BOSTON - So Wade Miley's Fenway debut was . . . interesting. Almost as interesting as Justin Masterson's fifth inning the day before. Or Clay Buchholz's first inning in Yankee Stadium.
And by interesting, we mean horrendous.
If you've been following the Sox this season, you know one of the big storylines is the starting pitching, or potentially lack thereof.
There's no ace. There's five aces! Wait, there's five No. 3 starters. Wait . . . three of those No. 3 starters recently looked like No. 5 starters. Except some No. 5 starters look like they belong in the majors.
OK, the last sentence is a bit unfair. In reality, three starting pitchers had bad starts. Cause for concern? Sure. Is the sky falling? Not yet, anyways. These are, however, pitchers who have had their ups and downs over their respective careers, and therefore you don't really know what you're going to get on a game-to-game basis.
As Brad Stevens once joked about a way to promote his Celtics team: "Hashtag every game is an adventure."
That could apply to this Red Sox team with the definition of hit-or-miss pitching and well, hit-or-hit hitting.
Red Sox GM Ben Cherington sees the same thing you do out there: some trouble the second time through the rotation. But he's not going to panic over a few bad starts yet.
“The first time through the rotation went well. Everyone threw well,” Cherington said on WEEI's Dennis and Callahan Show on Thursday. “The second time through the rotation has not gone as well, aside from [Rick] Porcello’s outing on Monday. Watching the games, I don’t see anything in the stuff — in the raw stuff — that is any different than the first time through the order. So it’s really just been a matter of execution, command, that hasn’t been as good the second time through. That has to be better.
"I think the key for our group is to get deeper in the games which allows the bullpen to be aligned better and gives our offense a chance to continue to grind down the opposition the way that they've been doing. I don't see any reason why we're not going to do that, just the second time through hasn't gone as well but I think we need to get deeper into the season. I know as a group the guys feel good physically, confident and just have to execute a little better."
CSNNE.com's Sean McAdam wrote on Thursday that the Sox should consider a long man in the bullpen, someone like Steven Wright, who can come in on games like Wednesday's when Miley lasted just 2.1 innings and get you deep into the game. For such a questionable rotation out of the gates, that seems like a good way to alleviate the bullpen stress early on in the season.
If performances like the three of four this week become a trend, you can bet something like that will be done - or changes must be made in the rotation. Until then, the Sox staff simply has to go deeper into games and avoid those killer innings.
“I think with our team," Cherington said, "one of the things that helps us win is, we’re not going to have perfect outings, perfect innings all the time, but minimizing damage and being able to get through those dirty innings get deeper into games — that is something Porcello did well on Monday and we did very well the first time through the order. That lines up our bullpen . . . gives our offense a chance to click and will lead to wins. I think, again, up until the last few days through spring training and through the first six games of the season or so there was really a lot of encouraging things about the pitching. The last few games haven't gone as well but I think we need to see these guys a little bit more."