Tanner Houck, a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, was told he would be moved to the bullpen a year ago. He refused, asking how he could stay in the starting rotation. He developed a new pitch, a splitter, and cut back on his fastball velocity. He is now an American League All-Star with an 8-6 record and a 2.54 ERA.Tanner Houck, a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, was told he would be moved to the bullpen a year ago. He refused, asking how he could stay in the starting rotation. He developed a new pitch, a splitter, and cut back on his fastball velocity. He is now an American League All-Star with an 8-6 record and a 2.54 ERA.
A year after being told he was being sent to the bullpen, Boston Red Sox’s Tanner Houck is an American League All-Star. Steve Senne/Associated Press
ARLINGTON, Texas — Hours before the world shut down and spring training came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tanner Houck stood on the back fields of the Boston Red Sox complex in Florida and attempted for the first time the pitch that would make him an All-Star.
Before he earned the All-Star nod, he first had to convince the Red Sox to keep him in the starting rotation.
“I think everything I’ve done in my life has been geared toward achieving this goal,” Houck said.
Houck has become Boston’s breakout starter about a year after he was called into an office at Fenway Park to discuss a move to the bullpen. Chaim Bloom, then the Red Sox’ chief baseball officer and now a consultant to the St. Louis Cardinals, was there with manager Alex Cora. They told Houck early last season that he would be removed from the rotation to make room for returning players.
Houck’s response was essentially: No.
“I want to stay a starter,” he said. “I know I can start.”
He asked what he should do to change their minds.
“I was a little stubborn in that sense — knowing what I wanted to do,” Houck recalled Monday at Globe Life Field on the eve of his first All-Star Game. He is 8-6 with a 2.54 ERA in 19 starts for the Sox and had been mentioned as a potential American League starter.
“It was more about proving that I could do it,” he said. “It was kind of a moment where I learned to stand up for myself and know that this is my career, and sometimes it’s hard to have conversations with people in authority. They can be scary. At the same time, I’m growing as an individual.”
Though he threw seven innings in a start shortly after that meeting, the results weren’t immediately consistent. He threw more strikes—which the Red Sox demanded—but finished the 2023 season 6-10 with a 5.01 ERA. He walked 41 batters in 106 innings. Houck was the 24th overall pick out of the University of Missouri in 2017. His career had already included a recasting as a reliever, a facial fracture suffered on a hit, and back surgery. And here he was this spring, trying to reassert himself as a starter.
Meet the splitter.
That pitch he began working on in the final minutes of spring training 2020 has been rolling around in his hand ever since. He knew he needed a third pitch to hang on as a starter, and that splitter had the depth and movement to be that pitch.
Last spring, taking a tip from new pitching coach Andrew Bailey, he switched his grip to a split-finger. Now the pitch comes off his middle finger, like a changeup, and he collapses. He has more than doubled his use of the pitch to one in four pitches. Opponents are hitting .188 against it, with a slugging of .234.
At the same time, Houck, again at Bailey’s urging, dropped his four-seam fastball, hit his cutter and did something else today: He stopped grabbing for velocity.
“I know I’m a better pitcher when I’m throwing 91-94 mph than when I’m throwing 94-96 mph,” Houck said. “Why? Because I execute the pitch better when I get it in the zone better. I get better spin on all of my pitches, and ultimately that’s a better combination than chasing a little bit (of speed). I always believed I had the ability. It was just a matter of putting it together. Sometimes the best way to put things together is to subtract. We think more is better, and ultimately I throw my best three pitches as much as I can now.”
And it all started with that first pitch he made in that meeting, when he – “Calm, cool, collected,” he said – insisted that he could be a starter and asked how.
“I’ve always wanted to do it myself,” Houck said. “For me, it’s more satisfying knowing that I put the work in. I put the time in. I put all that effort in to pitch every fifth day. I love what I do. This is the best job on earth. If I didn’t earn it, that’s fine. But I will. I’m going to keep going.”
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