Garrett Whitlock, Cutter Crawford giving Red Sox pitching good structure
Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora has to love the way this pitching staff is shaping up.
Chris Sale has that ace mojo back, young studs Bryan Bello and Tanner Houck have been flashing, veteran James Paxton is looking like this season’s version of Michael Wacha and Garrett Whitlock returned from the injured list to give the team five strong innings in a 2-1 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks Saturday night.
In his first outing since suffering ulnar neuritis, Whitlock started by surrendering a solo home run off the bat of Ketel Marte. But the right-hander battled back. Brushing it off, shaking it off, Whitlock settled down by retiring the next 12 batters delivering an overall strong five innings in which he gave up just three hits while striking out four.
Red Sox righty Garrett Whitlock shuts down Arizona Diamondbacks
The really, good news for the Boston Red Sox is Whitlock will just get better as long as he’s healthy. His return strengthens the starting rotation, but also the bullpen asCorey Kluber and Nick Pivetta in the pen gives the team a couple of reliable long inning pitchers and spot starters when necessary.
With the Red Sox offense only manufacturing two runs of their own, the performance from Whitlock definitely has Cora feeling good as it should.
"“He’s really good, and this is where we’re at,” Cora said following the game at Chase Field. “The three kids and the two veterans…and there’s two kids in the bullpen that are really good too. Structure-wise, this feels good.”"
One of those two kids Cora is talking about is Kutter Crawford who entered the game in relief of Whitlock and continued to shut the Diamondbacks down. Crawford gave the Red Sox 2 1/3 innings of shutout baseball before giving way to the combination of Chris Martin and closer Kenley Jansen.
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Cora and the Sox couldn’t have scripted Saturday night’s victory any better and for Whitlock it was a matter of focus and a changeup that had Arizona whiffing. In all, he threw 35 changeups which he labels as the difference between his latest outing and the up-and-down starts prior to landing on the IL.
"“That was the big difference between before [when] I was working on it, and then now,” Whitlock said. “I just got to keep focusing on that and keep working on that.”"
Again, with Sale doing his thing on the mound as well as Paxton and Bello really rounding out the stop of the starting rotation, Whitlock will have time to focus in on his consistency on the mound. With arms like Crawford in the bullpen, a solid five innings is what the Red Sox need out of Whitlock. Then, he can build off that.
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In all, the Boston Red Sox look like they have a strong rotation and bullpen shaping up as the 2023 MLB season swoons into the month of June.