If you watched the Red Sox slog through the first couple of weeks to this season, you would have been forgiven for thinking that there are only two -- and not three -- true outcomes: walks and homers.
The Red Sox were giving up both walks and homers at a record pace, and getting the predictable results. The team lost eight of its first 10 games, and eventually, 13 of its first 19 games.
In the first series alone, during which the Sox dropped three-of-four to Seattle, Red Sox pitchers allowed 11 homers, eight of them by the starting pitchers. It didn't get much better in Oakland, where the rotation was guilty of allowing six more over the next four games.
In all, the starters allowed 16 homers in the first 40.1 innings pitched, an average of 3.57 per nine innings. And because most of the starters were having difficulty with command and issuing walks, most of the homers didn't come with the bases empty.
In their first 50.1 innings of work, the team's Big Five -- Chris Sale, David Price, Rick Porcello, Nathan Eovaldi and Eduardo Rodriguez -- allowed 36 walks.
The problem was obvious: too many baserunners and too many big innings.
This was not how the Red Sox drew it up, of course, in the offseason. The team eschewed the many experienced relievers on the free agent market and invested further in the rotation by re-signing Eovaldi, easily their biggest transaction ($68 million over four years) of the winter.
As other teams took steps to find new ways to utilize their pitching staff and deemphasized the importance of starters by experimenting with concepts like "the opener,'' the Sox doubled down. They would construct -- and pay handsomely -- experienced starters who would regularly take them deep into game and limit the exposure of the bullpen.
And then, the vaunted rotation promptly executed a face plant in the first two weeks of the season.
"Regardless of where we are in the season,'' offered pitching coach Dana LeVangie, "it's always important for our pitching staff to avoid big innings. That's an emphasis regardless, throughout. And the other key was getting our starters back to who they are and who they've been throughout their career. That was huge for us.
Fixing it took time.
LeVangie traced some of the early-season issues back to the team's plan to bring the starters along slowly in spring training -- though not in a way one might expect. To LeVangie, it was less about lack of arm strength or inning buildup and more the result of the starters trying to do more than they were ready to do.
"Despite the fact these guys didn't get (the usual amount of) innings in spring training,'' said LeVangie, "they worked hard. Every time they threw the ball, it was with intent and purpose. I'd say there were some delivery-related type things. But the big thing was we went from playing on the biggest stage in baseball (in postseason last October) to spring training.
"As a team, in the World Series, every pitch is a swing and miss and you can't recreate that in spring training. In October, guys are pitching to 100 percent effort on every pitch. That in itself was an adjustment for a lot of our guys. Our starters can't go out there (early in the season) and throw 100 percent on every pitch because they'd be toast by June.''
And yet, some of them tried in the first few weeks of the season, subconsciously trying to ramp it up fully before they were ready. The result was a lot of overthrowing. And when pitchers overthrow, trouble ensues: pitches end up out of the strike zone, resulting in either walks, or worse, falling into hitter's counts and having to throw balls over the middle of the plate, resulting in homers.
Or, in a worst case scenario, both.
"We had to figure out who each guy was coming into the season,'' explained LeVangie. "They were trying to pitch the same way they did in October at the beginning of the season and they can't do that. They were overthrowing and pitching playoff-style and you can't last doing that for 33 starts.
"We had to make adjustments to how they were competing. They were probably competing with too much intensity, trying to get swing-and-misses from the get-go, which led to the walks. And then you get into bad counts and they have to throw strikes and (opponents) are doing damage.''
Fast forward a few weeks and the problems have, gradually and methodically, disappeared. The execution is better. The mechanical wrinkles have been ironed out. The starters are no longer devoting maximum effort on every pitch. And both the walks and homers are down precipitously.
With Eovaldi out for the last three weeks and Price temporarily sidelined, the remaining Big Three of Porcello, Rodriguez and Sale have made the necessary adjustments. In the last 13 games for the trio, they've issued just 19 walks.
As for the homers, they dipped precipitously, too. In the last 31 games, the Sox have given up just 16 homers, an average of just over half a homer per outing. In 17 of the last 31, Boston's starters haven't allowed any homers, with one homer yielded in 12 others. Only twice in that span have starters allowed multiple homers. By contrast, that happened three times in the first six games of the season.
"Guys have really started to find their groove and are giving us a chance to win every game,'' said LeVangie.
Indeed, the Sox are in the midst of a stretch of 27 games in which a starter hasn't allowed more than four earned runs while limiting the opposition to three or fewer in 23 of them.
There will continue to be debates about the wisdom of the team's spring training approach to its starters, especially with two of the five currently on the IL. But LeVangie harbors no second guesses.
"We know we're a good team,'' LeVangie said. "Can you win or lose (a season) in April? Yeah, but I'd like to think that our team is too good to say we're going to lose the season in the first month.''
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