Boston Red Sox Utilizing Backwards Approach to Great Success Early On
Sure, it's just four games into the season, but the Boston Red Sox have utilized a brand new pitching approach to great success early on. The team is throwing more breaking balls than anyone in baseball to this point.
The Boston Red Sox, who are supposed to have one of the weakest pitching staffs in all of baseball, completely dominated the Seattle Mariners' hitters in the first four games of the 2024 season.
Though the Red Sox only came out of a Seattle with a 2-2 series split, the starting pitching was absolutely not the problem, it was an incredible success. Brayan Bello, Nick Pivetta, Kutter Crawford and Garrett Whitlock all went at least five solid innings as starters, and the bullpen generally performed excellently as well. Boston pitchers registered 46 strikeouts against Seattle hitters.
Perhaps the reason for the success? The new pitching program of Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow and pitching coach Andrew Bailey, which saw the Sox take on a more offspeed-oriented approach in the first week.
Rob Bradford of WEEI had more data on the Sox' new approach:
So far, no staff has thrown a higher percentage of breaking stuff - coming in at 54.7 percent - than the Red Sox. Conversely, the Yankees' pitchers have tossed breaking pitches just 27.7 percent of the time.
But it's not just that they are throwing stuff with spin, it's that they are getting outs with it. Only the Guardians have gotten more outs via breaking balls than the Red Sox, thus far, with Andrew Bailey's guys. They also have the third-highest strike percentage when throwing breaking balls, which is obviously part of the plan.
And when it comes to starting hitters off, the Red Sox are throwing four-seam or two-seam fastballs just 6.9 percent of the time, last in the big leagues.
Now, it remains to be seen if this was just a gameplan for the Mariners, or if the Sox will use this plan all season, but either way, this coaching staff has shown the ability to identify a plan that works - and they've gotten the pitchers to be able to implement it.
The Red Sox will open a series on Monday against the hapless Oakland Athletics on Monday night. First pitch is 9:40 p.m. ET.
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