Red Sox's Minor Adjustment May Have Just Unlocked Another Star Pitcher

Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Johan Oviedo has a chance to be a real X-factor this year.

After arriving in a December trade with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Oviedo always looked like the most likely candidate for the No. 5 spot in the Red Sox's opening day rotation. But after he showed promise in his 40 2/3 innings last year after Tommy John surgery recovery, the more pressing question has been how high his ceiling is in year one with Boston.

While we won't know much concrete information until the regular season, we just got an anecdote that suggests Boston has made a major breakthrough with Oviedo in spring training that bodes awfully well moving forward.

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Andrew Bailey may have found magic Oviedo formula

Red Sox pitching coach Andrew Bailey revealed that to get a point across, he showed Oviedo statistical and video evidence of why he could be on par with some of the greats across the game if he threw more of his pitches in the strike zone.

"The likes of (Shohei) Ohtani and (Garrett) Crochet and (Bryan) Woo and (Hunter) Greene, (Carlos) Rodón, (Jacob) deGrom, and anybody — and where he stacks up with those guys when he’s in-zone," per Tim Healey of The Boston Globe.

"Just gave him a simple and clear understanding of how his stuff plays in-zone relative to some of the greats in our game. It was maybe a little bit of a clearer picture for him than maybe he had seen in the past."

Oviedo seems to have quickly taken Bailey's lessons to heart, which can only be a good sign.

“A lot of pitchers have to hit targets or make better execution by mixing pitches. For me, it’s more about being in the zone,” Oviedo told Healey. “I don’t have to make some emphasis about where the ball is going to go, because when it’s in the zone, it plays. Even if sometimes it is in the middle.”

We knew the Red Sox saw something they thought was special in Oviedo when they traded top outfield prospect Jhostynxon Garcia, who made major strides in the organization and was well-liked from top to bottom, to get him.

But now that we've seen Oviedo throw 6 1/3 scoreless innings with eight strikeouts and no walks since this meeting reportedly occurred, it's tempting to start raising the expectations even higher for the towering 27-year-old righty.