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BOSTON — As Tanner Houck prepares for his next start Sunday afternoon against the White Sox, the only place he can go is up.
Houck will look to bounce back Sunday after posting one of the ugliest pitching lines in Red Sox history Monday night in Tampa. In a blowout loss at Steinbrenner Field, the righty allowed 12 runs (11 earned) on 10 hits in just 2 ⅓ innings. Thirteen of 20 batters he faced reached base.
Houck, in a very brief interview Saturday, indicated he had moved on from the outing by making adjustments but said he wanted to keep those “in-house.” His pitching coach, Andrew Bailey, weighed in, though, noting that a review of Houck’s outing revealed that a combination of missed locations and non-competitive pitches in key counts doomed Houck against the Rays.
“Looking behind the curtain a little bit, it’s always going to be location-dependent. Count leverage is key in this game,” said Bailey. “We know he’s a pitcher who’s going to generate weak contact and rely on balls in play. We have to be able to generate swing-and-miss when we’re in an advantage count. Just stripping it down to location and usage stuff, letting him work through that to a point in time. But to be honest, Tampa had a great gameplan. You look at their aggression off of him and the pitches we threw in those counts... I’m not super worried about it.”
In his last outing of spring training, Houck gave up 10 runs and 12 hits (one homer) in 3 ⅔ innings against the Rays in Port Charlotte. Back-to-back horrendous performances against the same team made many wonder if Houck was potentially tipping pitches. Bailey, however, said the Red Sox didn’t detect anything of the sort.
“We don’t know what a team does or doesn’t know,” Bailey said. “If we rack our brains and spend too much time in that mindset, we’ll be swimming down rabbit holes and trying to fix things by chasing ghosts. Obviously, we’ve done our due diligence there but for me, it all comes down to the execution, a little bit of game-planning and being able to execute our pitches where and when we need to.”
Tampa Bay put together innings of four runs (second inning) and nine runs (third) against Houck and the Red Sox en route to a 16-1 win, and those frames were a mixture of hard-hit balls and shoddy defense. The Red Sox were charged with just a single error (on an Alex Bregman fielding miscue at third) but had plenty of other balls bounce off gloves or land in catchable areas. Still, the Rays hit eight balls off Houck at 100.2 mph or harder.
Houck’s strikeout rate of 12.6% is significantly down from his career average of 22.7%. He’s never going to lead the league in punch-outs but the Red Sox know he needs to get more whiffs in order to make his contract-heavy approach play up.
"He misses bats but he’s not going to punch a lot of guys out,“ Bailey said. ”That has been pretty indicative over his career. We’re not going to magically be able to help him miss bats. He’s a guy that feeds off ground balls.
“You look at some BABIP (.361) numbers and sure, it’s high, but we know the balls in play rate are going to be high with him. We just have to do a better job of limiting the contact and executing when we need to.”
Bailey said that the club is not worried about Houck, who pitched a career-high 178 ⅔ innings over 30 starts in 2024, hitting the wall after a heavy workload a season ago. Health-wise, they believe the righty is fine. But something has clearly been off with Houck since the All-Star break. After riding a 2.54 first-half ERA (117 innings) to his first career All-Star appearance, he hit the wall hard down the stretch, logging a 4.23 ERA in his last 11 starts (61 ⅔ innings). He struck out just 42 batters in his last 11 starts.
The Red Sox attempted to make some mechanical adjustments with Houck during spring training in an effort to move more efficiently and dominate on his arm side. Now, the mechanics are in sync but the attack plan and pitch location has been off.
“We’ve just got to dial in a few things here and there,” Bailey said.
Houck, who owns a staggering 9.16 ERA through his first four starts, doesn’t seem to be in danger of being shut down or removed from the starting five yet. The Red Sox would welcome a quick turnaround, however, and the efforts to that end will begin Sunday.
“You get 30 starts in the big leagues. There’s going to be 10 where you’re dominant, 10 where you want to flush them, and it’s the middle 10 that really make or break the season,” Bailey said. “We’ve just tilted the scale in the latter a little bit but we’ve got to keep pushing, get back to basics in terms of location and how we want to attack hitters and continue to problem solve for lefties.
“As long as these guys are bouncing back great, we want to continue to push them. We want our best pitchers on the field as often as we can and that’s what’s best for our team and our organization. Tanner taking the ball every fifth or sixth day is really good for our team and we know he’s capable of getting the team deep into games.”
