At the beginning of the 2024 season, the Boston Red Sox pitching staff shocked MLB fans. They posted a 2.71 ERA in April as a staff, good for the lowest in the league, and claimed six shutouts in the process.
Boston's staff did not maintain its early level of dominance — and few expected it to — but one hurler stuck out above the rest as a beacon of consistency and improvement. Tanner Houck's transformation over one offseason is worthy of sixth place on Bleacher Report's list of most improved players this season.
Houck was Boston's first-round draft pick in 2017 and it hasn't taken a pitcher in the first round since. He was billed as a right-handed Chris Sale early in his career due to their strikingly similar delivery, but it took multiple seasons for Houck's stats to match up.
Houck was meant to be a fixture of the Red Sox's rotation during the 2023 season, but he sustained a facial fracture off a comebacker that kept him sidelined for over two months. He posted a 5.01 ERA with 99 strikeouts and 41 walks in 106 innings, all as a starter.
Red Sox pitcher Tanner Houck among MLB's most improved players, per Bleacher Report
Before the 2024 season, the Red Sox hired Andrew Bailey as the squad's new pitching coach, and Houck has been his greatest success. Bailey helped Houck fine-tune his command by encouraging him to throw his best pitches and develop new ones. Houck hasn't thrown a single four-seam fastball this season — Bailey's personal nemesis is the four-seamer — and he refined his sweeper to become his most-thrown pitch.
Even after some recent struggles, Houck's 2024 ERA has dropped significantly from his 2023 metric to 3.23. He's thrown a career-high 158.2 innings and clocked 137 strikeouts to 44 walks. He's never pitched over 106 innings in a single slate before, so some late-season woes are to be expected. If he's been able to improve this much over just one offseason, there's no telling what Houck will be able to do next season.
Houck may not necessarily be the model for Bailey's approach for the rest of the Red Sox's pitching staff, as his plans are catered to each pitcher's individual skills and areas for improvement. But the 28-year-old is proof that Bailey's methods work. Bailey's been able to transform pitchers into Cy Young contenders in the past, like Carlos Rodón, Kevin Gausman and Logan Webb, and he's working with Craig Breslow to bring a new level of success to Boston's pitcher development program.