Red Sox Ink Rick Porcello to 4-Year, $82.5 Million Extension
By Steve Benko
The Boston Red Sox signed Rick Porcello to a four-year, $82.5 million extension. The 26-year-old is coming off a very impressive season with the Detroit Tigers, where he posted an ERA of 3.43 and 129 strikeouts. Not that Porcello isn’t talented, he is, but he hasn’t pitched a single game for the Red Sox yet, so it’s a high-risk, high-reward kind of deal.
His ERA over the last few years isn’t what really made the Red Sox want to invest a great deal of money into him over the next four seasons. Porcello has a had an average to above average FIP, which has seemed to get better since his rookie year in 2009. Since he’s only 26, there’s a lot of room for improvement, and the Red Sox rotation has pitchers that are terribly inconsistent.
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Justin Masterson had a great 2013, and an awful 2014, Clay Buchholz had a phenomenal 2013, and an awful 2014 as well. Porcello has been consistently average to above-average for the last six years – Wade Miley fits into that category also, maybe a little less.
Porcello had a lot of offensive help in Detroit, at least for the last few years, but this year’s Red Sox team has a lot of potential. It makes perfect sense for Boston to extend Porcello now, especially since this team is fairly young, whether or not it works out is a different story.
It’s the safest move for the Red Sox to make in terms of pitchers, he hasn’t gotten into his prime yet. For much of his career, he’s flown under the radar, most likely because he lived in the shadows of Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, and Anibal Sanchez while pitching in the logjam that was Detroit.
Clay Buchholz is only 30-years-old, so he has some quality years left before he starts to decline, but the problem is, he’s inconsistent, and gets injured. His ERA over the years has looked average, but his FIP has shown that he really was very much below average. Hence why it makes perfect sense to sign Porcello to a deal like that, the Red Sox know at the very least, they’ll get good outings.
The Red Sox had an off-season that told everyone they were a “win now” type of team. At the same time, they are building for the future, in players like Xander Bogaerts, Mookie Betts, and Rusney Castillo, (who was optioned to Triple-A) but this team is poising itself for a playoff run in the very near future.