Resilience, grit put Porcello on cusp of 20 wins

SAN DIEGO — The man who threw his first Major League pitch at the age of 20 all those years ago is now on the cusp of his first 20-win season.

For Rick Porcello to get to this point (19-3, 3.23 ERA) in his eighth season is a credit to his combination of unflappability and determination that Dave Dombrowski saw in him all those years ago, and what Ben Cherington had uncovered before bringing the righty to Boston.

It was Dombrowski who was convinced that giving Porcello a full-time spot in the Tigers’ rotation less than two years after he had graduated from high school would have no adverse impact on the young right-hander.

“He was not in awe of the situation,” said Red Sox president of baseball operations Dombrowski, who took Porcello with the 27th pick in the 2007 Draft while serving as Detroit’s general manager. “He was a mature person for his age. He was a competitor. We thought if something were to ever happen at that age, which you have to take into consideration, that it wouldn’t hurt his career.

“We knew that. We felt that. And he made us better. We were looking for young starters. We were looking for starting pitching at the time and he was one of our five best guys. We just felt that he could handle it.”

And it was Cherington who not only traded Yoenis Cespedes to Dombrowski’s Tigers for Porcello, but signed him to a four-year, $82.5 million extension before he even threw a pitch in a regular-season game for the Red Sox.

Cherington, who was feeling the heat as Porcello endured a humbling first few months in Boston last year, didn’t get to see the situation play out as he had forecast until he was no longer working for the Red Sox.

“Rick was a really good pitcher in Detroit and was entering his prime,” Cherington told MLB.com earlier this week. “We …

continue reading in source mlb.mlb.com