Celebrating Tanner Houck’s Career Night and a Few Others You May Have Forgotten

COMMENT

What are the 10 greatest pitching performances in Red Sox history?

To be clear, Tanner Houck’s Wednesday night gem is not in that group. Franchise history contains 18 recognized no-hitters, two Roger Clemens 20-strikeout games, and seven years of Pedro Martínez at or near the peak of his powers. And this is the smallest outline of the possibilities.

Wednesday, however, was the reason I thought about it. What Houck did against the Guardians was a flashpoint worth celebrating. On the one hand, it happened during an injury-laden 3-7 homestand that drained any momentum from the pleasant surprise trip that preceded it.

One of the best collective starting ERAs in franchise history, and yet there are multiple bullpen games in three weeks. What a build.

Once again, Houck. While his offense tallied just five hits, none of which came with a runner in scoring position, Houck wasn’t really threatened, throwing 21 first-pitch strikes and getting 19 swings and misses. After giving up 12 hits to the Angels a week ago Friday, his “no really, I’m a starter” statement is back on track.

“I think it’s one of those nights where you’ll probably get one, maybe two, a season if you’re lucky,” Houck told reporters. “That’s when you go out there and feel like you can’t do anything wrong. You cannot throw a bad throw in any count.

The fact that it took just an hour and 49 minutes to play, becoming the shortest game at Fenway Park since 1975, is a hook that partly has to thank for this anemic Red Sox offense. However, this remains a hook and reminds us that nights of dreams do not always remain in the brain.

Like, say, Brian Johnson. The pitcher with the Fenway Red Sox’s last shutout before Houck was a first-round pick who didn’t exactly pan out, totaling 171 innings in MLB over four seasons in the late 2010s. However, nine of them scored five-hitter against Seattle on May 27, 2017 – the left-hander’s first career home start.

Let’s review four more somewhat forgotten and unforgettable nights.

Aaron Cook — June 29, 2012

Since 1988, the Red Sox have played six complete nine-inning games in fewer than Houck’s 94 pitches. Two were 86-pitch one-hitters by Cy Young Arms – Clemens, in 1988, and Rick Porcello, against the Yankees in 2018. Porcello won at Camden Yards on 89 in 2016. Mike Boddicker and John Dopson had nights of 92 launches in the late 80s.

And then there is Cook. Eighty-one shots, in 2:18, on a Friday night in Seattle. The rare West Coast game that made the front page of your local newspaper.

“What an incredible game,” Cody Ross, himself the saving grace so many times in a lost year, told reporters.

In many ways.

Cook, 33, made the non-roster invitational team. He had suffered from shoulder problems “for probably five or six years,” in his words, and he sang the praises of Boston’s medical staff. His gem of June was his third start of what was his final MLB season, and for the rest of the year he would give up far more than a hit per inning.

Another number that night gave an idea of ​​why: Zero. That’s the number of pitches Mariners hitters swung at and missed. Cook’s two strikeouts were both looking and came in the middle of the extreme sinker getting 15 ground outs.

For the season, no pitcher had a lower swing strike percentage.

“It’s difficult (for him). A lot of it is luck,” manager Bobby Valentine told reporters. “Balls hit people.”

Mariners manager Eric Wedge put it another way.

“We were horrible,” he told reporters. “We just stank up the joint.” Nothing else to say.”

Chris Sale — June 24, 2018

From a man who didn’t miss a single bat to a man who missed more than anyone in Red Sox colors in the Statcast era.

Since 2015, when reliable public data began, Sale has seven of the nine highest single-game swing and miss totals for the Red Sox. He posted 26 twice, both during the 2018 season. The first was a 15-strikeout, no-walk loss in 12 innings at Toronto on May 11; Sale went to nine, but allowed a tying homer in the seventh.

The other was June 24 and he could have had more. Sale struck out 13, including 10 of the first 16 Mariners he faced at Fenway, part of a streak of five straight starts in which he reached double figures.

With the Sox up by five runs, Alex Cora retired Sale after seven innings and 93 pitches, with the left-hander lasting 100 miles per hour. He came away with more swings and misses (26) than balls (22, with 71 of his 93 pitches going for strikes).

“He looks fresh, he throws the ball well,” Cora told reporters. “I can’t wait to see him for the rest of the season.”

Five weeks later, Sale was placed on the injured list with shoulder inflammation.

Devern Hansack — October 1, 2006

It’s certainly strange, even by these strange standards.

It was the season finale of the only year 2003-09 the Red Sox missed the playoffs, a miserable Sunday at Fenway, rain delayed three and a half hours before first pitch and ultimately ended with more rain after only five rounds.

It was Trot Nixon’s last game. It was the day Theo Epstein announced that Jonathan Papelbon, after almost winning the rookie of the year title, was becoming a starter. (Note: He changed his mind.) That was the day a false drug report led Clemens to threaten prosecution.

And that’s the day Devern Hansack didn’t allow a hit in a 9-0 victory.

Making his second major league appearance after being called up in September by Double A, Hansack, 28, a Nicaraguan released from the Houston system in 2004, had worked as a lobster fisherman to make ends meet before Boston signed him for $3,000. – faced 15 Orioles, walked one and erased it on a double play.

“For the fans there, it wasn’t a hit,” he said that night. “I was very excited, surprised, because I had been away from baseball for so long.”

Hansack would make only seven more MLB appearances, appearing in three games for the 2007 champions. His final run in the organization came for Pawtucket in 2009.

Danny Darwin — August 18, 1993

There are only 119 players who have pitched 700 major league games and 138 who have pitched at least 3,000 innings. Darwin is in both groups, after a career that began in Texas alongside Bobby Bonds in 1978 and ended in a falling out with Barry Bonds in 1998.

However, Darwin never pitched more than in 1993, when the second of Butch Hobson’s three bad teams relied on the 37-year-old for 229 1/3 innings and 34 starts. In a year where the Sox’s problems were offensively, Darwin had a 3.26 ERA and a league-best 1.068 WHIP.

And he nearly pitched the Red Sox’s first no-hitter in three decades, the only blemish a two-run shutout on a Dan Pasqua triple in the eighth. This happened immediately after he pulled a comebacker off the knuckles.

Even in August, it stung his fingers. When catcher Tony Peña called for a split-finger fastball, Darwin thought about shaking it off, but didn’t.

Pasqua knocked him off the center field wall.

“I walked on the mound a little bit to get rid of the numbness,” Darwin told reporters. “I probably should have walked more than I did.”

It ended up being the last of Darwin’s three career single-hitters, but he was never this close to a no-no. The Red Sox would have to wait nine more years for a no-hitter at Fenway Park, until Derek Lowe faced Tampa Bay in 2002.