A Red Sox Starter Actually Made It Out Of the Sixth Inning
The pitching staff is still a disaster, but it was nice to get a night off from having to watch how bad they can be.
The Red Sox came into Wednesday night with the third fewest quality starts in the American League, the worst ERA for starting pitchers in the MLB (6.03), and their starters had allowed the most earned runs in all of baseball (75). Simply put, they needed somebody to step up, and get the rest of the rotation trending in the right direction. They got that from Rick Porcello in the series finale against Toronto, who threw seven innings, allowing just one run on two hits, in what was hands down his best start in a Red Sox uniform thus far.
This Toronto Blue Jays lineup is no joke, and I think this is the first time that we’ve seen an impressive outing from a Red Sox starter this year that didn’t come with a disclaimer about how bad the lineup was that they faced. In the bulk of his start, Porcello retired fifteen consecutive batters, recording perfect innings in the third through the sixth.
I caught plenty of flack for calling the Porcello extension a “steal”, but it’s starts like this that make you see why the Red Sox didn’t want this guy to get to free agency. To reiterate, yes, they totally overpaid for him in terms of average annual value. He will likely never be a $20 million-a-year pitcher, but the Red Sox can afford to overpay him. The “steal” wasn’t in the dollar value, but rather in the length of the deal, getting him for four years, instead of the six or seven years that he easily would’ve gotten in free agency. Bottom line is the Red Sox are a better team with him than without him.
Oh, and Hanley Ramirez smashed another home run — his tenth. Nelson Cruz went deep on Wednesday night, too, to keep pace with Hanley for the MLB lead in homers. They actually measured Cruz’s home run at 483 feet, so you might want to check that out (watch it here). And if it feels like Hanley hits a home run every game, it’s because he pretty much does. He has four home runs in his last four games, and five home runs in his last six games, averaging a home run once every 8.2 at-bats for the year.
Hanley also tied David Ortiz for the most home runs in Red Sox history for the month of April. The year that Ortiz set the record was when he hit 10 home runs in April, 2006 — the same year that he set the Red Sox single-season home run record (54). According to Red Sox PR, Hanley’s also the first player in Red Sox history to hit at least 10 homers and drive in at least 23 runs in the month of April.
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