It’s all coming back for Nick Pivetta.
He’s arguably even better this time around.
Pivetta continued his hot streak with another gem on Saturday afternoon in Oakland, where he allowed just four baserunners while striking out seven over seven scoreless innings in the Red Sox’s 8-0 win over the A’s.
It was the third straight win for the Sox, who are in the midst of a 10-game West Coast trip. They moved to 26-27 with a chance to get back to .500 in Sunday’s series finale. They haven’t been .500 or better since April 22.
The takeaways:
1. Pivetta has been ace-like
No matter how you slice it, Pivetta has been the ace of the Red Sox and one of the premier starting pitchers in baseball over the last month.
With his dazzling performance against the A’s on Saturday, Pivetta has now strung together six consecutive quality starts, the fourth-longest such streak in MLB this year. His 1.32 ERA in that span ranks sixth, and he’s struck out 37 batters in 36 innings.
More importantly, the Sox are 5-1 in those six starts after going 0-5 in Pivetta’s first five starts of 2022.
Saturday’s start was notable in that Pivetta looked like he was feeling his fastball. Primarily working off his knee-bending knuckle curve, the 29-year-old right-hander rediscovered his heater, which saw its average velocity jump to 94 mph while touching 96 mph. The A’s had six whiffs against Pivetta’s fastball and three more off his curve as they looked off-balance all day.
Pivetta’s success continues to be one of baseball’s underrated storylines. While the Yankees’ Nestor Cortes Jr. has gotten a lot of press with his surprise season, Pivetta has received far far less notoriety despite having a similar story as an underdog who has risen to the top of the rotation.
The Phillies had all but given up on him in 2020, when they traded him along with prospect Connor Seabold to acquire a pair of relievers, Brandon Workman and Heath Hembree, who ended up being unsuccessful short-term rentals.
Since going to the Red Sox, Pivetta has been a fantastic mid-rotation starter for the Sox, with a 4.13 ERA that ranks 65th among qualified starters in that span, and 246 strikeouts, which ranks 23rd.
All while costing the Sox next-to-nothing. He just hit his first year of arbitration and is making about $2 million this year. He has two additional years of team control.
2. The offense is back, it appears?
That’s three straight games with at least seven runs as the Sox erased a quiet offensive week at Fenway Park and have started to look back to their normal selves on the road.
With 22 runs in their last three games, the Sox are back to being the No. 1 ranked offense in the American League, a remarkable feat considering how bad they were in April.
Their 4.85 runs per game are just above the Yankees, who are scoring 4.77 runs per game this year.
Xander Bogaerts continued his torrid season at the plate as he was on base three times, scoring two runs, while Alex Verdugo was 3 for 5 with two RBIs and a double.
3. Tanner Houck is wasted in the eighth.
The easiest way to make up for a shaky bullpen is by tacking on runs late in the game and allowing manager Alex Cora to save his best arms for another day.
The Sox did just that on Saturday, pushing a 4-0 lead to 8-0 by adding four runs in the top of the eighth inning.
Houck was warming for the second straight day, though there was no need for the Sox to waste their best option out of relief.
Cora used him anyways, letting Houck strike out two in a scoreless eighth before removing him.
He threw just 13 pitches, so he should be able to bounce back in a day or two, but Cora has been hesitant to use Houck on less than two days rest and tends to save him for big moments.
Without many reliable options, the Sox have to be more efficient with their usage of Houck, who is now in the Garrett Whitlock role as the team’s ace multi-inning reliever.
