Call it a comeback: Porcello, Rendon honored

Red Sox right-hander Rick Porcello and Nationals third baseman Anthony Rendon, who each bounced back to lead his team to an East Division championship in 2016, have been named recipients of the American League and National League Comeback Player of the Year Awards, respectively, Major League Baseball announced on Tuesday.

The Comeback Player of the Year Awards are officially sanctioned by MLB, and they are presented annually to one player in each league who has re-emerged on the field during the season. The 30 club beat reporters from MLB.com selected the winners from an original list of 30 candidates, one per club.

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For Porcello, it is another piece of hardware to add to the AL Cy Young Award he won 13 days earlier. After going 9-15 with a 4.92 ERA last year in his first season with the Red Sox, Porcello became a model of consistency, elevating his WAR from 0.6 in 2015 to 5.0 in ’16 and leading Boston to the AL East title. He was 22-4 with a 3.15 ERA over a career-high 33 starts, topping the Majors in wins with a total that represented the most by a Boston pitcher since Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez went 23-4 in 1999.

“I felt like I had the weapons this year and the command to get out just about any guy that I was going to encounter in any lineup,” Porcello said.

Of 130 pitchers to throw 3,000 pitches in the Statcast™ era (2015-16), his four-seam fastball rate of 2,380 rpm has been the seventh highest. The MLB average was 2,162 rpm over that time.

Porcello increased his innings pitched from 172 in 2015 to 223, permitting 78 earned runs on 193 hits with 32 walks and 189 …

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