Add Rick Porcello to the list of Boston Red Sox starters who have started the 2018 season with a sterling performance.
The right-hander tossed 5 1/3 innings Saturday, giving up one run on six hits while striking out four and walking one in the Red Sox’s 3-2 win over the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field.
Porcello tossed five scoreless innings before running into a bit of trouble in the sixth inning. Heath Hembree relieved the righty with one out in the frame and allowed one inherited runner to score. Porcello’s five scoreless innings gave Boston’s starters an 18-inning scoreless streak to begin the season, the franchise’s longest since 1940.
The 2016 American League Cy Young Award winner didn’t have his best stuff in his season debut, but he battled all night and kept the Rays’ offensive at bay before turning it over to the bullpen.
“He commanded the bottom of the zone,” manager Alex Cora said after the game, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “Was able to mix up his pitches as we talk about before the game. It’s very important for him to have a good mix. His cutter was good, he threw a few comeback sinkers to lefties. You know he worked hard in the offseason and throughout spring training to work on his pitch selection and try to get back to the bottom of the zone and he was able to today.”
Porcello’s sinker has been his bread and butter pitch throughout his career, but the righty used his best pitch as a way to change the hitters’ eye level and go up in the zone later in the game.
“They got good low ball left-handed hitters,” Porcello said, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “And they have for the past couple years. It doesn’t mean we can’t throw the ball down, but we have to change eye levels and, you know, I’m not going to eliminate pitches just because I’m trying to be stubborn and get groundouts, I’m trying to get any out, any way possible.”
Chris Sale and David Price turned in stellar outings in the first two games of the season, and Porcello did his best to follow in their footsteps.
If this is a harbinger of things to come for Porcello, the Red Sox could boast the best 1-2-3 rotation punch in baseball.
Here are more notes from Red Sox-Rays:
— Xander Bogaerts is hitting .667 with six extra-base hits to begin the 2018 season, and has scored four of the Red Sox’s eight runs so far this season. Bogaerts became the first Red Sox hitter to record multiple extra-base hits in each of the first three games of a season. Adrian Gonzalez is the only other major leaguer to do that in the last 100 years, accomplishing the feat in 2015.
— Craig Kimbrel has dominated the Rays of late. In his last 11 appearances, the Red Sox closer has faced 34 batters, giving up zero hits, two walks and striking out 26.
— J.D. Martinez collected his first two hits as a member of the Red Sox on Saturday. He went 2-for-4 with a single and a double.
