Young Red Sox starters have shown they can handle a full season’s grind

For the last few years one of the biggest questions surrounding Boston’s young starting pitchers was whether or not they could survive a full 162-game season. Guys like Tanner Houck, Kutter Crawford and Brayan Bello had shown they could compete against big league hitters, but could they maintain their stuff deep into August and September?

The answer, it turns out, is a resounding yes.

This weekend Houck, Crawford and Bello wrap up successful seasons in which each will exceed 30 starts for the first time in their careers. Houck and Crawford will both approach 180 innings, and while an early-season injury will prevent Bello from nearing that mark, he has also made every start since mid-May and gotten better as the season’s gone along.

Even if the season ultimately fell short of expectations, the trio’s emergence as legitimate rotation anchors has massive implications for the club’s future.

“We felt like they were capable of it,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. “They worked hard in the offseason to get to this point physically. Bello, you see the evolution of the body. Kutter put some weight. And Tanner, he’s Tanner. He’s very consistent in everything he does on the field, in the weight room and in the training room.”

Crawford, who is scheduled to make his 33rd and final start on Saturday, comes into the weekend with a 4.17 ERA over 179.1 innings. Barring a change of plan, he will become just the fifth Red Sox pitcher in the last decade to make 33 starts in a season, and probably also the third to top 180 innings since 2019.

Reaching those totals is particularly gratifying for Crawford after he spent his first two full MLB seasons bouncing back and forth between the rotation, bullpen and injured list. He said his goal was to make at least 30 starts and throw 162 innings, but while he’s happy to have accomplished that, there’s still more work to be done.

“I feel good about my ability to stay healthy and make the starts and post every five days, but there are also other stuff that needs to be worked on,” Crawford said. “I’m not satisfied with where my velo is at, I’m obviously not satisfied with how many homers I’ve given up this year. I haven’t given up necessarily as many hits, but when I have gotten hit it’s been hit hard.”

Pitching coach Andrew Bailey, who praised Crawford’s progress and work ethic, offered a similar assessment of what it’ll take to reach the next level.

“Obviously the long balls hurt him,” Bailey said. “So finding ways to stay off barrels, whether that’s increasing velo, honing in on some of the more intricacies of the shapes, specifically the splitter.”

With nothing to play for and having battled shoulder fatigue over the past few weeks, Houck won’t make his final scheduled start on Sunday, wrapping up a breakout year in which the 28-year-old earned his first career All-Star nod and established himself as a front-of-the-rotation guy. Houck finishes with a 3.12 ERA over 178.2 innings in 30 starts, all by far the best totals of his career.

And even Bello, who got off to a rocky start, finished the year on a high note. The 25-year-old missed three weeks with lat tightness in April and May and boasted a 5.32 ERA heading into the All-Star break, but from July 20 onwards he recorded a 3.47 ERA over 72.2 innings, a stretch that included one of the best outings of his career, an eight-shutout-inning gem against the Toronto Blue Jays on Aug. 28.

“l learned a lot this year,” Bello said via translator Carlos Villoria Benítez. “I was able to finish strong, I gave everything my last few outings so to be able to start pretty much every outing since May was a huge accomplishment for me.”

With the core of the starting rotation now firmly in place, the Red Sox should be much better positioned to supplement the group with additional up-and-coming arms along with new external additions this coming winter. But even if the Red Sox are happy with the steps their young pitchers have taken, the hope is this is just the start of their journey, not the ultimate destination.

“For me moving forward it sets the bar for these guys,” Bailey said. “On what we expect and continuing to drive performance.”