Red Sox: Steven Wright should be an automatic All-Star
By Tyler Mason
With what Steven Wright is doing so far this season, he should be one of the players representing the Boston Red Sox in this year’s All-Star game.
All-Star weekend is a little over a month away, which means fans are voting rapidly for their favorite position players so that they can hopefully watch them play in this year’s All-Star game. But when the pitchers get selected by the All-Star managers, Steven Wright should, without a doubt, be one of those pitchers chosen.
As we all know, Wright has been the Red Sox go-to guy this season, which is kind of eye opening to most since the Sox signed their “ace”, David Price, to a $217 million deal.
Don’t get me wrong. Price is beginning to get back on track after a rough couple of starts in the first two months of the season. It’s just no one was thinking of Wright to be the guy that would be automatic in giving the Sox quality starts every 5th day. It’s crazy to think how good Wright is performing when he was originally not even planned to be in the rotation.
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It’s obviously a great story. Since there are just two active knuckleball pitchers in the Major Leagues (Wright and R.A. Dickey), it’s nice to see one of them showing success this year with the so-called “mysterious” pitch. Especially if you’re a Red Sox fan.
So far in 2016, Wright is ranked 3rd in the American League with a 2.29 ERA, 6th in opponent batting average (.199), and tied for second with 9 quality starts. Again, pretty impressive from a guy who floats his 75 MPH knuckler by hitters.
This is special when every year you see pitchers like Clayton Kershaw, Felix Hernandez, and Max Scherzer being selected to represent their respective leagues because they are known to fire their 95 MPH fastball by hitters. What Steven Wright does is an art that only a handful of people throughout the history of baseball has done. When Wright is on the hill, personally, it’s tough to look away from the TV because he makes me believe that I still have a shot to make it to the Big Leagues (not a chance).
It’s funny because people do not seem to really appreciate the knuckleball except when they see someone who is successful with it.
In 2012, during R.A. Dickey’s All-Star and Cy Young season, people were all about the knuckleball and how Dickey was making hitters look foolish with it. Then, when he never really had that type of dominance after he was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays, people began to forget about the pitch and how special it is when someone masters it, until this season when Wright stole the show.
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Steven Wright is a big reason why the Red Sox are successful so far in 2016. When it comes down to the second half of season, I don’t see why Boston wouldn’t keep him in the rotation. But before then, buy a plane ticket to San Diego because Steven Wright has plans to put on a show in this year’s All-Star Game, or at least he deserves a chance.