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Houck will look to bounce back Sunday after posting one of the ugliest pitching lines in Red Sox history Monday night in Tampa. In a blowout loss at Steinbrenner Field, the righty allowed 12 runs (11 earned) on 10 hits in just 2 ⅓ innings. Thirteen of 20 batters he faced reached base.
Houck, in a very brief interview Saturday, indicated he had moved on from the outing by making adjustments but said he wanted to keep those “in-house.” His pitching coach, Andrew Bailey, weighed in, though, noting that a review of Houck’s outing revealed that a combination of missed locations and non-competitive pitches in key counts doomed Houck against the Rays.
“Looking behind the curtain a little bit, it’s always going to be location-dependent. Count leverage is key in this game,” said Bailey. “We know he’s a pitcher who’s going to generate weak contact and rely on balls in play. We have to be able to generate swing-and-miss when we’re in an advantage count. Just stripping it down to location and usage stuff, letting him work through that to a point in time. But to be honest, Tampa had a great gameplan. You look at their aggression off of him and the pitches we threw in those counts... I’m not super worried about it.”
In his last outing of spring training, Houck gave up 10 runs and 12 hits (one homer) in 3 ⅔ innings against the Rays in Port Charlotte. Back-to-back horrendous performances against the same team made many wonder if Houck was potentially tipping pitches. Bailey, however, said the Red Sox didn’t detect anything of the sort.
“We don’t know what a team does or doesn’t know,” Bailey said. “If we rack our brains and spend too much time in that mindset, we’ll be swimming down rabbit holes and trying to fix things by chasing ghosts. Obviously, we’ve done our due diligence there but for me, it all comes down to the execution, a little bit of game-planning and being able to execute our pitches where and when we need to.”
Tampa Bay put together innings of four runs (second inning) and nine runs (third) against Houck and the Red Sox en route to a 16-1 win, and those frames were a mixture of hard-hit balls and shoddy defense. The Red Sox were charged with just a single error (on an Alex Bregman fielding miscue at third) but had plenty of other balls bounce off gloves or land in catchable areas. Still, the Rays hit eight balls off Houck at 100.2 mph or harder.
Houck’s strikeout rate of 12.6% is significantly down from his career average of 22.7%. He’s never going to lead the league in punch-outs but the Red Sox know he needs to get more whiffs in order to make his contract-heavy approach play up.
"He misses bats but he’s not going to punch a lot of guys out,“ Bailey said. ”That has been pretty indicative over his career. We’re not going to magically be able to help him miss bats. He’s a guy that feeds off ground balls.
“You look at some BABIP (.361) numbers and sure, it’s high, but we know the balls in play rate are going to be high with him. We just have to do a better job of limiting the contact and executing when we need to.”
Bailey said that the club is not worried about Houck, who pitched a career-high 178 ⅔ innings over 30 starts in 2024, hitting the wall after a heavy workload a season ago. Health-wise, they believe the righty is fine. But something has clearly been off with Houck since the All-Star break. After riding a 2.54 first-half ERA (117 innings) to his first career All-Star appearance, he hit the wall hard down the stretch, logging a 4.23 ERA in his last 11 starts (61 ⅔ innings). He struck out just 42 batters in his last 11 starts.
The Red Sox attempted to make some mechanical adjustments with Houck during spring training in an effort to move more efficiently and dominate on his arm side. Now, the mechanics are in sync but the attack plan and pitch location has been off.
“We’ve just got to dial in a few things here and there,” Bailey said.
Houck, who owns a staggering 9.16 ERA through his first four starts, doesn’t seem to be in danger of being shut down or removed from the starting five yet. The Red Sox would welcome a quick turnaround, however, and the efforts to that end will begin Sunday.
“You get 30 starts in the big leagues. There’s going to be 10 where you’re dominant, 10 where you want to flush them, and it’s the middle 10 that really make or break the season,” Bailey said. “We’ve just tilted the scale in the latter a little bit but we’ve got to keep pushing, get back to basics in terms of location and how we want to attack hitters and continue to problem solve for lefties.
“As long as these guys are bouncing back great, we want to continue to push them. We want our best pitchers on the field as often as we can and that’s what’s best for our team and our organization. Tanner taking the ball every fifth or sixth day is really good for our team and we know he’s capable of getting the team deep into games.”
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