BOSTON — What now for Nick Pivetta?
The enigmatic Red Sox starter was good again on Wednesday. Manager Alex Cora called it one of Pivetta’s best starts in a Red Sox uniform. In chilly conditions, against a dangerous lineup — and briefly flustered by a balk call that cost him a run — Pivetta pitched the Red Sox to their fifth straight win. He struck out six, walked only one, and pitched through the sixth inning for the first time this season. He got 14 swings and misses and retired eight of his last nine batters. He was steady and solid, and occasionally excellent.
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“As far as game planning and what he wanted to do against a tough lineup, that’s one of his best outings here,” Cora said.
But after an 8-3 win against the Blue Jays, the Red Sox now have won five in a row and given themselves a chance to sweep this four-game series. Their situation, quite suddenly, does not seem nearly as dire as it was a week and a half ago. They’re in a playoff position at the moment and could move into third place in the division by the end of the homestand.
And after weathering much of the past month with one of the least effective rotations in baseball, the Red Sox also seem to be on the verge of having to figure out what to do with (perhaps) an overabundance of starting pitching.
Not a bad time for Pivetta to make his case to stick in the rotation.
Of the five current starters, Pivetta actually leads the team in ERA (4.99) and WHIP (1.30). He’s second in innings (behind Tanner Houck) and second in strikeouts (behind Chris Sale). He’s allowed more than four runs in a start only once, and he’s the only Red Sox starter to have made at least 30 starts each the past two seasons.
But Pivetta doesn’t have the veteran track record of Sale, Corey Kluber or James Paxton. Nor does he have the youthful upside of Houck, Brayan Bello or Garrett Whitlock. With Paxton nearing the end of his rehab assignment, and Whitlock making encouraging early progress from an elbow injury, the Red Sox could have each of their top seven starters available by the end of next week. There is no inarguable path forward in terms of who stays in the rotation and who falls into the bullpen.
For a moment on Wednesday, it seemed that Cora had guaranteed that Houck would stay in the rotation, but even that wasn’t much of a declaration in the end.
“He’s going to keep starting,” Cora said. “He’s not going to the bullpen.”
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Not at all? Not ever?
“He’s starting on Sunday,” Cora said.
Well, of course he’s starting Sunday. Short of replacing Houck with Kutter Crawford, there was never a scenario in which Houck wasn’t going to stay in the rotation for at least one more start. The real question comes in the days and weeks after Sunday.
Paxton’s minor league rehab assignment has to end on Monday (he’s allowed to pitch in the minors for only 30 days) and he could step into the big league rotation as early as Wednesday (he’s making one last Triple-A start on Friday). Aside from three minor league appearances — most of them a decade ago — Paxton’s never pitched out of the bullpen, and he’s made clear that the prefers to keep working as a starter.
“That’s what I’m comfortable doing,” he said this week. “And I feel like I can contribute best as a starter.”
If Paxton goes into the rotation in the next week or so, who comes out? And beyond that, what happens when Whitlock is cleared to pitch again? Whitlock was shut down last week because of a nerve issue in his elbow, but his symptoms already have subsided enough that he’s started playing catch. He, too, is eligible to be activated from the IL next week, and even if the Red Sox don’t want to push him that quickly, initial indications are that Whitlock might not be too far away.
“Hopefully soon,” Cora said. “But we’ll see how he progresses.”
There’s little reason to rush these decisions given that next week includes off days on Monday and Thursday, giving the rotation plenty of extra rest even without making changes, but barring setbacks, the day is coming — perhaps within the next two weeks — when the Red Sox finally will have all of the starters they brought into spring training.
Given their track records and most recent outings, Sale and Kluber are presumably locked into the rotation, at least for now. Paxton, too, is a veteran starter with no bullpen experience to speak of. The team briefly optioned Bello last month, but they made clear that was a temporary situation and Bello was excellent in his return to the big league rotation on Saturday (he’s pitching again in Thursday’s series finale). Houck and Whitlock have thrived as relievers in the past, but the Red Sox have intimated that they would like to keep developing Houck and Whitlock as starters. Just last week, chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom singled out the importance of “younger pitchers taking steps forward” in the Red Sox rotation. He noted that putting young starters Josh Winckowski and Crawford into the bullpen has paid off — for both the players and the team — but said that’s not necessarily a rule of thumb for everyone.
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“I think so much depends on the individual circumstances,” Bloom said. “You want to make sure you’re prioritizing the right things. We also want to make sure we’re putting players in a position to succeed, and that means different things for different players.”
What does it mean for Pivetta?
He allowed a couple of early home runs on Wednesday but otherwise pitched effectively through six innings, getting himself out of trouble in the fourth and allowing his only other run on a balk in the fifth. He retired the side in order in the sixth, a shutdown inning immediately after the Red Sox had taken the lead with a three-run bottom of the fifth. He’s often singled out the importance of his fastball command, but he threw an unusually even mix of fastballs, curveballs and sliders on Wednesday, an effective combination of game-planning and execution.
“It’s pitching, at the end of the day,” Pivetta said. “It’s what I’m here to do. I’m not just here to throw. I’m here to pitch and execute all pitches in the zone.”
That sounds like a starting pitcher. And Pivetta looked like one on Wednesday.
(Photo: Omar Rawlings / Getty Images)
