NEW YORK – Of the 26 men on his team’s active roster, only Garrett Whitlock can say he walked the thrilling, daunting October baseball gauntlet as a Red Sox rookie pitcher.
His postseason debut, on Oct. 5, 2021, was a high-stakes event of a multi-layered variety. Less than a year after New York opted not to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft, enabling Boston to scoop him up, Alex Cora used Whitlock to end the Yankees’ postseason.
Whitlock was also the last pitcher on the mound in the American League’s final single-game, winner-takes-all Wild Card. (Major League Baseball expanded the Wild Card to three teams per league the following year.)
Almost exactly four years later, Whitlock and the Red Sox are about to play October baseball for the first time since.
He’s the veteran now, and it’s a responsibility he does not take lightly. Long before the Red Sox punched their playoff ticket on Friday, he was already trying to follow in the footsteps of 2018 World Series hero Nathan Eovaldi, who became a mentor and friend in ‘21. It’s why Whitlock sits in the back of the team bus with rookies Connelly Early and Payton Tolle, and Kyle Harrison, who is not a rookie but is starting over with the Red Sox after arriving in June’s Rafael Devers trade.
“I sit back there because that’s what Nate did with me,” Whitlock told the Herald. “And if they have questions – a lot of the time, they’re asking questions. I never want to insert myself in anything, so most of the time it’s them asking questions. But I hope I’ve tried to show them that I’m open to it.”
Star Wars fans – and there are several on this year’s Red Sox – would say Eovaldi was Whitlock’s Yoda, he is Obi-Wan Kenobi, and these are his trio of Luke Skywalkers. Whitlock doesn’t mind the comparison. If prompted, he can perfectly mimic Sir Alec Guinness’ Obi-Wan.
The conversations can be technical: routines, pitch grips, or experience with a particular opponent. Whitlock’s advice on how to navigate high-stakes situations came from another former Red Sox teammate.
“What I told Tolle, and Early, and Harry,” Whitlock said, using Harrison’s nickname, “when you get in the playoffs, there’s going to be all this pressure, and you’re gonna feel it. But the biggest thing Chris Sale told me is, ‘Don’t be afraid to suck. Because if you’re sitting there and you’re so worried about it, that’s all your mind’s going to focus on, and you’re probably going to make it happen.
“You’ve worked your tail off, you’ve put in the process. Trust it, it’ll take care of itself… With that mindset, you’re going in much freer. It’s like, ‘I can do this.’ And then you live with the results after that.”
Veteran advice is a key component of the pitching staff’s team-first mentality. Whether you’re injured, healthy, starting that day, closing, available out of the bullpen or not, you can contribute every single day.
Liam Hendriks last pitched May 27 before going on the injured list with hip inflammation but has still been at the ballpark every day. If his four years of postseason experience (and 14 big-league seasons) taught him anything, it’s that the postseason is a completely different animal.
“There’s more pressure on each individual pitch,” Hendriks told the Herald. “So there’s more weight on each pitch, there’s more weight on each swing. Some guys thrive on that because they either can lock in that little bit more, or they can also just keep it as is. So it depends on who you are.”
Hendriks pointed to the Houston Astros, whose eight-year postseason berth streak came to an end over the final weekend of the regular season. Pitching for the Athletics from 2016-20, he saw firsthand how they took things to the next level in October.
“What they’ve been able to do the last decade, they had a different level when they got to the playoffs,” Hendriks said. “Being with the A’s for a long period of that time, we would go against them in the season and we’d do well against them, and then the postseason would come around and they would just be different. It was different. They stopped swinging at the pitches they were swinging at. They’d start hitting our mistakes. Everything got turned up a notch.
“And from the flip side of that, with the A’s, we started yanking the pitches before. We started overdoing those two-strike pitches to get us into bad counts, putting too much pressure on situations. Like me in the Wild Card game in 2018, I was a little too amped up and I was trying to do too much, trying to strike out the side with one pitch, and it’s just not possible. So there’s two ways of doing it, and neither way is right or wrong, but you just need to find what works for you, and that just comes with experience.”
“With experience, you know, I feel like you just continue to gain more and more composure in the situations that require it the most,” said left-hander Garrett Crochet.
Reveling in completing the regular-season portion of what he dubbed his “Year of Health” last offseason, Whitlock understands more than ever that seasons like this, opportunities to gain this highly specific type of experience, are rare. He wants the rookies to recognize that now, without having to go through all of the injuries and setbacks the way he did.
“I told them, ‘Guys, you can’t put it into words,’” said Whitlock.
On Friday night as a clubhouse full of champagne beckoned, Whitlock and Crochet told them to stop and smell the October roses, because they don’t bloom every year.
“I was telling the rookies when we were celebrating clinching, this could be the one time you get to do this as a major leaguer,” Crochet recalled, “so let’s enjoy it and let’s feel good about ourselves.”
“After we had all dog-piled and everything like that, and we were all walking back to the clubhouse to celebrate, I stopped Tolle right behind the pitcher’s mound,” said Whitlock, “and I was like, ‘Bro, just take a lap with your eyes. Look, because this doesn’t happen every day. You’re never gonna get to see this kind of stuff. Take it in, don’t rush through this, enjoy it.’”