What Tanner Houck's Role Should Be in 2023
The Boston Red Sox have a decision to make regarding a former first round pick.
Tanner Houck had season ending surgery on his back in early September. Garrett Whitlock, who also had been moved to the bullpen during the season, had his season end due to a nagging hip injury that caused him to miss time during the summer. This left the Boston Red Sox bullpen filling in the void with AAA call-ups and the results went about as good as you think they would go.
Tanner Houck was a first round draft pick for a reason. Teams in the MLB (most of the time) will not spend a first round draft pick on a kid that they don’t think can start and win games at the big league level. His numbers while pitching at the University of Missouri were very solid, also considering the fact he played in the SEC against a few powerhouse teams during his college career.
During the 2015 season at the age of 19, Houck dueled against another first round pick, AJ, Puk, for a win against a pretty stacked Florida lineup that contained the likes of Harrison Bader and Pete Alonso. Moving forward to the 2016 season where he dueled against current Atlanta Braves starting pitcher Kyle Wright and 4th ranked Vanderbilt. And even into his last season at Mizzou in 2017, once again blanking Kyle Wright and Vanderbilt. They knew from early on at his Missouri days, Houck was going to be special.
Every game Houck pitched during his time at Mizzou he started. Every game moving forward for the Boston Red Sox he should start. The starting rotation currently has quite a few question marks heading into the 2023 season. With Nick Pivetta being the only starting pitcher coming back who started in the rotation this year, there are four spots that are needing to be filled. With Brayan Bello figuring to slot into one of those spots based on his ending of the 2022 season, that leaves three spots up for grabs. One of those spots should be reserved for Houck.
With two spots already taken and one would assume at least 1-2 free agent pick ups will take place this winter, Houck needs to be able to have a chance to shore up the other one to two spots. The guy is a regular on Rob Friedman’s twitter page, which if you don’t know what type of content he posts, see below:
So, you can see the point just based on stuff alone. Throwing from a low three-quarters arm slot, he is about as tough as it gets when facing right handed hitters. While pitching at Mizzou, his two-seam fastball was regarded as one of the best in the country. His splitter is already developing into such a nasty pitch and he only just started throwing it in 2020. Lets not forget about one of the prettiest sweeps in the league with his slider.
Just going off stuff alone, Tanner Houck deserves a shot in the rotation. Houck has shown he has good enough stuff to get outs in the majors with stats that can back that up, carrying a career 3.03 ERA. His career WAR is 4.5, and that is essentially just two years worth of pitching with a shortened season in 2020 and an injury in 2022. He had 164 strikeouts in 146 innings of work this season, which was actually a lower K/9 than he had when he was solely starting in 2021.
Based off the initial report of his season ending back surgery, it is reported than Houck will be ready well before spring training begins. A healthy Tanner Houck to help lead the starting rotation will help fill a big hole that the Red Sox had during the 2022 season.
Photo via CBS Boston