A day after Cincinnati's Luis Castillo mowed down the Red Sox lineup to the tune of 10 strikeouts over six innings of one-hit ball, Wednesday's effort against Reds' starter Hunter Greene didn't look to be faring much better at the beginning.
Through three innings, Greene allowed just one hit -- a Trevor Story double -- and struck out seven Sox hitters, overpowering them with a fastball that routinely touched triple digits and a nasty slider.
Then, on the second pass through the lineup, the Red Sox reminded us what an accomplished veteran lineup can do to young pitchers when they make mistakes.
Rafael Devers' double kicked off a string of four straight hits that netted three runs, and Jackie Bradley Jr.'s RBI single chased Greene after just 3.2 innings. (Speaking of Bradley: his two-hit night bumped his batting average at Fenway Park this year up to .308, and 13 of his 20 RBIs, including four on Wednesday, have come at home.)
Impressively, the first three hits of that fourth inning -- Devers' opposite-field double and two consecutive jam-shot singles by J.D. Martinez and Xander Bogaerts, the second of which made the game 1-0 -- came with two strikes.
It wasn't so much a shelling of Greene so much as a series of professional at-bats and adjustments that took the sting out of the young flamethrower's game. After spending Tuesday night swinging through Castillo's fastballs and flailing at his changeups the evening before, the Red Sox broke out of an offensive funk by going back to the basics.
The offense wasn’t the only part of the team that had to make adjustments for Boston, though.
Garrett Whitlock had to figure out how to function without his most dominant stuff Wednesday night. His velocity was down on all three of his pitches, with his fastball averaging under 94 mph, and he struggled to miss bats as a result, generating just five whiffs all game.
Somehow, a guy who manages to strike out one batter per inning on average didn’t sit one Reds hitter down on strikes all game.
But Cincinnati couldn’t square him up anyway.
Whitlock scattered five hits over six innings with no walks and erased three of those hits with double-play balls, two of which came in the first two innings. The only run he allowed was unearned, lowering his ERA to 3.02.
You have to go back a decade to find another Red Sox pitcher (Aaron Cook) to go at least six innings in a game without allowing an earned run while failing to record a strikeout.
"One of the things we talked with him (about) a few days ago is pitch to your strengths," manager Alex Cora said of Whitlock's performance. "Don't adjust before they adjust...the last two, he's been like, get ahead with the fastball and go from there."
“Amazing,” added left fielder Alex Verdugo, who had a two-run double in the Red Sox' big fourth inning. “It feels like any time a guy is on first base, it’s like, ‘Hey, a double-play ball is coming up, right?’ He’s unbelievable throwing bowling balls up there. It’s fun to watch. I’m out there in left field wondering if I’m going to get a ball.”
Wednesday also marked Whitlock's second quality start in a row.
Things will get crowded in the Sox’ rotation once Chris Sale, who is ramping up his work off the mound, and James Paxton potentially return to the fold. But if Whitlock’s last two starts are any indication, he won’t make the decision to kick him back to the bullpen an easy one.
It also felt somewhat poetic that Tanner Houck, whose unvaccinated status essentially forced the Red Sox to move Whitlock into the starting rotation in the first place ahead of the team’s April series in Toronto, relieved Whitlock for the first time this year, throwing two strong innings out of the pen.
While Houck has frequently been used as a long-reliever on days when Rich Hill or someone else can’t make it out the fourth inning, Wednesday showed his potential as a strong late-game option for a bullpen in need of one.
Aside from Vazquez, Franchy Cordero, and Bobby Dalbec ruining the party by being the only Sox to go hitless and Vazquez committing another throwing error, it’s hard to complain about much.
At least for one night, the Boston Red Sox were who we thought they were: a good baseball team that can beat up on a bad one.