Mauricio Llovera makes Red Sox debut against former team
New Red Sox right-handed reliever Mauricio Llovera made his team debut on Saturday, facing his old team the Giants from Oracle Park.
The righty was summoned to pitch the eighth inning with the Sox trailing 2-0.
Giants designated hitter Michael Conforto greeted his former teammate with a double to leadoff the frame. Conforto’s two-bagger was scorched into right field passed Alex Verdugo.
With the Giants already leading and looking for insurance runs, Llovera quickly settled down.
Llovera struck out Marco Luciano on three strikes, hammering the strike zone with his slider. Casey Schmitt would follow, after an eight-pitch at-bat, Llovera threw him a slider down and in for the swinging strikeout.
He would intentionally walk Mike Yastrzemski and hit Austin Barnes with a pitch to load the bases.
With traffic on base, the new Sox hurler wasn’t phased, peppering the outside corner of the plate with sinkers and sliders to strikeout the red-hot Wilmer Flores on five pitches. Up to that point, Flores had three hits in the game.
The Giants left the bases loaded, they were 1-for-13 with runners in scoring position and left 12 on base.
Llovera threw 27 pitches in his debut, 18 sliders and 9 sinkers, per Baseball Savant. He induced eight swings and four whiffs in his outing, with the majority of the swings coming against his slider.
The Venezuelan native relies on just the two pitches, the slider and sinker. He throws his slider 51.4 percent of the time, per Statcast. His sinker with reaches 95 mph is in the 78th percentile in fastball velocity on Baseball Savant.
Boston expects Llovera to help the big league roster and if he doesn’t, the righty is out of player options and will have to be designated for assignment to be removed off the roster.
“We’ll see where we’re at late in the game,” Cora said before the Red Sox’ 3-2 loss on Saturday night. “Good sinker, good slider. We’ll make sure he gets his feet wet here. We needed a righty and we got one. We feel like if he can execute what we want, he’s going to be able to get people out.”
Follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisHenrique
For additional Red Sox, Bruins, Patriots, MLB and NFL content follow Beyond the Monster on Twitter @BeyondtheMnstr.
