The Red Sox and Pirates—a new opponent!—face off at 1:05 p.m. afternoon in Fort Myers as Nick Pivetta looks to continue his torrid spring.
Pivetta’s line so far March looks like a nice complete-game: 9 IP, 3 R8 K, 1 BB. Most recently he went four strong against the Rays en route to likely locking down the fifth starter spot. OTM alumnus and antagonist Matthew Kory wrote in his invaluable newsletter, Sox Outsider, about Pivetta, and how the problem was never his stuff:
His fastball velocity has always been around the 75th percentile for starting pitchers, and the spin rate on his curveball (meaning, effectively, how hard it breaks) has always been elite, better than more than 90 percent of the other starters in baseball.