Watch CBS News

Can Steven Wright Maintain His All-Star Pace?

By Matt Dolloff, CBS Boston

BOSTON (CBS) -- Much of the success in the first half of the season for the Boston Red Sox has been the performance of their ace. Surprisingly, that ace's name is not Price - the real staff anchor thus far has been 31-year-old knuckleballer Steven Wright.

It seems like with each passing start, we're waiting for the day that Wright comes crashing back to Earth. Besides a blip on May 13 against the Houston Astros in which he allowed five earned runs, Wright has allowed three runs or fewer in his 11 other starts. He will almost certainly make the cut as a pitcher for the American League in July's All-Star Game, leading the AL with a 2.09 ERA.

The big question, that could follow Wright for the rest of the season, fair or not, is whether he can keep this up.

Let's start with that 2.09 ERA. Wright's fielding-independent ERA is at 3.20, indicating that Wright has been somewhat lucky - but that number is still relatively low. Wright sits fifth in the AL in that category, according to Fangraphs.

Another sign that Wright has benefited from good fortune this season is his opponents' batting average on balls in play (BABIP), which is at .254 through 12 starts. The average BABIP is typically around .290 to .300, so Wright has certainly gotten some help from the Red Sox's excellent team defense.

However, Wright's success has also been a product of his own improved performance on the mound, and there are some advanced metrics that bear that out. Wright has given his defense plenty of chances with a drastic reduction in fly ball rate (33.8 percent, down from 43.2 percent in 2015). Many of those fly balls have turned into line drives; his line drive percentage (21.8 percent) is up drastically from 13.7 percent last season.

As a result, Wright has kept the ball in the ballpark at an otherworldly rate, letting up just three home runs in 82 innings so far in 2016. His 0.33 home runs per nine innings are second in the AL only to Oakland's Rich Hill and just ahead of Cleveland's Danny Salazar and Chicago's Jose Quintana - not coincidentally, all three are also in the top-five in ERA in the league.

Another factor for the knuckleballer's success is, ironically, that he's throwing fewer knuckleballs. He's throwing his signature pitch 82.1 percent of the time this season, which is down from 89.6 percent last year. He's also re-introduced a curveball after abandoning it in 2015; he only throws it 3.3 percent of the time, but that's nearly three times as often as he'd ever thrown it before. Oh, and he's throwing more low-80s fastballs as a complement to his mid-70s knuckler. Wright has made it much harder for hitters to sit on the knuckleball and it has kept them off balance.

In addition to mixing up his pitch arsenal, Wright has also thrown more strikes across the board in 2016. Swinging strikes are up (11.4 percent) from his career rate of 10.2 percent, while he's also throwing more first-pitch strikes and hitters are making contact at a slower rate on pitches both inside and outside the strike zone.

None of these improvements are so drastic to suggest that if they normalized it would lead to a big drop-off in production. The only major difference between 2016 and 2015 is that Wright is mostly keeping the ball out of the air. Even if he starts allowing more longballs, there's little reason to believe that a major regression is coming for Wright.

Is Wright really this good? Probably not. But even with a regression to the mean, Wright appears poised to continue putting up solid numbers for a Red Sox team in desperate need of a strong No. 2 starter to anchor the rotation behind Price. Even if he ended the season with an ERA under 4.00, which he has a good chance to do, Wright will have exceeded most people's expectations.

Whatever Wright does for the rest of the season, he's certainly earned himself a trip to San Diego next month.

Matt Dolloff is a writer for CBSBostonSports.com. His opinions do not necessarily reflect that of CBS or 98.5 The Sports Hub. Have a news tip or comment for Matt? Follow him on Twitter @mattdolloff and email him at mdolloff@985thesportshub.com.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.