Porcello amidst scary flashback
HOUSTON — Whoever is making Rick Porcello crawl back into his 2015 time machine instead of the 2016 model, just stop.
It’s become almost a cruel joke to watch Porcello go all Benjamin Button on himself and revert to the bad form he had two seasons ago, rather than build upon or at least come close to the form of a year ago, when he turned that 2015 frown upside down with a Cy Young campaign of post-to-post domination.
Last night, Porcello got shelled for the third start in a row.
Porcello’s ERA after 15 starts stands at 5.05.
He and the Red Sox have lost half of his season trying to pinpoint his problem with finding consistency with his command of the strike zone.
They have pointed to peripherals in his statistics that point to bad luck, yet nobody has been able to create good luck.
This isn’t about bad luck.
This is about finding solutions for Porcello over his next 15 starts.
The Red Sox and Porcello have no choice but to fix what’s wrong.
“Honestly, there aren’t any alternatives — Rick is a key member of this team and we’ve got to continue to work to get it right because we see inside of every start that he’s made, there’s been stretches where he’s thrown the ball as he’s capable, and yet we’ve got to get back to what makes him most consistent,” said manager John Farrell after the 7-1 loss to the Astros.
Porcello’s start was maddening, because as bad as he started, that’s about how strongly he finished.
In the first inning, the first four batters reached base and three of them scored.
He allowed only one hit in the second inning, and then it was off to the races for the Astros lineup in the third: a leadoff home run by Jose Altuve, a single by Carlos Correa and then a two-run home run by Carlos Beltran.
The Red Sox were down 6-0 seemingly before the last note of the national anthem had been sung, but then Porcello found something over the next three innings.
He allowed just three hits and one run.
Red Sox followers don’t need that kind of whiplash on top of a headache.
For Porcello, the latest poor start left him as close to disgusted as he’s looked and sounded in his two-anda-half seasons here, especially when it came to being reminded of how he fought off that 2015 funk and now is back in one that looks and feels pretty similar.
“I don’t know, I don’t think back to (2015), necessarily,” said Porcello. “You just try to make the adjustments you need to make to get back to executing pitches. It’s a different year. I’m not going to go back and look at all that sort of stuff. It’s a matter of executing pitches. That’s what got me out the (expletive) I was in in 2015, and that’s what’s going to get me out of it now — executing pitches.”
Farrell did not put up much of an argument about whether or not this was 2015 again — “I can’t say it’s dissimilar,” he said, but emphasized that there’s no mystery to what’s gone wrong.
According to Farrell, Porcello is leaving too many pitches up in the strike zone.
“One thing we’ve tried to do is not throw as many four-seamers up in the strike zone where it might be more difficult to get back down in the bottom of the strike zone,” said Farrell. “There’s been a high number of two-seamers (last night), but still, finding their way to the mid-thigh region, the belt region, and that can be trouble as we saw here (last night).”
Porcello said his problems go beyond leaving pitches up.
“I’m trying to do a bunch of different things, not necessarily keep the ball down,” said Porcello. “These hitters are very good if you key in on one location. It’s being able to balance all of it, being able to execute pitches down when I’m trying to and being able to execute pitches up when I’m trying to execute pitches up.”
Porcello had more to say about all the quadrants of the strike zone.
“I can think of two fastballs that I threw up that got hit for base hits that looking back at them they’re at the top of the zone and they probably need to be higher than that, but I don’t think it’s the fastballs up, it’s everything,” he said. “Guys are very comfortable with everything that they’re seeing and driving the ball off me right now. I’ve got to get back to making them uncomfortable.”
Porcello has now given up 20 earned runs over his last four starts, a stretch of just 241⁄ innings. 3
Someone needs to figure out how to straighten out Porcello — and fast.