PawSox lose season finale to ex-BC pitcher; Rusny Castillio wins batting title

The Pawtucket Red Sox wrapped up their 2018 season Monday afternoon at McCoy Stadium with a pitcher's duel between two of the best–and fastest rising–talents in the Boston and New York Yankees organizations. Both starting hurlers only arrived in the AAA International League in the first week of August, after dazzling for most of their seasons at double-A,   and both had strung together five solid starts for their new teams.

Although the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, the Yankees triple-A affiliate, would eventually tack on insurance runs for a 5-1 victory, the game was still just 2-1 when both starting hurlers departed after the sixth inning, in a masterful pitcher's duel. Unfortunately for the home team, and 23-year old Pawtucket right hander Mike Shawaryn, RailRiders righty Michael King was just a bit better Monday, stifling the PawSox on just three hits and a run over his six-inning stint.

To make it a bit more painful, and certainly ironic, King, also 23, is a product of Boston College, and a resident of Warwick who was a high school star at Bishop Hendricken. King's father is former WPRI (channel 12) and NECN anchorman Jim King, who now is a branch sales manager for Hershey's Ice Cream in the Boston-Worcester/Cape Cod and Rhode Island area. Michael King, 6'3 and 210 pounds, was a 2016 drafty choice of the Miami Marlins, but was acquired by the Yankees in a trade last November. While King's three-year record at Boston College was just 11-11, his career 3.14 earned run average is the second best ever in Eagle history.

King had been lights-out for the Trenton Thunder in double-A this season, going 6-2 with a 2.09 ERA. Before that, he'd posted a 1.79 ERA in 40 innings at High-A Tampa, where he'd started the season. King had made five starts for Scranton/Wilkes-Barre before yesterday, going 3-0 with a microscopic 1.09 ERA, and holding opposing batters to a .149 average. Monday afternoon, with roughly 100 of his hometown buddies in the crowd of about 3000, King was just as good as advertised. Two of the three hits he allowed were singles to left from rehabbing Red Sox third baseman Rafael Devers, who finally looked like he'd found his batting stroke again. But aside from that, and the infield hit that Aneury Tavarez led off the game with, King was virtually untouchable, walking two and fanning four.

Pawtucket got its lone run, after Tavarez beat out his infield hit, and Devers singled him to third with one out. The RailRiders' infield botched a potential doubleplay ball after that for an error, which allowed the run to score.

Shawaryn was almost as good, even if he didn't have his best stuff Monday. The 6'2, 200 pound Shawaryn shut the visitors out for the first three frames, while striking out five. With two outs in the fourth inning, 34-year old veteran Wilkin Castillo blasted a line drive home run into the visitors' bullpen in right field. Shawaryn shrugged that off and pitched a perfect fifth, but ran into more trouble in the sixth inning. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre second baseman L.J. Mazzilli, the son of former Mets star Lee Mazzilli, led off the sixth with a double to left-center. RailRiders third baseman Bruce Caldwell singled to right to score Mazzilli. After Shawaryn got two outs in the inning, his pitch count was at 87 so reliever Jordan Weems was summoned for the final out.

“Shawaryn didn't have his best fastball today, but he battled,” said Pawtucket manager Kevin Boles. “He worked his way out of a couple jams and kept us in it.”

Three RailRiders relievers kept the PawSox bottled up for the rest of the day, as they managed only a Dan Butler single over the final three frames. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre added another run in the seventh off of Weems.   Mazzilli, meanwhile, was not done, as he launched a two-run homer just inside the left field foul pole in the top of the ninth, off reliever Matthew Gorst to make the 5-1 final.

Shawaryn is probably the best story as a new face for pitching help in the Red Sox system this summer. He and Gorst were elevated from double-A Portland right after the Ian Kinsler trade left the PawSox mound staff a bit shorthanded, but both had done enough to deserve the promotion. Shawaryn had divided his 2017 season between Low-A and High-A ball, posting a 3.81 ERA in 26 starts between Greenville and Salem. Starting this season in Portland with the SeaDogs, Shawaryn made 19 starts, posted a 3.28 ERA, and fanned 99 in 112 innings. Shawaryn entered Monday's game with a 3-1 record for Pawtucket, with a 4.06 ERA in 31 innings after his five AAA starts.

Shawaryn's 5.2 inning stint, where he had allowed two runs on six hits, whiffed five and walked none, lowered his ERA to 3.93. His month-long introduction to the International League has to be seen as an encouraging end to a fine season of progress, and the Red Sox have already announced Shawaryn will be pitching in the Arizona Fall League. It would seem likely that the young righthander, who holds the career record for wins (30) at the University of Maryland, could contend for a spot in Boston next spring, and will almost certainly be a pillar of the 2019 Pawtucket rotation.

