Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Richard Fitts was shelled on Monday, but it wasn’t entirely his fault.
In a one-inning, 39-pitch nightmare outing that only lasted one inning, Fitts, 25, allowed six runs to the Los Angeles Angels before registering an out.
Fitts gave up three home runs to Zach Neto, Mike Trout, and Jo Adell, respectively, and none of the homers looked remotely close to staying in the ballpark.
On Tuesday, Fitts was optioned to Triple-A Worcester Red Sox.
To an onlooker unfamiliar with Fitts’s game, the terrible outing followed immediately by a demotion would seem like an epic fail from Fitts, deeming him unfit for the majors. But, of course, there’s far more to the story.
For one, Fitts is a viable big league pitcher, and he proved so over the 40 2/3 innings leading up to Monday, in which Fitts allowed just 10 earned runs combined and only two home runs across eight starts.
Secondly, Fitts wasn’t given adequate time by Boston’s management to rehab his pectoral strain, which placed the hurler on the Injured List back on April 13.
The Red Sox rushed Fitts back to the Major League diamond without putting him through a rehab assignment, and it backfired miserably, as noted by MassLive’s Christopher Smith on Tuesday.
“They rushed Richard Fitts back without a rehab assignment out of necessity,” Smith wrote.
“He needed at least two rehab starts. He pitched poorly but I think there’s a reason it was his worst major league start. The lack of a rehab assignment caught up to him in his second start back.”
Related news surfaced on Tuesday that Hunter Dobbins would be taking over Fitts’s spot in the Red Sox rotation.
