BOSTON — “It wasn’t a tryout,” Alex Cora said after Tanner Houck pitched a career-high seven innings in Thursday afternoon’s 11-5 series finale victory over the Minnesota Twins.
The Red Sox currently have an abundance of starting pitching, but maintain they want to keep a five-man rotation on a consistent basis, though Cora notably said “or six” after Houck’s performance.
The 26-year-old righty was originally slated to start the season in the bullpen, but reverted back to a starting role when Garrett Whitlock, Brayan Bello and James Paxton weren’t ready for the Opening Day roster. At the time, the expectation was that Houck would move back to the bullpen as soon as one of the aforementioned pitchers was ready to be activated, but four times through the rotation now, he’s been one of the most consistent, effective arms.
Can they afford to move him to the bullpen? Better question: why should they?
On Thursday, the 26-year-old righty not only went six innings for the first time since his second major league game (Sept. 20, 2020), but turned it into a career day by completing the seventh for the first time.
Seven innings, six hits, three earned runs, one walk, seven strikeouts, 96 pitches, 63 strikes.
What a difference shutdown pitching makes.
“He’s a stud,” Jarren Duran said. “It was nice to be able to relax in the outfield today and just watch him do his thing.”
Entering Thursday’s game, the rotation had a first-inning ERA over 11; Houck no-hit the Twins through the first three frames, giving them one walk and striking out five. He only needed 36 pitches (24 strikes) to mow down the Minnesotans. He worked his way out of a jam in the fourth, and didn’t allow an extra-base hit or run until the fifth.
In setting a new career-high for innings pitched, Houck’s final line took a significant hit. He recorded two outs in the seventh before giving up a two-run homer to Willi Castro.
No matter, the overall result was stupendous. He was “very aggressive in the zone,” Cora lauded. “He did an outstanding job.”
Since Houck’s brief debut in 2020, the concern has been that he couldn’t be effective as a starter without a more varied pitch arsenal, because hitters would figure him out after an at-bat or two. He’d gotten pulled from most starts before having to face the lineup for the third time.
But his manager doesn’t necessarily see it that way. Were Houck to stay in the rotation, what’s the key to him continuing to pitch deep into games?
“If he can harness his stuff in the strike zone, he can go deeper into the game,” Cora said, “It’s not about his ability, or third time through the lineup, it’s kind of like, efficient, the stuff is going to be better. And then he can (go deep).”
Houck expanded his pitch mix this year, too, enabling him to be a more viable starting option.
“As a starter, it’s huge. It just helps set up my two best pitches, between the sinker and the slider,” he explained of his upgraded arsenal. “It just gets them off those two, it gets lefties off of the sinker a little bit more, with the cutter. The splitter obviously adds a different element as well, that they have to respect.”
Houck threw 19 splitters (19.8%) on Thursday, pummeling the bottom half of the strike zone. In the longest start of his career, he was able to maintain fairly consistent velocity; his third-hardest pitch of the game was a 95.1 mph sinker in the seventh.
“He had pretty good command of every pitch. He’s got really nasty stuff,” Kiké Hernández said. “From the first inning, something that stood out to me was his sinker against righties … he had a really good cutter today, and that splitter was really good as well. He neutralized both sides of the ball.”
While Houck keeps proving he deserves to stay in the rotation, Ryan Brasier has made it hard to see why he’s still on the roster. Forget high-leverage situations, the 35-year-old reliever struggled in two garbage-time relief appearances this week.
After giving up a three-run homer to give the Twins a 10-2 berth on Wednesday, he got the ball for the ninth on Thursday, and was unable to pitch a clean inning. After a quick strikeout to begin the ninth, he gave up a double, RBI single, single, and walk (on the 11th pitch of the plate appearance), prompting pitching coach Dave Bush to come out for a chat. Richard Bleier even began warming up.
A putout finally put the game to bed, but not before the Twins scored one last run. Brasier entered with an 11-3 lead, and 35 pitches later, ended the game with an 11-5 final score that felt much less commanding than it had half an inning before. Over 11.1 innings this season, he’s allowed 10 earned runs on 14 hits, walked six, struck out 10, and hit two batsmen.
Alex Verdugo collected his first career leadoff home run to give the home team an immediate 1-0 lead, but the Red Sox really went on a tear when Kenta Maeda left the game after two innings with an ankle contusion. Emilio Pagan took over, and promptly gave up six runs on seven hits, including four straight singles.
Each batter in the starting nine recorded at least one hit, something the Red Sox hadn’t done since Sept. 18, 2022. Hernández recorded his first three-plus hit game of the season and extended his hitting streak to seven games.
Duran has doubled in four consecutive games and driven in a run in each of his last three; each of his first three at-bats resulted in a hard-hit ball (111.6, 104.1, 106.2 mph). Triston Casas drew at least one walk in each game of the series, including two apiece on Wednesday and Thursday. Back from the Paternity List and the birth of his second child, Yu Chang blasted a two-out home run to the Monster seats to make it 10-1 in the fifth. Masataka Yoshida entered the game in an 0-for-17 slump, then busted out of it with a pair of RBI singles.
The Red Sox are 4-0 in Houck’s starts, and finished the homestand 5-2, with their first back-to-back series wins of the season.
“We’re playing good baseball,” Cora said.
Keeping Houck in the rotation seems like a way to keep it going.
