Red Sox starting rotation preview
What will the Red Sox do with seven starting pitchers and a commitment to a five-man rotation?
It’s officially February, the month when the seeds of a baseball season to come are planted in the garden that is Jetblue Park in Fort Myers, FL. It’s the time of year when Red Sox fans can look at the roster and generally visualize the product they’ll watch in the upcoming season. But when Red Sox fans look at the current roster, they see seven starting pitchers. What gives?
The Red Sox will enter Spring Training with Chris Sale, Corey Kluber, Brayan Bello, Garrett Whitlock, Nick Pivetta, James Paxton, and Tanner Houck all preparing to start the season in the rotation.
Chris Sale is determined to come back and be the ace of the staff that everyone envisioned when he signed his extension before the 2019 season. “You know, I owe these people something,” Sale told the media at Red Sox Winter Weekend. “I owe everybody. I owe my teammates the starting pitcher they thought they were gonna get. I owe the front office the starting pitcher they paid for, and I owe the fans the performances that they're paying to come and see.”
Corey Kluber, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, believes he found a routine that allowed him to stay healthy and on the field last season. He hopes to build on that with the Red Sox and put together a full productive season. Kluber posted a 4.50 ERA across 31 starts last season, but his impressive 3.57 FIP gives hope for improvement in 2023.
Brayan Bello is one of the most electrifying young arms in baseball. The Red Sox recognize this and have no intention of pitching him in a relief role. "In terms of [Bello's role], given his ceiling is so high, we don't want to jerk him around,” Chaim Bloom told MassLive’s Chris Cotillo on the Fenway Rundown Podcast. “He has a ceiling of a really good starting pitcher and we don't want to get in the way of him accomplishing that." Bloom did not elaborate on whether or not Bello could see time in AAA to potentially limit innings, but considering how excited the team is about him, and the fact that he threw 153.1 innings across all levels of the system in 2022, it would be surprising to see them take that route.
Garrett Whitlock is another young arm the Red Sox are very high on. Many fans think Whitlock would be best utilized out of the bullpen, where he has been electric in each of his first two seasons. But the Red Sox envision him as a possible frontline starting pitcher, and as a result, he will begin the season in the starting rotation.
Nick Pivetta is entering a make-or-break year. Many pegged him as a trade candidate heading into the off-season, and while the off-season is not yet finished, it appears at this point that Pivetta will remain with the Red Sox to begin the 2023 season. Jen McCaffrey of The Athletic reported this week that at the moment, the team is not considering any other role but the starting rotation for Pivetta. Unlike Bello, Whitlock, and Houck, Pivetta has multiple seasons of full major league starting pitcher experience. Unlike Sale, Kluber, and Paxton, Pivetta has made 64 starts over the past two seasons and has stayed healthy. It’s not a surprise that the team intends to keep its 2022 innings leader in the rotation.
Now it gets interesting. Because James Paxton opted into his $4.2 million player option. After pitching in just six games over the past three seasons, many have speculated that Paxton could be the odd man out and wind up as a long reliever in 2023, but Chaim Bloom doesn’t seem to agree. “With somebody at the stage of his career that (Paxton’s) at and having been through as much medically as he’s been through, adding the variable of asking him to do something he hasn’t really done is something that we would have to think long and hard before doing,” Bloom told Chris Cotillo on the Fenway Rundown Podcast. While it’s been a while, James Paxton has been a highly effective starting pitcher as recently as 2019, when he posted a 3.82 ERA across 150.2 innings (29 starts) with the Yankees. The Red Sox are curious to see what they can get out of him if he can stay healthy, and for now, it appears he will show us what he’s got as a starting pitcher.
Last but not least, we have Tanner Houck. You might think Tanner Houck is destined to pitch in relief because 28 of his 32 appearances in 2022 came out of the bullpen. But let’s pump the breaks for a second. In 20 career starts spread out across the previous three seasons, Houck has posted a 3.22 ERA with a 10.4 K/9 and has looked dominant for the most part.
The team pitched him in relief last season by necessity, not because they don’t have confidence in him as a starter. "We know he can [start],” Chaim Bloom told Chris Cotillo on the Fenway Rundown Podcast. “A lot of guys who succeed in relief, they end up in relief because they failed as a starter. Tanner didn't fail as a starter, he just ended up in relief."
However, unlike the other rotation pieces the Red Sox have, the front office has been more open, at least publicly, to pitching Tanner Houck out of the bullpen. “He's shown in terms of what he can do physically and mentally, that he can do it at any point in the game and in any kind of role," Bloom told Cotillo.
Of the seven starting pitchers the Red Sox have, six either have an extensive recent injury history or have yet to pitch a full season in a major league rotation. The Red Sox will surely find ways to limit some of their innings along the way. One might think deploying a six-man rotation to open the season could be an effective way to limit innings, but Red Sox GM Brian O’Halloran has repeatedly shot the idea down this offseason.
The Red Sox have labeled seven of their arms as major league starting pitchers, but seem committed to keeping their rotation to five. Something has to give. Maybe Bloom isn’t telling the full truth, and they envision one of their starters in a bullpen role. A trade is always a possibility; Nick Pivetta and Tanner Houck would seem like the most realistic trade candidates, although the recent fortification of the roster would make a trade seem less than likely.
Is it possible the Red Sox are just leaving as many doors open as possible? It’s not hard to imagine needing all seven of these guys as starters at one point or another this year, including to open the season. Chris Sale has started just eleven games over the past three seasons. James Paxton has started just six games over the past three seasons. Corey Kluber is entering his age-37 season, and although he was healthy last year, he missed significant time in each of the prior three seasons.
None of the young trio of Brayan Bello, Garrett Whitlock, or Tanner Houck has ever pitched a full season in a big-league rotation.
Nick Pivetta wasn’t fully ready to go at the end of Spring Training in 2022. He began the season with diminished velocity on his fastball and got knocked around to the tune of an 8.27 ERA before finally appearing ready in the month of May when he was dominant. The Red Sox could simply be leaving all of their options open in case of potential Spring Training injury or lack of readiness.
In 2022, injuries were a constant issue for the rotation. The Red Sox hoped that most or all of their games would be started by Chris Sale, Nathan Eovaldi, Michael Wacha, Rich Hill, Tanner Houck, Garrett Whitlock, and James Paxton. Despite preparing for the season with seven big league-caliber starting pitchers, the Red Sox still had 45 games started by Josh Winckowski (14), Kutter Crawford (12), Brayan Bello (11), Connor Seabold (5), and Austin Davis (3).
The Red Sox will surely hope for fewer starts from their minor league depth and bullpen in 2023. Entering the spring with seven healthy starting pitchers certainly helps their cause. The question will be how they maneuver it. Do they option Brayan Bello to AAA to begin the season to limit his innings? Could they piggyback a couple of guys to keep their arms stretched out and the bullpen fresh? Tanner Houck could be an interesting pairing with Chris Sale or James Paxton if they take that route, with Houck’s sidearm release from the right side representing a difficult counter to either of the team’s left-handed starters.
Injuries could render these questions meaningless, but until that point, the Red Sox rotation is going to be one of the more interesting storylines to watch this Spring. The team may not be ready to tip their hand yet, but fans will surely keep an eye on every decision they make until they do.
Follow Gordo on Twitter @BOSSportsGordo.
For additional Red Sox, Bruins, Patriots, MLB and NFL content follow Beyond the Monster on Twitter @BeyondtheMnstr.