globe's Alex Speier. He's made four starts, two apiece in the rookie Gulf Coast League and the short-season New York-Penn League, and the results have been encouraging: three runs allowed on 14 hits and four walks with 20 strikeouts in 18 innings. The command problems that characterized his starts early in the season at Triple-A Pawtucket are gone and so, too, the crushing burden he carried with him since early 2015 when he was on the brink of MLB. At this point, there's no timetable for his return to Pawtucket -- Johnson's still building arm strength and stamina after a period of downtime -- but he's showing signs of what made him so highly regarded by the Red Sox.