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

On Monday, Tanner Houck contributed to the Sox starters’ season-ending streak by contributing five scoreless innings against the Jays. That performance lowered the rotation’s ERA to 1.39 over its last six games, an MLB-best 2.43 over its last 27 contests and a solid 3.76 for the season, sixth-best in the major leagues.

With Brayan Bello taking the field on Tuesday, the trio of Houck, Bello and Kutter Crawford will become the first group of three homegrown Sox starters to make 30 starts in the same season since Roger Clemens, Bruce Hurst and Al Nipper accomplished the feat in 1987.

It’s clear the rotation now has a foundation the Red Sox can build upon, especially if they aim to make an addition to the front of the rotation next winter, the kind of addition they haven’t made since trading Chris Sale after the 2016 season.

But the Sox will have days, weeks and months to chart their path beyond 2024. More urgently, Monday’s win moved the Sox 3½ games behind the Tigers and Royals, who had Monday off, for the final two wild-card spots and postponed elimination from the playoff picture for at least another day.

The Red Sox offense produced runs steadily in the first innings, as Blue Jays starter Chris Bassitt walked a career-high seven batters.

The Sox scored a run in the second (Vaughn Grissom sacrifice fly), third (Wilyer Abreu RBI double) and fourth (Ceddanne Rafaela RBI ground out) innings to take a 3–0 lead. This lead was stifled when the Sox’s runners were caught drifting too far from second base by Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk, forcing the runners into scoring position.

Still, those deficiencies were an afterthought when considering Houck’s performance. While Bassitt struggled with inefficiency (striking out just 46 of 88 pitches in 4⅓ innings), Houck proved relentless in his rat-a-tat strike zone attack. He needed just 42 pitches to retire the first 14 Blue Jays he faced on a night when the sinker/sweeper/splitter combination missed a few hits (he had just one swing and a miss) but produced a series of tamely hit grounders.

Houck finally struck out with two outs in the fifth inning, allowing a walk to Addison Barger and a single to Ernie Clement. But with the tying run still in the inning, Houck completed the fifth hitless inning by getting a harmless flyout to left by Jonatan Clase.

While Houck worked a one-inning count while rebuilding his workload after two weeks of inactivity due to fatigue this month, the fifth inning was his last, and manager Alex Cora elected to remove him from the game after 57 innings pitched (5 hits, 0 runs, 1 hit, 1 walk, 0 strikeouts). Houck lowered his ERA for the season to 3.12 — the lowest by a Sox pitcher in a season with 30 or more starts since Sale posted a 2.90 mark in 2017.

The Jays appeared to come alive with Houck’s debut, opening the bottom of the sixth with consecutive singles against relief pitcher Greg Weissert. But the most promising rally of the night was quickly snuffed out by Weissert’s 4-6-3 double play off of Nathan Lukes and a groundout from Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to end the frame.

The Sox scored an insurance run in the eighth inning on an RBI home run by Rafaela, and the club took a 4–0 lead into the ninth inning thanks to strong bullpen work by Weissert (one hit), left-hander Zach Penrod (two-thirds of an inning) and Luis Guerrero (1⅓ innings).

Although Chris Martin allowed a run in the ninth, he escaped any real harm with Kirk’s game-ending 4-6-3 double play. The Sox extended their winning streak to three games – their longest since August 4-6.

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