There’s a shuffle looming in the struggling Red Sox rotation
Boston's best starter to date has been Tanner Houck, but he's likely to get demoted with James Paxton due back.
COMMENTARY
Well, there’s three more days of evidence maybe there’s something here after all.
In a second straight series against a division leader, the Red Sox looked like they eminently belonged, winning two games and coming just a hit or so short in the third. Milwaukee’s looking up at someone in the NL Central on Monday morning because of it.
Of all teams, it’s at Pittsburgh — the perennial also-ran whose sweep at Fenway Park the first week of the season looks a little different now that the Pirates are 16-7.
We’re still deep in the speculative part of the season, of course. Texas atop the AL West. Arizona even with the Dodgers and Padres. None of it matters, but all of it counts, as I’m newly fond of noting.
“It’s 23 games,” manager Alex Cora told reporters Sunday. “I don’t want to say this is who we are, but it seems like this is who we are.”
The Red Sox are in the one division where mediocrity isn’t going to get them anywhere, but it at least looks like the puzzle pieces fit a little bit. The big blows in Sunday’s nine-run eighth, which made it nine come-from-behind wins in 12 wins this season, were from Justin Turner and Masataka Yoshida.
Both began the season lost in a competent offense. The old DH found it in the Tampa series. The young DH found it this week.
With Kenley Jansen as good as he’s ever been at closer, with Yu Chang playing a competent shortstop beside “no really, he plays defense now” Rafael Devers, with Jarren Duran and Alex Verdugo . . . you can talk yourself into this, can’t you?
Lord knows, every win has people trying.
Unmentioned to this point is the starting pitching. The run as a six-man rotation was better, though that only means so much when a 6.12 ERA improves your season numbers to 6.61. (Thank goodness for the A’s.)
This matters, and not merely because trailing every game after the first inning is a questionable strategy. James Paxton is scheduled to make his fifth minor league rehab appearance Tuesday in Worcester, and Thursday’s travel day after the Baltimore series was due to be the end of the six-man experiment.
These things tend to work themselves out, as Terry Francona used to say. (His MLB Network special on Sunday night was excellent, by the way.) But presuming Paxton comes through his night at Polar Park clean, with better command than he’s shown to date, then what?
In a reminder of just what three weeks of baseball means in the long term, Boston’s best starter likely gets demoted.
To be clear, Tanner Houck being the odd man out is not some grand injustice. His 4.23 FIP — an ERA-like stat that aims to iron out some of the randomness of balls put into play — is roughly a run better than any other Sox starter, but its squarely in the middle leaguewide.
He threw an excellent seven innings last week against the Twins, the longest work of his career at a time he’s got the deepest pitch mix he’s ever had. Boston’s won all four of his starts, but that’s largely a function of scoring 9, 14, 5, and 11 runs behind him.
Consider the alternative cases.
Chris Sale is penciled in the ace slot, and just had his best start of the year against Minnesota. Nick Pivetta is one of only 20 pitchers to make 30 starts each of the past two years, and though he’s pitching slightly worse than last season, they need the innings and he’s kept the Sox in all his games.
Garrett Whitlock? He wasn’t good Saturday, and has allowed nine extra-base hits in 16 innings, but the Sox have made no secret they want him in the rotation. (Maybe the conversation’s different if the bullpen was struggling, but it pointedly isn’t.)
Brayan Bello? Sunday’s start was better than his first — again, faint praise — and he’d likely go back to Worcester before taking on a bullpen role. That doesn’t seem developmentally smart.
Which leaves the obvious: Corey Kluber, with his 8.50 ERA, six homers allowed in just 18 innings, and his exemplary walk rate of a year ago gone. A flatter curveball is getting hit harder, and if not for a still-effective changeup he’s increasingly leaned on, things could be much worse.
“I think it’s probably, more than anything, adjusting my sights on where I’m starting my pitches,” Kluber told reporters after the Twins tagged him for seven runs Wednesday. “I don’t feel like there are a lot of big misses where I’m missing drastically. I think a lot of it is kind of off the edges and things like that.”
“We have to control traffic. That’s the most important thing,” Cora said. “His mechanics are always sound. He’s close to the strike zone, but they’re balls. . . . Throughout his career, he’s been to the edges, but in the strike zone.”
Four starts seems like a small sample to cut bait, even on a one-year flyer like Kluber, whose strong 2022 was centered on that excellent walk rate. It’s the eternal driver of roster decisions in spring training: Maintaining flexibility.
Are you going to quit on a pitcher who might still have more to offer? (Kluber did retire eight of his final 10 with an error Wednesday, albeit once it was 7-0.) Or are you going to keep him around and plug Houck into a role you know he can handle?
“They all want to start, that’s the bottom line,” Cora told reporters Thursday. “Wink [Josh Winckowski], Kutter [Crawford], Tanner. Obviously we can only have five, but we’ll talk about it when we have to talk about it. Competition is always good.”
Baltimore will offer that, winners of six straight. They’ve continued to run wild as they did on the opening weekend, second in the American League in steals and tops in drawn walks. Suffice to say, just the sort of team to test Kluber — and perhaps force Houck into a long-relief spot a day before an expected Wednesday start.
He’s got something to prove, just like the rest of them. The Red Sox are trying to find themselves, and actually seem like they might hang around long enough to outlast a couple winter playoff runs.
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