Rick Porcello Is Everything That Shohei Ohtani Wishes That He Could Be
After all the hype, all the buildup, and all the excitement, Shohei Ohtani will not pitch again this year. He might hit again, but even that we can’t be too sure of. But there’s one thing that we can be sure of, and that’s the fact that Rick Porcello is the best two-way player in Major League Baseball. Oh, you didn’t hear? The Red Sox faced the best pitcher in the National League on Monday night. Yeah. Max Scherzer’s got three Cy Young awards, and a fourth one more than likely on the way at the end of this season.
You know what his former teammate and best friend Rick Porcello said to him? Nothing. He was too busy laughing in his face after ripping a three-run, bases loaded, bases-clearing double off of him to single-handedly take him down. It was quite a sight to see, fellas. It was quite a sight to see. Rip City Ricky AKA Ricky Gap Shots just standing there on second base, unable to contain his laughter, although he did his best to conceal it. After all, that was his best friend who he just emasculated out there. There has to be some shred of decency after a public execution such as this one.
But Porcello didn’t just get it done in the batter’s box in the series opener in DC, no. He then went on to pitch six innings, holding the Nationals to two earned runs on two solo homers, while striking out five batters. The Red Sox would later add another run on Mookie Betts’ 21st home run of the year. Outside of a Bryce Harper moon bomb that the free agent-to-be hit off of Joe Kelly, that was all she wrote. Craig Kimbrel locked it down in the ninth inning to secure his 25th save of the season, as the Red Sox once again jumped back out to a one-game lead in the American League East.
Don’t look now, but Porcello is a 10-game winner before the All Star break again. He’s got ten wins through his first 18 starts. In his 22-win season in which he captured his first Cy Young award back in 2016, Porcello had 11 wins through his first 18 starts. I’m not saying that we’ve got another Cy Young season on deck for Pretty Ricky AKA Ricky Raindrops in 2018, but he’s quietly having a very good year by his standards, lowering his ERA to 3.57 on the season after his most recent victory. Is 20-win watch back on for Porcello? Could be.
In the middle game of this series, we’ve got Brian Johnson going up against Tanner Roark. Johnson stepped back into the Red Sox rotation last week when Steven Wright hit the disabled list and held the Angels to one earned run over four innings. With no exact timetable for Wright’s return, the Red Sox will likely look to stretch Johnson out with each start that he makes in Wright’s absence with Hector Velazquez piggybacking his starts until he can give the Red Sox somewhere in the region of six innings and/or 100 pitches.
Roark, overall, has pitched really well this season, but hit a little bit of a bump in the road with back-to-back stinkers this month against the Blue Jays and the Phillies. The right-handed long lost brother of Ron Swanson rebounded nicely his last time out in his second consecutive start against the Phillies, holding them to one earned run over six innings with five strikeouts.
Final score: Red Sox 4, Nationals 3