BOSTON — Red Sox manager John Farrell said before Wednesday’s game that Rick Porcello would need make three or four “big pitches” for the right-hander to have any chance of escaping the brutal funk he’d been mired in.
The biggest of all came in the fourth inning.
After the Red Sox hung four runs on the Miami Marlins in the bottom of the third, Porcello, who’d put two men on base in the previous two frames, proceeded to surrender five consecutive base hits, bringing home two Miami runs and loading the bases with one out.
A chorus of boos began to rain down from capacity crowd at Fenway Park. They had seen this movie far too many times.
During an eight-start stretch that included zero wins, seven losses and five outings in which he allowed five or more earned runs, Porcello had displayed a nasty tendency of giving away leads mere moments after his team had gained them.
So, although the Red Sox still owned a two-run cushion after Ichiro Suzuki smacked Miami’s fifth straight single, confidence in their pitcher to protect it was at an all-time low.
But then, Porcello did something he seldom has over the last month and a half: He buckled down.
He got leadoff man Dee Gordon to ground out to third — with Pablo Sandoval throwing home to retire the lead runner — then made an excellent play to snare a Christian Yelich comebacker and end the threat.
No Marlins batter reached base over Porcello’s final two innings of work, and the Red Sox added a pair of insurance runs en route to a 6-3 victory.
“Those are the situations that really any starting pitcher is going to face in the course of a game,” Farrell said after the win, Boston’s fourth in a row. “There’s probably three or four of those opportunities that come up. And not only did he make the pitch, but he makes a heck of a defensive play to prevent a potential two-run single going through the middle. I thought he kept the game under control and for the most part minimized the mistakes that have kind of cropped up over the stretch of games in which he’s pitched.”
The last time Porcello pitched, the Red Sox’s momentum ground to a screeching halt — a three-game win streak cut short by an 11-2 shellacking at the hands of the Toronto Blue Jays. That game also was Porcello’s worst of the season: He was pulled after giving up seven runs — all on three mammoth homers — in just two innings.
The Canada Day debacle raised Porcello’s ERA to an American League-worst 6.08 and made it difficult to justify him keeping his spot in the Red Sox’s rotation. Another disaster like that would have made doing so next to impossible.
Instead, Porcello gave Boston what it needed: a solid start. Not brilliant, not spectacular by any means, but solid.
“We’re a team here,” he said after the game. “We need to support everybody, support each other. I never doubted I was going to make my next start. That’s what it’s all about. It’s not always going to be going great for you. To me, the support and everything that I’ve had from the coaching staff has been huge.”
Now, the Red Sox will look to keep the good vibes rolling into the weekend as the New York Yankees visit Fenway for one final three-game series before the All-Star break. The Yankees sit atop the American League East standings, but the last-place Sox, who now have won nine of their last 12 and 14 of their last 21, sit just five games back.
“There’s a good feeling in our clubhouse right now,” Farrell said.
Thumbnail photo via Mark L. Baer/USA TODAY Sports Images
