How is the Red Sox rotation shaping up for the stretch run?
COMMENTARY
There have been times this year when I’ve felt a 2013 Tigers vibe from these 2017 Red Sox. Each team had a dominant ace (Chris Sale, Max Scherzer), a lineup full of accomplished hitters, a thin bench, and a bullpen you didn’t completely trust (though the Tigers had nothing resembling Craig Kimbrel at the back end.) It’s almost as if the same guy put the teams together.
Oh, and one other similarity: For both teams, Doug Fister was much better than Rick Porcello.
Yep, it sure has been a strange season for the Red Sox starting rotation. Not much has gone according to plan. Porcello, who won the Cy Young Award last year, could lose 20 this year, not that the Red Sox will allow him to. Meanwhile, Fister — who shut down the Red Sox in Game 4 of the 2013 American League Championship Series — has emerged from the scrapheap to become one of Boston’s three most reliable starters.
I think we all knew Fister and Drew Pomeranz would join Chris Sale in that “Big Three’’ while David Price and Porcello would not, right? Sure we did. With the Red Sox looking steady in their quest for the AL East title, it seems like a good time to take a spin through the rotation and assess what they really have here.
Porcello: There’s a common and unsurprising thread through many of the flukier Cy Young Award-winning seasons by starting pitchers: They won a lot of games, usually for very good teams, allowing them to overshadow pitchers who were better but won less.
A few examples: Steve Stone went 25-7 with a 3.23 ERA for the 1980 Orioles. The A’s Mike Norris, who won 22 games, and the Royals’ Larry Gura had more value per WAR, but 25 wins was a blinking VOTE FOR ME sign to the BBWAA then, and probably still would be. Stone won four more games in his major league career after that season.
Pete Vuckovich (who later delivered an Oscar-worthy performance as Yankees slugger Clu Haywood in “Major League’’) went 18-6 in 1982 with the AL East-winning Brewers, edging Orioles ace Jim Palmer. Vuckovich won despite a 105-102 K/BB ratio and a 1.50 WHIP. Those wall-banging Brewers sure knew how to support a pitcher.
In ’83, 24-game winner LaMarr Hoyt was the AL honoree, despite a few pitchers — including the Yankees’ Ron Guidry, the Tigers’ Jack Morris, and Hoyt’s teammate, 22-game-winner Richard Dotson — having superior all-around seasons.
Then there’s the one that still gets to Red Sox fans — at least those who didn’t banish Roger Clemens from their memories when he put on the pinstripes. In 1990, the A’s Bob Welch was worth 3.0 wins above replacement when he won the AL Cy Young Award. Runner-up Clemens was worth 10.6 WAR. Clemens had a 1.93 ERA, more than a run lower than Welch’s 2.95. He allowed 19 fewer homers (26-7). He struck out 209 to Welch’s 127. He had more shutouts, complete games, a lower WHIP, fewer walks, and the same number of losses (6).
Why did Welch win the award? He won 27 games, to Clemens’s mere 21. Clemens might have won 30 if he’d had that bashing Oakland offense behind him.
How does this all connect to Porcello, who won 22 games last season? Let’s put it this way: I think we can all acknowledge now that Kate Upton had a point.
Fister: Sure, we all saw this coming. The lanky 33-year-old righty couldn’t get a big-league job after posting a 4.64 ERA with the Astros last season, then caught on with the Angels in May but wasn’t impressive enough in Triple A to warrant a call-up. He joined the shorthanded Sox on waivers in June, provided a Sean O’Sullivan-like 6.23 ERA through his first five appearances . . . and suddenly became not just replacement-level or reliable, but really, really good.
Over his last nine appearances (seven starts) since June 23, he has allowed just 37 hits in 52 innings, with 47 strikeouts and a 2.94 ERA. I’m not sure I completely trust that this will continue, but I want him in the rotation over a certain reigning Cy Young winner come October.
Chris Sale: September is traditionally his worst month (career 3.73 ERA). He’s actually off to a good start this September (2.61 ERA in two appearances) after a relatively shaky August (4.38 ERA). Recency bias tells us not to sweat it, though — he looked like his dominating self in his gem against the Rays Saturday.
Not sure if it’s been noticed much around here, but it’s not a guarantee that the Red Sox have a second straight Cy Young winner. Sale leads the AL in wins (16), innings (195⅔), strikeouts (278), and K/9 (12.8). But the Indians’ Corey Kluber leads in ERA (2.56) and WHIP (0.889), has just one fewer win, has been worth more WAR (6.8 to 5.8), and plays for a team the seems to have forgotten how to lose.
I think Sale will win, but it’s going to be close. Imagine these two going head-to-head in the playoffs.
Drew Pomeranz: Unless some of you old-timers finally acknowledge being really excited at the time about the 1971 swap of Sparky Lyle for Danny Cater, I can’t think of a Red Sox deal that has changed so drastically in perception over such a short time.
If there were any Red Sox fans who liked this deal a year ago, before Anderson Espinoza, the highly regarded prospect sent to the Padres for Pomeranz, had a scar on his elbow, they kept it to themselves. Heck, the consensus among us was for Dave Dombrowski to accept MLB’s offer to reverse the trade after it was revealed that the Padres were not totally forthcoming on Pomeranz’s health.
Well, here we are a year later, and Espinoza has undergone Tommy John surgery before throwing a single pitch above Single A. Meanwhile, Pomeranz is a 27-year-old lefty with a first-round-pick pedigree, a killer breaking ball, and a stat line (15 wins, 3.35 ERA, 161 strikeouts) that we expected from Price.
Dombrowski doesn’t seem like the gloating type. But he sure has bragging rights about this one.
Eduardo Rodriguez: We’re still finding out what he is and what he will be, and the mystery in the outcome is evidenced by his mishmash of a most-similar-pitchers list through age 23 on baseball-reference.com. The top five: Brian Matusz, Bob Sykes, Martin Perez, Jon Niese . . . and Andy Pettitte.
Right now, he remains a talented enigma, one whose strikeout rate is above one per inning for the first time in his career, and yet one who has given up 17 homers in 116⅓ innings. Say this for him: He’s at least better than Felix Doubront ever was, and Doubront helped the Red Sox win a World Series.
Price: Man, that segment of Red Sox fans who take their cues from radio bloviators must feel really foolish now, right? I mean, if I had the hubris to believe that a competitive, successful professional athlete was faking an injury just to avoid getting booed by a few local leather-lungs — as was the cynical theory when Price went on the DL in late July — and it turned out he really was hurt and seven weeks later he still hadn’t thrown a pitch that matters, I’d probably reconsider some things. Maybe even start thinking for myself once in a while.
It looks like Price’s best hope to contribute this year is to come out of the bullpen as some sort of relief ace. Hey, both of his playoff wins are in relief, and we all remember how he smoked helpless J.D. Drew in Game 7 of the ALCS in ’08.
If the long odds pay off and there’s a Red Sox-Nationals matchup in the World Series, Stephen Drew had better be nervous.
