Even with Nick Pivetta cruising on the mound against the Houston Astros on Wednesday night and showing no signs of tiring, Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora had a decision to make following Pivetta's 1-2-3 eighth inning.
Pivetta was up to 102 pitches at that point, and Cora could have easily taken a cautious approach and turned things over to Boston's bullpen for the final frame, but the skipper wasn't even going to bring up the possibility of taking his starting pitcher out of the game.
"The way he was looking at me, I was like, 'Let me stay away. He might kill me,'" Cora said as seen on NESN's postgame coverage. "He had that look. He had it."
Pivetta needed only 10 pitches in the ninth inning to put the finishing touches on his complete-game masterpiece, a rare feat in baseball nowadays. Pivetta allowed just two hits and one run while striking out eight and walking none to lift the Red Sox to a 5-1 win over the Astros in the series finale at Fenway Park.
Cora admitted that taking Pivetta out given his high pitch count was in the back of his mind, but decided against it as he continued to watch the right-hander mow down Houston's lineup.
"His stuff was really good. It wasn't hard contact," Cora said. "The at-bat by (Yuli) Gurriel, you saw it, he got fooled by the breaking ball. (Jeremy) Pena fooled by the breaking ball. Even the last at-bat by (José) Altuve, that was his fourth time and he got him. You still have to manage the game. It's 5-1 here at Fenway, but he was in control."
Pivetta had no intentions of giving up the baseball as he recorded the Red Sox's first complete-game performance since Chris Sale did so in 2019.
"I didn't want to come out," Pivetta said. "After the last game, I felt like I could go the extra two innings, pick up the bullpen a little bit. I felt good. Felt confident. I was in the zone. They weren't taking great hacks against me, so I kind of just ran with that."
