Big mound of trouble
Porcello pitching his way out of playoffs
Is Rick Porcello pitching himself out of a postseason starting assignment?
To merely pose the question seems somehow obscene.
He is the reigning American League Cy Young Award winner. He’s made all his starts. He presents himself as organized, and dedicated to his craft. He hasn’t had a David Price-like, junior high-level clubhouse meltdown.
Yet to borrow an ancient locker room line, Porcello has gone from penthouse to outhouse this season. Last year’s 22-game winner dropped to 9-17 after lasting just five innings in the Sox’ 4-1 setback against the Tampa Bay Rays yesterday at Fenway Park, meaning he has an actual chance to be a 20game loser this year.
Pitchers of Porcello’s stature usually get more leeway with their managers. They get an extra inning, a chance to atone, to turn things around. What jumped out about yesterday’s loss is that Red Sox manager John Farrell gave Porcello none of those accommodations. After watching Porcello pitch four shutout innings, and then give up two runs in a laborious 39-pitch fifth inning, Accountability John yanked him.
“He was approaching 100 pitches, and I thought that was enough for today,” said Farrell, who then ladled out the obligatory platitudes about how “I thought his overall command was improved,” and that he “attacked Corey Dickerson in a couple of spots.”
Did Porcello want to go another inning?
“Absolutely,” he said. “I didn’t do myself any favors there by throwing (39) pitches in the fifth and creating a mess for us. I always want to get back out there, but it is what it is. I got myself in a tough spot.”
Fine. He wanted to keep fighting. He wanted to make it right.
And yet Porcello, in the eyes of his manager, didn’t look like he could answer the bell for the sixth inning against the fast-fading Rays, who are closer to the last-place Blue Jays than the firstplace Red Sox.
The Sox are back to holding a 31⁄2-game lead over the secondplace Yankees. But things still look good for the Sox, given that nine of their remaining 19 games are against last-place teams (A’s, Jays, Reds), and three of them are against the all-but-out-of-it Rays.
For the sake of this discussion, let’s presume the Red Sox will win the division. And let’s accept that Farrell will have time to set his pitching so that Chris Sale and Drew Pomeranz are his Game 1 and Game 2 starters. Doug Fister, a great midseason pickup by boss of baseball ops Dave Dombrowski, goes in Game 3, right?
Is there a Porcello start in a best-of-five series?
Heck, would there be a Porcello start in a best-of-seven ALCS?
Porcello’s not out. Not yet, anyway. But in considering the very real possibility he could be a 20game loser this season, which no pitcher wants attached to his baseball-reference page, Sox fans should also consider that the lanky righty is also pitching for his postseason life.
If Porcello has three more starts in which he’s racked, or in which he runs up a high fifthinning pitch count and then gets yanked, he might be pitching himself right out of the October rotation.
Yes, pitchers do have a way of making the most of these humiliations. You may remember how upset Derek Lowe was back in 2004 when Sox manager Terry Francona left him out of the rotation for the Division Series. Lowe pouted, sure, and then proceeded to win the clinching games in all three playoff rounds of Boston’s wild championship run — including the Game 7 start against the Yankees in the ALCS and seven shutout innings against the Cardinals in Game 4 of the World Series.
A variety of unusual circumstances, including the Sox’ shattering 19-8 loss to the Yankees in Game 3 of the ALCS, created an opportunity for Derek Lowe to resurrect himself.
Rick Porcello can either hope for a similar turn of events in the postseason, or he can use these next two or three starts to resurrect himself.
Their offense being what it is, the Sox will need to be scratching out runs in the postseason. Because of that, they can’t have their own starters lasting only five innings.