Sox get a high five from Wacha
Scoreless outing keys win over Minnesota
Michael Wacha doesn’t throw the fastest heater in the world, but if he works as quickly as he did on Sunday, the Red Sox are going to love him.
The Sox would still like to see their starters get deeper into games, and they’ll be waiting until June or July to get Chris Sale and James Paxton back from injuries. But with a 4.46 ERA through the first nine games of the season, the rotation hasn’t been an issue.
Wacha was aggressive and dominant against the Minnesota Twins on Sunday, as he held them to just one hit in five scoreless innings during the Sox’ 8-1 win at Fenway Park.
“He was great, working with a great pace and you love to play behind that,” said second baseman Trevor Story. “He was just pounding the zone, attacking the hitters, kept us on our toes. Great job by him. That was awesome.”
How Wacha landed in Boston is kind of an oddity.
The Red Sox hammered him in his final postseason appearance with the Rays last October. But they signed him to a $7 million deal this offseason and have now watched him flourish in his first two starts of the 2022 season.
Despite averaging just 91 mph on his fastball, down from 94 mph a year ago, Wacha used a heavy dose of changeups to keep the Twins off-balance. He cruised through the first three innings on just 37 pitches. He had to work for a 15-pitch strikeout of former Astros star Carlos Correa, but was able to complete five innings on just 79 pitches before manager Alex Cora pulled the plug.
“Aggressive,” Cora said when asked what he liked about Wacha’s outing. “Tempo… He was really good.”
It was a masterful performance for a pitcher who had been one of the worst in baseball in recent years. From 2019 through 2021, Wacha’s 5.11 ERA ranked 84th out of 92 pitchers with 250 innings in that span.
He’s looked like a hidden gem this year, despite missing some velocity on his heater.
“Definitely was a quicker spring training, but we’re all in the same boat here so there’s no excuses,” Wacha said. “There’s still some work to be done heading into this next start and the rest of the season.”
He actually threw more changeups than four-seam fastballs on Sunday, using 24 changeups and 22 four-seamers, generating two whiffs on each. He was aggressive in the strike zone and let his defense do the rest.
Changing his attack plan is how Wacha could be better with the Sox than he was while with the Rays last year.
“Velo will be up there,” Cora said. “As far as commanding the baseball, he’s really good. The changeup is good. The curveball plays now. He can steal pitches with that. And actually expand later on in counts. He’s a complete pitcher… Just using his whole repertoire. That’s why he’s doing what he’s doing his first two starts here.”
The final product will be getting Wacha, and other Sox starters, to last deeper into games.
Starters don’t often make it into the sixth inning in the modern game. It’s happening in just 27% of big league starts this year.
But as many wonder if the Sox are turning into the Rays in the way they prioritize maximum effort in shorter outings, pitching coach Dave Bush said on Sunday that the Sox are getting ready to unleash their starters for deeper workloads.
“We’re close,” Bush said. “We got them all up to six innings or into the sixth inning in spring training knowing we’d probably back off by one at the start of the year. They’ve all held strong pretty good so far.”
Tanner Houck needed 89 pitches to make it through 5 2/3 innings on Saturday, tying Nick Pivetta for the Sox’ longest start of the year. Only three times in nine games has a Sox starter reached the 80-pitch threshold.
“We’re trying to do it incrementally,” Bush said. “We’re pretty close. We’re pretty close to taking the wheels off and just letting them go.”
The Sox aren’t alone by taking extra care of their starting pitchers after a short spring training.
Across the league, there have been just 18 instances of a starter recording an out in the seventh inning, and just two instances of a starter recording an out in the eighth.
It might just be the natural evolution of the game, but it was causing concern among some during the 2021 postseason, when quick hooks and short starts were becoming the norm, and some wondered if too many pitching changes was detrimental to the viewing experience for casual baseball fans.
Having a three-week, abbreviated spring training didn’t help, but the Sox remain committed to getting more innings out of their starters.
“I still think it’s best for everybody if starters pitch a little deeper into the game just because that’s where their comfort level is,” Bush said. “It still means they’re pitching well. The longer they stay in the game it’s because they’re throwing the ball well.”
Teams can survive with short starts in April, when MLB is allowing them to carry 28 players on the roster. But on May that will decrease to the regular cap of 26 players.
“We’ll have a shorter bullpen so starters will need to pick it up a little bit more than they are right now,” Bush said.