Tanner Houck is back in the Red Sox clubhouse, and three weeks after being hit in the face by a line drive he’s feeling back to his old self and will soon begin working his way back to the mound.
But while his facial fracture will heal, Houck will always carry the experience with him. He’ll also have a vivid reminder to display on his shelf too.
Houck got a unique memento from the doctors after undergoing surgery — a 3D-printed model of his own skull, facial fracture and all. The print was created from a scan and was used by the doctors to examine his injury and help perform the surgery, and afterwards Houck got to bring it home. It’s now displayed in his locker.
“It’s amazing what medical technology can do,” Houck said.
Houck suffered the injury on June 16 when he was struck by a 89.7 mph line drive off the bat of Yankees catcher Kyle Higashioka. He said he remembers being hit and everything that happened afterwards, and he recalled initially checking his face and making sure he could still see before walking off with the trainer and going to the hospital.
Since then Houck said the recovery process has been fairly boring. He’s largely been limited to a liquid diet, though he got a big lift on Thursday when he was finally cleared to eat solid foods again. Red Sox manager Alex Cora said earlier this week that Houck has lost around seven pounds, but Houck said outside of his face the rest of his body has felt good and he hopes to be able to ramp back up fairly quickly.
At the time of his injury Houck was in the midst of one of his best starts of the season and was proving himself a reliable and valuable member of the starting rotation. He had made all of his first 13 starts and at 67.2 innings was just short of setting a new career-high (69.0) for a single season, and while his 5.05 ERA wasn’t anything to write home about, he’d also just shut down the Yankees the prior weekend (6 IP, 2 earned runs) and was on his way to doing so again (4 IP, 1 ER) when he got hit.
Though there is still no timetable for a potential return, Houck will begin his throwing program on Tuesday. He plans to spend the rest of his All-Star break doing light workouts and checking out Boston with his family, and once the second half begins he and the club will evaluate the next steps and proceed accordingly.
The Red Sox have experienced a lot of ups and downs this season, but they appear set to head into the All-Star break with some momentum. Entering Sunday the Red Sox had won eight of their last nine games and came into the day only two games behind the New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays for the last American League Wild Card spot.
Though the Red Sox had a similar record at this point last year, Cora said the vibes in the clubhouse now versus then couldn’t be a starker contrast.
“A lot different feeling than last year at this point,” Cora said. “That weekend in New York was awful. Chris (Sale) with the line drive, Nate (Eovaldi) coming back and he wasn’t himself, playing with kids, not performing, it feels like this week is a lot different.”
July is when everything fell apart for the Red Sox last season, and getting walloped by the Yankees in the last two games before the All-Star break felt in the moment like a knockout blow. Losing Sale in just his second start back was especially demoralizing, and the Red Sox never truly recovered the rest of the way.
But Boston’s tailspin really began two weeks earlier when the club followed a big three-game sweep of the Cleveland Guardians with an ugly series loss in Toronto. Ironically, it was a trip to Canada almost a year to the day later that may have jumpstarted Boston’s season.
Heading to Toronto having lost seven of eight and fresh off getting swept at home by the Miami Marlins, Boston was two games under .500 and was in real danger of falling out of the playoff hunt entirely. Instead the Red Sox swept the Blue Jays and followed that up by taking two out of three from an excellent Texas Rangers team.
Cora called that Toronto sweep a turning point.
“Like the great Tim Kurkjian said that’s a circle game, and those were circle series,” Cora said. “Like ok, we’re a little banged up and not playing good baseball, playing against one of the best teams in the division, and to sweep them with some good pitching, I think that got us going.”
There is still a lot of season to be played, but if the Red Sox can continue to play good baseball while steadily getting healthier, there’s nothing stopping them from fighting their way back into the playoff field.
And if they do? You don’t have to look hard for examples of what could happen.
“For all the ups and downs we’re right there,” Cora said. “It’s not how you get into the dance, it’s what you do there. When we get there we’ve done some good things in ’18 and ’21.”
Red Sox prospects Marcelo Mayer, Nick Yorke and Luis Guerrero all took the field in Saturday’s All-Star Futures Game in Seattle, which annually features many of the sport’s most talented young players who are knocking on the door of the big leagues.
Mayer, Boston’s top prospect and a consensus top 10 prospect in baseball, started at shortstop and singled his only time up to the plate. He also stole second base.
Yorke, who currently ranks No. 83 on Baseball America’s Top 100 prospect list, played the entire game at second base and went 1 for 3 with a double.
Guerrero, who has posted a 1.11 ERA with 14 saves as the Portland Sea Dogs’ closer, came into the game with two outs in the seventh inning and struck out the only batter he faced. Guerrero boasts a fastball touching 100 mph and was selected to the game to replace Shane Drohan, Boston’s top starting pitching prospect who was held out for precautionary reasons.