Tanner Houck deserves to be in Boston Red Sox rotation

Headed into 2021, the Boston Red Sox should add Tanner Houck to their Major League Baseball starting rotation.

For many reasons, 2020 hasn’t turned out how most expected it to, and that could also be said about the disappointing season the Boston Red Sox had this past year.

Going into the season, there were a lot of changes and uncertainty on both sides of the baseball. Whether it was the absence of Mookie Betts in the lineup after being traded to LA or the absence of Chris Sale in the rotation due to undergoing Tommy John Surgery.

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Even though most of the core players that had helped the Red Sox win in 2018 were still on the roster, there was still one major weakness that hadn’t been addressed during the offseason: PITCHING.

It’s worth noting that Chaim Bloom and the Red Sox front office did make a few small moves during the offseason to improve the lack of pitching depth by signing cheap pitchers like Colin McHugh, Martin Perez, Josh Osich, Matt Hall, and Austin Brice.

Unfortunately due to the circumstances of COVID, the Red Sox pitching staff got even weaker when Eduardo Rodriguez opted out of the season due to heart issues and McHugh opted out since he didn’t feel comfortable playing due to his family.

This forced the coaching staff to heavily rely on Nathan Eovaldi to be the ace of the pitching staff, while during the rest of the four days, an opener was chosen depending on the situation. These circumstances caused the Red Sox to have a combined 5.58 ERA, which ranked their pitching staff 28th in the MLB.

Luckily there was one bright spot in the Boston Red Sox pitching staff, 24-year-old right handed pitcher, Tanner Houck. Houck is a former first rounder pick and at the start of the season was the top Boston Red Sox pitching prospect.

For most of 2020, he spent his time at the Red Sox alternate site, but in 2019 he split time between Portland and Pawtucket and pitched 33 games with a 4.01 ERA.

Due to the lack of Red Sox pitching depth, most people expected Houck to make his debut at some point in 2020, but nobody expected him to be as dominant as he was.

During his three starts at the end of the 2020 season, Houck recorded 17 innings of work with 21 strikeouts and nine walks and only allowed just two runs, which one of them was earned.

Left and right, Houck was getting batters to swing and miss on his sweeping slider that would start from one side of the plate and finish way outside the zone. He also fooled many batters with his heater that tops out at 98mph and even made Jesus Agular nod his head in approval after striking out on Houck’s heater. Some even compare his slider to be as effective as Sale’s, but if he relies on it too much, it will cause walk issues which he struggled with during his three starts.

Even with those walk issues, Houck nearly doubled his ground ball rate from 39 percent with the bases empty to 67 percent with runners on, so his temperament is very good with runners on base.

Even with a small sample of three starts by Houck in the big leagues, I still believe that he deserves an opportunity in the Red Sox rotation in 2021.

Since Sale is slated to miss the start of the season and it’s unknown how the rest of the rotation will look on Opening Day since Rodriguez and Eovaldi are the only starters locked into the rotation for 2021, Houck would be a perfect No.5 starter.

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If Houck is able to use this winter to improve his splitter and fastball command, I think he can be one of the best rookie pitchers in the MLB.

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