Cade Cavalli is set to get another turn in the rotation Wednesday, and Washington needs it to be a better one. After a month in which he posted a 4.94 ERA across 23.2 innings, he will face the Red Sox at Fenway Park looking to build on a quality start against the Phillies.
That last outing was his sharpest recent work. Cavalli went 6.0 innings and allowed two runs, throwing a season-high-tying 97 pitches and logging his first quality start since May 26th. The right-hander had not stacked up many clean answers before that. This month, he had been tagged for too much traffic and too many runs, and Washington has been counting on him to settle in as the games get tighter.
The timing matters because Washington enters the series fourth in the National League East and 2.0 games back of a playoff spot. The club snapped a four-game losing streak with two straight wins to close out a series win against the Baltimore Orioles, so the staff does not have much room for a relapse. If Cavalli can work deeper into the game, it would ease pressure on a bullpen that has already been asked to carry too much of the load.
Boston arrives with a different kind of momentum. The Red Sox are 36-46 and have just finished a four-game sweep of the New York Yankees, capped by a come-from-behind walk-off victory in 10 innings. They also have two young left-handed pitchers lined up in the series, which gives Washington a different look than it got against Philadelphia. One of the other American League starters chasing top-five status, Ranger Suarez, sits at 2.83 ERA and is only.14 ahead of Sonny Gray in the race among qualified arms, a reminder of how tight the pitching picture can be when the numbers start to stack up.
For Cavalli, the assignment is simple even if the context is not. He has already shown he can deliver a quality start. Now Washington needs him to make it part of a pattern, not a pause between difficult outings.
