Pivetta's tinkering paying off in spades for Sox

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BOSTON -- Just when it seemed that Nick Pivetta’s season was going sideways, he did some tinkering. Once he did, some of his pitches started to go more sideways.

Thanks to what appeared to be a subtle adjustment at the time, Pivetta has turned into one of the most indispensable pitchers on the Red Sox as the season heads down the stretch.

At some point during Boston’s three-game series in Cleveland from June 6-8, Pivetta was playing catch in the outfield and came up with a second slider with more of a horizontal break.

“I was just messing around with some pitches in the outfield and then it was working well, and I brought it into a game to see how the pitch would play,” Pivetta said. “It seems to work really well off of my curveball and off of my fastball up.”

Keep in mind where Pivetta was in the trajectory of his season during those three games in Cleveland in which he didn’t pitch.

In his last outing before the Red Sox went to Cleveland, Pivetta walked three while recording just two outs in a bullpen outing against the Rays at Fenway Park. His ERA for the season was 5.65. Pivetta had moved to the bullpen on May 17 and his first six relief outings were nothing special. He was mainly being used in low-leverage situations.

Over his past 14 outings -- nearly all of them during meaningful portions of the game -- Pivetta has a 2.53 ERA. In 46 1/3 innings, he has 65 strikeouts and holds opponents to .155 batting average.

“The game changer has been that cutter/slider/sweeper, whatever they put out there [on the scoreboard],” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. “It gives him four pitches now. He has the fastball, curveball, the short [slider] and the big one, so it's hard to hit him now. It’s not just a vertical attack of fastballs up, breaking balls down. It’s something sideways, especially with righties. We always talked about his fastball; it always plays. There's confidence now, too. You can see it.”

On Wednesday night, Pivetta gave the Red Sox a solid five-inning start for the win just four days after he threw 66 pitches in relief against the Blue Jays. In fact, two of Pivetta’s last three outings have been starts.

He allowed five earned runs over 12 1/3 innings across the two starts, walking just two and striking out 18.

This version of Pivetta works in any role.

“He’s so strong, and he works so hard between outings. He’s a big kid,” said Cora. “He’s strong. He cares. I mentioned a few weeks ago that he’s very similar to David [Price] in that he enjoys coming to the ballpark with the mindset of, ‘I want to compete.’”

While it was tough at first for Pivetta to move out of his five-day routine, he has taken to being the Swiss Army knife of Boston's pitching staff.

“I think it's just all going with the same mindset,” Pivetta said. “Every inning is like the seventh inning and just continuing to pitch until I get taken out of the game.”