Tanner Houck's 'shutdown' 1st inning set stage for latest 1-run Red Sox loss

Gabrielle Starr, Boston Herald on Apr 26, 2025

Published in Baseball

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Alex Cora’s 1,000th career game as Red Sox manager began with a bang, and ended with a whimper as his team lost, 5-4, in the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader with the Cleveland Guardians.

The rotation hasn’t managed to pitch a scoreless first since last Saturday, but the series opener in Cleveland was particularly painful, because the Boston bats had jumped out to an immediate 3-0 lead on Wilyer Abreu’s three-run homer, only for Tanner Houck to give up four runs (all earned) in the bottom of the first.

Houck managed to go five innings and kept the Guardians scoreless in the final four. In addition to the four earned runs, he gave up eight hits, one walk, and six strikeouts. He threw a season-high 94 pitches, 61 for strikes, and induced six swings-and-misses. Through six starts, he owns a 7.58 ERA with 25 earned runs allowed in 29 2/3 innings.

The splitter, a centerpiece of Houck’s All-Star arsenal last season, was the source of his early struggles. He threw eight in a 29-pitch first inning, and the Guardians made contact on six of them. Four of their five hits in the frame came on splitters, including a pair of RBI knocks.

Houck rarely utilized a splitter in his first three big league seasons (6.87%), but he began incorporating it more in ‘23 (11.4%). Thrown 24.9% of the time last season, he held opponents to a .194 average and .264 slugging percentage. This year, however, he’s thrown the pitch 24.1% of the time and hitters are both averaging and slugging .292 on it.

Pivoting away from the splitter drastically improved the remainder of Houck’s outing. After throwing 29 pitches in the first, he needed no more than 19 pitches to get through any later inning. It was far from smooth sailing but the Guardians didn’t score again. Through the end of his start, they went 4 for 7 with runners in scoring position and left five men on base.

“He was good after the first inning,” manager Alex Cora told reporters postgame. “(The first) was a shutdown inning, big-time.”

Brennan Bernardino relieved Houck in the sixth, but was unable to finish the frame. The Sox southpaw allowed what proved to be the deciding run, a go-ahead RBI-single by Guardians leadoff man Steven Kwan, before Cora swapped him out for Greg Weissert.

Weissert and rookie Luis Guerrero combined for the remaining 2 1/3 innings. Guerrero, recalled at the end of the homestand for his season debut, became the third pitcher in franchise history to begin his career with as many as 11 scoreless outings.

No offense

It was deja vu all over again as the Red Sox not only played a game decided by no more than three runs for the 18th time in 28 games (and 11th time in their last 16), but lost their third such contest in a row. They’ve also lost back-to-back one-run games now, and are 4-6 in them.

Guardians starter Ben Lively gave up homers to Abreu and Rafael Devers (solo in the third), but that was all the Red Sox wrote. They were 1 for 11 with runners in scoring position and left nine men on base. They put a leadoff man on four times between the fourth and ninth innings, and never scored.

Alex Bregman led the way with his fourth consecutive multi-hit game, and Ceddanne Rafaela extended his hitting streak to three games. Duran’s 11-game hitting streak, which had been third-longest active in the majors, ended, but several hitters showed signs of breaking out of slumps: Devers’ homer ended an 0-for-16 drought, and was not only the hardest-hit ball of the game (110.9 mph), but his hardest of the season thus far. Abreu and Kristian Campbell snapped 0-for-8 and 0-for-9 skids, respectively.

Trevor Story’s cold spell continued in brutal fashion, though; the veteran shortstop went 0 for 5 with two strikeouts, including the game-ending punchout, which left Rafaela and Duran stranded in scoring position.

“Credit to the guys, they kept battling, but obviously, a 3-0 lead, you know, you feel good about yourself,” Cora said. “We didn’t cash in. We had traffic, we put some good at-bats, but then we didn’t cash in, so we just gotta be better.”

The Red Sox have dropped three games in a row and are back at .500 (14-14). They’re 0-10 when trailing after the sixth inning and 5-11 when they strike out in the double digits. They’re 4-6 in one-run games, 3-9 against teams with winning records, and they have a losing record on the road. A month into the season, it’s quite the quintet of concerning trends.