Sox demote Houck
Bloom calls dazzling rookie ‘work in progress’
The Red Sox have one of the brightest young starting pitchers in baseball at their disposal, but are choosing not to use him.
Wednesday, the Sox demoted star rookie Tanner Houck to the alternate site at Triple-A Worcester, where the WooSox don’t open up play until May 4 and Houck will have to continue honing his skills during bullpen sessions and intersquad games without fans.
“Tanner pitched great, both in his start and his appearance out of the bullpen,” chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom told the Herald by phone. “Simply put, this is about depth. We’re fortunate to have five guys we feel are good and capable major league starters. Tanner, we feel, is a sixth. We want to keep them all starting and keep them all pitching.”
Houck dazzled with a high-90s fastball and sharp slider in his season debut on Saturday, striking out eight over five innings and allowing two earned runs. But with Eduardo Rodriguez ready to return to the rotation after a case of dead arm delayed his season debut, the Sox chose to give Houck’s rotation spot back to Rodriguez.
“Tanner is at a stage in his career where he doesn’t have as much under him, he’s more of a work in progress than the other guys,” Bloom said. “And we have the ability to option him. That matters in terms of keeping everybody going and in a consistent role.”
Houck entered out of relief in the Sox’ extra-innings win on Tuesday night and allowed the man starting the inning on second base via the new rules to score on a bouncing double up the left-field line, the first hit he’s allowed on his slider since entering the big leagues. Opponents had been 0-for-19 with 13 strikeouts on his slider until that point. It counted as an unearned run and Houck struck out two more to finish the inning.
Through 23 big league innings, he has 31 strikeouts and a 1.17 ERA.
Bloom sounded like he was not ready to buy into the numbers.
“To judge Tanner one way or another based on this small of a sample would probably be wrong,” he said. “We really like him. He couldn’t have made a better first impression between last summer and so far this year. I think if we start changing our minds based on one or two starts, or even a month’s worth of starts, we risk making some decisions that could look pretty regrettable down the road.”
Regrettable, how?
“Well, if we were to keep Tanner in the big leagues and essentially write off somebody else based on a bad first start or a bad month, we might miss out on good performance by that person,” Bloom said. “But more important, then when the inevitable injuries and missed time happen, we won’t have the depth to make up for that.”
Since he entered the league last September, Houck has struck out 35% of the batters he’s faced, a rate that ranks 9th in MLB just above Trevor Bauer, and just behind the likes of Jacob deGrom, Gerrit Cole, Lucas Giolito and Tyler Glasnow.
“I think Tanner Houck is a capable major league starting pitcher right now, but that doesn’t mean he’s a finished product,” Bloom said. “We know his ceiling could be even higher if he gets really comfortable with a third pitch. We know he can get lefties out, executing the fastball and slider the way he has in his big league starts, but if he can get more comfortable with that splitter, he’ll be even better. While he’s in Worcester, it’ll be easier to work on that than it would be while he’s pitching in a close game at the big league level.”
While two-pitch starters like Dinelson Lamet, Lance Lynn and Patrick Corbin, among others, have shown the ability to dominate big leaguers without a third pitch, Bloom thinks Houck needs to work on his splitter.
“Hitters are always adapting to pitchers, and pitchers want to adjust and come up with new tricks,” Bloom said. “To the extent that you can, without taking away from your strengths, you want to work on weaknesses or areas of improvement.”
The Sox have said they’d like to preserve Houck as a depth option behind their top five starters of Rodriguez, Nathan Eovaldi, Garrett Richards, Martin Perez and Nick Pivetta. Richards was knocked around in his debut (six earned runs in two innings), but Eovaldi, Perez and Pivetta looked solid.
“We talked about a six-man rotation throughout the offseason as we were looking at the best ways to get through this season,” Bloom said. “One of the problems with the six-man rotation is it means everybody pitches less frequently. It also takes somebody out of the bullpen and puts more pressure on your bullpen. Especially early on where we have very few off-days, our bullpen is going to be really taxed. To take an arm out of the ‘pen and force the rest of the guys to carry more of the load, that didn’t make sense to us.”