Commentary

Against the contending Twins, multiple Red Sox who need to step forward more than did so

Alex Verdugo is off to a torrid start for the Red Sox, up to and including his leadoff home run on Thursday. John Tlumacki / The Boston Globe

By Jon Couture

April 21, 2023

4 minutes to read

COMMENTARY

Thursday was Fenway Park’s 111th birthday, with the park’s first official game on April 20, 1912, a late victory over the Highlanders (later to be known as the Yankees) by the Red Sox (later not to be known as the Speed Boys, Casey & Barrett’s anthem not having the sticking power of, say, New England, The Patriots and We).

To much less fanfare, Thursday at Fenway Park was another cherished holiday, The School Vacation Game. It’s the end of April break in Massachusetts, and a mid-week, homestand-wrapping matinee is the perfect chance to get the kids to the park. At least in years that don’t include a freebie, 12-minute game.

The kids ran the bases in the late afternoon beneath a cloudless sky, everyone happy after the home team won a series against an honest-to-goodness division leader to reclaim .500. Single games and even single series can trick the mind, but few teams better fit their record than this mediocre bunch.

But Thursday specifically was laden with promise in a lot of places this team needs it, beginning with Tanner Houck.

Days after his staff brother Garrett Whitlock’s three-hit gem against the Angels, Houck was just as good, though the numbers aren’t entirely there after Willi Castro tagged him for a two-run homer in the seventh.

It was 10-1, and thus forgivable. The Sox are 4-0 in Houck starts, and while that has a lot to do with scoring 39 runs in those four games, he’s more than doing his part.

“Very aggressive in the zone. Set the tempo for that outing in the first inning,” manager Alex Cora told reporters. “If he can harness his stuff in the strike zone, he can go deeper into the game. … [if he’s] efficient, the stuff is going to be better.”

Houck arrived, and was a phenom in, the summer of 2020 on the back of a wipeout slider. In an abbreviated stint, he threw it about 35 percent of the time and got hitters to miss on about half their swings. The night he destroyed the Miami Marlins with it and a mid-90s fastball is possibly the only good thing to come out of the 2020 Red Sox actually playing games.

Two pitches, however, does not make a starter, and Houck long seemed destined for a relief role because his repertoire beyond was inconsistent. That still seemed true as recently as last year, when he was the most effective patch at the back end of a brutal bullpen throwing his fastball, sinker, and slider 94 percent of the time (per Baseball Savant).

He, like most, wanted more for himself. And on Thursday, he hit the Twins with five pitches across his seven innings, getting six of his 16 swings and misses from 10 tries at his splitter. Even his new-for-2023 cutter was a strike on nine of 15 offerings.

“I definitely feel like I’ve put myself in an even better [position] than I have in years past,” Houck told the The Boston Globe earlier this month. “I ultimately have four pitches, five pitches that I feel like I can throw at any point.”

Houck’s fighting for a place in a crowded starting rotation currently running six arms. Alex Verdugo’s place in the lineup is less in doubt, but handed the leadoff spot to begin a year with no clear candidate for it, he’s off to a torrid .338/.407/.481 start after a 5 for 13 series that included a walkoff single Tuesday and a leadoff homer Thursday.

Results can lie, but Verdugo’s aren’t. Based on the quality of his contact, he has the highest expected batting average on the team at .338 and is missing on just 4.8 percent of his swings (per Sports Info Solutions), the fifth-lowest rate in the majors.

“I’m just kind of working to my strengths,” he told the Globe. “Sometimes you run away from it, you get away from it. But I found that just staying inside the ball and trying to go the other way, for me, is a lot more beneficial.”

Verdugo’s average launch angle has increased, to what would be a career high 10.5 degrees, but he says that’s not a conscious focus. If anything, Cora notes, it’s the opposite.

“It’s the quality of the at-bats. He’s not trying to hit homers,” he told reporters Thursday. “He’s just trying to stay inside the ball, staying through the ball. Swing at the right pitches.”

The most striking example, however, might’ve come over the shortest window. Jarren Duran doubled for the fourth time in four games Thursday, his latest missing a home run by inches. His speed certainly helps — Wednesday’s was a single he made more on a snoozing Michael A. Taylor — but so too does a hand-lifting tweak at the plate.

“It made me feel more comfortable in the box. Just kind of like, kind of my old swing used to be, with my hands higher,” he told the Globe after his callup Monday. “It just feels like I was going back to something I know.”

It’s a long way not only from his disastrous 2022, but this spring, when he looked better in Fort Myers only to depart for riding the bench on Mexico’s World Baseball Classic team. It felt like another misstep for a player who couldn’t go five minutes without one last summer.

It’s a small sample. If you remember Duran’s August visit to Kansas City, you know to be quiet and take it.

There was more from these games, too. Triston Casas drew five walks, doubling his season total from the first 16 games despite continuing to struggle offensively. Masataka Yoshida broke an 0-for-18 skid with two RBI singles Thursday — one to center, one an outer-half fastball ripped the other way.

“The intent of going the other way is helping him,” Cora told reporters, as aware of the litany of right-side groundouts as you are.

It’s a stretch of good baseball. A team that was 5-8 is now 10-10, headed into a Milwaukee-Baltimore road trip that used to pass for an AL East tour. This time, they don’t call the Brewers yard Miller Park, but they also won’t be filming scenes for “Still We Believe: The Boston Red Sox Movie” there.

Talk about another piece of Red Sox ephemera best left in the dustbin. Things really might be looking up.