Owens finishes strong after rough beginning

Share

BOSTON - When taking a look at Henry Owens' pitching line today, the words "great job" certainly wouldn't come to mind.

Owens allowed seven runs on 10 hits over 6.0 innings. He did, however, strike out 10 batters as well. So there is that.

But there's also the fact that while yes, Owens did allow back-to-back homers in the 1st inning and four more runs in the 3rd inning, the rookie making his Fenway Park debut got himself together and pitched three more innings of scoreless baseball, including a 1-2-3 6th inning that included two strike outs and a foul out.

That had Torey Lovullo being positive about the outing as a whole.

"He did a great job. I honestly feel like giving up seven runs in the first three innings it would have been easy for a young pitcher to collapse, but he composed himself," Lovullo said. "He wanted to go back out there for the 6th inning and he executed a good game plan. For a young pitcher to do that, for a young pitcher to go back out there and complete that 6th inning as easily as he did, it says a lot about Henry."

Owens was obviously disappointed that he put his team down by so much early on. A couple homers in the first inning came off of "very edible" changeups, according to him. He admitted to leaving too many pitches up in the zone.

But just as often as Mariners batters hit Owens, they missed. Owens' 10 strikeouts puts him in a category with only Pedro Martinez (12 strikeouts) and Don Aase (11 strikeouts) as the only Red Sox pitchers to strikeout at least 10 batters in their Fenway Park debut

"You got to give him some credit he was getting to a certain point in the at-bat, he smelled blood and he finished it off," Lovullo said. "Ten strikeouts over six innings is pretty impressive no matter how you look at it. I think we have to kind of break it up into a couple segments. Yes, he was rattled early. A few long balls. Composed himself, kept us in the game, gave us a chance to play catch up, and that's really the theme for me today. We chipped away at a 7-0 lead and had a chance to win that ball game."

The rookie will get back to work tomorrow and continue his progression. He knows he's a long ways away.

"Going to be a constant learning process," Owens said. "I think even people who aren't rookies are still trying to learn this game. There's so much to learn so I'm going to continue to take it day by day and tomorrow come out and get my work in and try and learn something watching the game."

Contact Us