Red Sox score early to beat Blue Jays in another steady outing for Tanner Houck

TORONTO — As the regular season winds down, the Red Sox understand the reality of the math that confronts them. Though they have not been eliminated, too many teams are too far in front of the Sox in the wild-card race for this year’s edition of the club to have a realistic shot at playing in October.

Nevertheless, the season’s final days have offered evidence of forces that can help the team get there in the future. In particular, the team’s young starters are amid a season-ending sprint that could signal better days in future seasons.

On Monday, Tanner Houck made his 30th start of the year. In a 4-1 Red Sox win over the Blue Jays that pushed the Sox back over .500 (79-78), Houck logged five shutout innings, pushing his season total to 178⅔ innings while lowering his ERA to 3.12.

The righthander was a model of efficiency. Though he garnered just one swing and miss, Houck (9-10) retired the first 14 Blue Jays he faced, and needed just 57 pitches to navigate five innings in which he allowed just one hit and one walk while eliciting 10 ground ball outs.

“It’s great, super efficient,” said Houck. “You got to be pounding the zone to get to that.”

Houck joined Kutter Crawford in the 30-start club. On Tuesday, Brayan Bello will take the mound and turn the duo into a trio — thus forming the first threesome of homegrown Red Sox starters to reach the 30-start plateau in the same season since 1987, when Roger Clemens, Bruce Hurst, and Al Nipper accomplished the feat.

“Huge step forward,” Houck — who missed two starts this month with shoulder fatigue, and thus was working on a modest pitch count for the second straight outing — said of reaching the 30-start plateau. “It’s been fun to really watch all three of us grow and kind of push past our limits and barriers and go through this full 162 together. “It’s been great.”

The group has not simply been taking the ball on turn. After a mid-summer struggle, the Sox rotation has offered a reminder of its dominant early-season form. The team’s starters have a 1.39 ERA in the last six games, a 2.43 mark (best in MLB) in their last 27, and a 3.76 mark (sixth) for the season.

It’s clear the rotation now represents a foundation upon which the Red Sox can build — particularly if, in the coming winter, they target the sort of front-of-the-rotation addition they haven’t made since trading for Chris Sale after the 2016 campaign

“They took a step forward and that was to plan going into the season,” said Sox manager Alex Cora. “The way they’re finishing the season, let’s see what happens. They’ve been great.”

While Houck stifled the Blue Jays by pouring his sinker/slider/splitter mix over the plate, Toronto counterpart Chris Bassitt was afflicted with a strike-zone aversion, walking a career-high seven batters in 4⅓ innings. The Sox capitalized with a steady drip of offense, scoring single runs in the second (Vaughn Grissom sac fly), third (Wilyer Abreu RBI double), and fourth (Ceddanne Rafaela RBI ground out) to take a 3-0 lead. The Sox added an eighth-inning insurance run when Rafaela had another RBI fielder’s choice — sprinting out of the box to beat out a potential inning-ending double play.

“The guys did an amazing job working counts, taking the walks,” said Cora. “You do that, you put the ball in play with men on third, and you hustle down the line, and good things happen.”

Behind Houck, the team received strong work from the bullpen, with Greg Weissert working out of a jam to produce a scoreless sixth, lefty Zach Penrod offering two outs in the seventh, and rocket-armed righthander Luis Guerrero delivering four outs to hand off a 4-0 lead to Chris Martin in the ninth.

Though Martin allowed a run, he escaped any real harm by inducing a game-ending 4-6-3 double play from Alejandro Kirk.

The Sox extended their winning streak to three games — their longest run of W’s since August 4-6 — while claiming their 79th victory of the season, surpassing the team’s win total from the last two years. The Sox also ensured they’ll finish ahead of the Blue Jays in the standings, thus escaping last place for the first time since 2021.

“Woo!” Cora said with feigned excitement for what he considered an unremarkable achievement. “We’ve got to continue. Let’s win tomorrow and keep going. Just win tomorrow and see where we’re at and finish strong. That’s the goal. And overall, we’ll talk about (the season) whenever we’re done. “We set our sights to make it to the playoffs and it’s a very slim chance to make it.”

Of course, the team hopes that in future years it will be doing more than fighting to preserve long-shot hopes at the end of the season. The steps forward by the young Red Sox starters offer hints at how that might happen.

“Sky’s the limit, as long as we all keep pushing ourselves to get better and pushing each other to get better each and every day,” said Houck.

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Alex Speier can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @alexspeier.