Garrett Whitlock already is throwing Red Sox fans for a loop just by the number he's wearing on the back of his jersey.
The Boston pitcher wore No. 72 last season but planned to switch to No. 22 to honor his idol and former Red Sox pitcher Rick Porcello. Whitlock donned the new number for a little bit, but then went back to his original 72.
So, why the change?
Derek Holland, a veteran pitcher in Major League Baseball who the Red Sox signed this year, was given No. 22.
"The crazy thing about 22 is it's with me, my agent, my brother and one of his buddies. Growing up, that was one of the popular numbers that would show up on everything, and it's continued to be something that's been out there," Holland said during an appearance on WEEI's "Gresh & Keefe," as transcribed by Audacy's Logan Mullen. "If I go to a casino, I'm gonna bet on 22, everything I do it somehow falls back on 22. And to throw it into perspective and give you an idea of how much it pops up, it's even the bus that the Joker drives in the Batman movie 'The Dark Knight.' So if you take a look, you'll see 22 showed up a lot, and that's why I went with it."
Holland added he wasn't trying to take the number away from Whitlock. In fact, he wasn't even aware the pitcher had changed numbers.
"Now I had no idea of what had happened with Whitlock wanting that number for Porcello. I sat and talked to him about it. I'm a very superstitious guy, and one of the things that I brought up to him too was look at what you did last year with the number you had," Holland said. "It's a different number, I get it, but at the same time you're building your own legacy with that number. People are going to know you because of that number, wouldn’t you want that? Those are the kind of things to think about."
Now we'll just have to wait and see if Whitlock can mirror (or even improve) what he did last year for the Red Sox with No. 72.
