OUTSTANDING SEASON ENDS WITH A CY
Imagine the concern now, with all the attention in the baseball world on the radar gun, if a $20 million starting pitcher lost 2 mph before his 28th birthday.
For some, it’d be devastating. The headlines didn’t go away when it happened to 30-year-old Chris Sale last year. And the concerns were warranted, as the lefty finished the year with elbow problems and has since needed Tommy John surgery.
But for Rick Porcello in 2016, losing velocity played a key role in creating the cool, comfortable and consistent winner that the Red Sox molded for one magical season.
The year before, Porcello signed a heavily-criticized four-year, $82.5 million contract extension before throwing a single pitch in a Red Sox uniform. Ben Cherington had sent a package including Yoenis Cespedes to the Detroit Tigers to get Porcello to Boston during the offseason, and Cherington thought he’d get good value out of signing Porcello early, before starting pitchers salaries continued to skyrocket.
But what Cherington had mentioned when the Red Sox first acquired Porcello was the belief that the sinker-baller had more potential for strikeouts than the numbers indicated. And with a few tweaks and some growth, Porcello could become a strong No. 2 or No. 3 pitcher.
All the pressure of the contract and high expectations seemed to flatten Porcello’s effectiveness in his first season in Boston. The velocity spiked a bit, but the desire to test people with four-seam fastballs up in the zone was not rewarded. He finished 9-15 with a 4.92 ERA.
In 2016, Porcello went back to basics. He took some cheddar off his two-seamer and threw using more precision than force. His sinker, slider and curve saw 1-2 mph drops in velocity, but his walk rate, hit rate and home run rate plummeted.
He won his first five starts of the season, resulting in online betting site Bovada making Porcello the No. 6 favorite in the early Cy Young voting at 14-to-1 odds.
At the time, even with his 5-0 start, it seemed laughable to think of Porcello as a Cy Young candidate. But something was happening behind the scenes.
“My body is in a much more comfortable spot,” Porcello said then. “I’m seeing the glove a lot more clearly. My release point is much more consistent than it was in spring training. That was really what I had been working on the whole spring, just trying to find that. It’s starting to come and feel a lot more comfortable.”
The year before, a strained triceps in his throwing arm caused him to miss a month toward the end of the season. Getting back to basics after the injury was a blessing in disguise.
Porcello rattled off win after win, starting the season 13-0 at Fenway Park before finally losing in a September start against the Orioles. In that game, a 1-0 loss, he pitched eight innings and allowed one run on four hits.
It had become normal for him at that point. He was spotting his signature twoseam fastball, letting it break toward righties and away from lefties, while keeping his below-average four-seamer away from hot zones and using his slider and changeup as effective out-pitches.
He tallied strikeouts at a rate much higher than his career average, collecting 7.6 strikeouts per nine innings (he averaged 5.5 strikeouts per nine in Detroit), but it was his command that led to a season that, on paper, looked like it was pitched by Greg Maddux (his 1996 season is almost identical to Porcello’s