“I definitely feel like I made a lot of progress this season,” said Shawaryn. “I thought I made some big strides, in becoming more of a pitcher, instead of just a thrower, and just learning more about the game in general. I'm definitely looking forward to playing in the Arizona Fall League, where I'll be playing against some of the best guys in the minor leagues. I'm just grateful for the opportunity to come here and compete at the triple-A level, and it has certainly been a big step up in my development.”

“Yeah my fastball wasn't quite there today,” Shawaryn admitted. “But when you get to these upper levels of competition, you can't just rely on one pitch. When you've got something that's not working, you go to your other pitches, and you can't get very far if you've only got one pitch. Games like today are a good learning experience like that, so I've really enjoyed getting my feet wet here at Pawtucket over the past few weeks.”

BATTING CHAMP CASTILLO:   PawSox center fielder Rusney Castillo finished the season as the IL batting champion, as his .319 beat out runner up Joey Meneses of Lehigh Valley. Castillo, who had gone 0-for-4 last Thursday, sat out the weekend home-and-home four games series with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre with an ankle problem and shin splints that had him hobbling. Meneses, already voted the IL's Most Valuable Player, leads the league in several hitting categories, but he went 0-for-4 Monday and finished at .312. Castillo is the first Pawtucket player to win the IL crown since Wade Boggs, with .335 in   1981, with some other batting champs including Garry Hancock (.325 in 1979), Wayne Harer (.350 in 1977), Jim Rice (.337 in 1974) and Juan Beniquez (.298 in 1973). Castillo's 151 hits are the most by a PawSox player in ten years. “Rusney's been fighting shin splints and his bad ankle, but he wanted to play,” said Boles. “Just watching him struggle to go down the baseline (Thursday) we just decided it wasn't right to leave him in there. He's one of those guys that always wants to play, but it didn't make any sense. He's put together an outstanding body of work this season, and we've all enjoyed seeing it and being around him. We're all happy he's got that batting championship because he's really earned it.”

DEVERS FINALLY FENWAY BOUND: While Christian Vazquez looked to have his timing at the plate last Thursday, Devers was clearly still searching for it. The young third baseman appeared to be locked in pretty well yesterday, banging out two singles to left, and flying out deep to the outfield on two more at-bats on his last rehab outing. “Devers looked good today,” Boles noted. “He had three well-hit balls, and what I most liked was how aggressive he was with his counts.”

PHILLIPS ELEVATED: Former National League All Star Brandon Phillips departed Pawtucket just prior to yesterday's game, and he'll be joining the Boston club for the rest of the regular season. Phillips, 37, went unsigned at the beginning of the year and only hooked on with the Red Sox in late July. In 38 games, and 149 at-bats with Pawtucket, Phillips hit .302 with 14 doubles and four home runs, with an OPS of .824, while splitting time between his usual second base and third base. Minor injuries, like being hit on the hand by a pitch, slowed Phillips' progress at first, perhaps necessitating the Kinsler trade, but he was feasting on AAA pitching so he could have an impact yet.

ANOTHER SEASON IN THE BOOKS: It was kind of an odd feeling to McCoy Stadium this week, with the team having announced its move to Worcester in 2021. The typical route-95 shuttle was in full force this summer, with 18 different players called to Boston at one time or another, not including rehabbing major leaguers. Concluding his fifth year at the Pawtucket helm, Boles can look to BoSox like Jackie Bradley jr., Brian Johnson, and Blake Swihart, for example who've all made significant contributions to the big club, after having spent two or even three seasons at McCoy Stadium.

“It's disappointing, of course, that we didn't make the playoffs this season, ” said Boles, whose club finished at 66-73. “And it's kind of mixed emotions here with the move to Worcester coming up. But looking ahead, the guys who went up this year have filled in pretty good, I think, and I'm very proud of that. We're at the point now where there's probably 70 or 80 percent of the major league club who came through our system, and they've all worked hard and been driven to succeed. It's really an honor to be a part of developing those guys. Any time I see them on tv, I feel very proud and gratified–it's just a blessing to be able to work with such athletes. We work hard to try and put the guys in the right spots, to help them reach their potential, and do what they need to do to hopefully someday help the big club. It's been an interesting summer, and I'll have a lot to think about, planning ahead to next year and such, on my drive home to Florida.”

Pawtucket opens on the road next spring, at Buffalo and Syracuse in the first week of April, before their home debut on April 11.