ARLINGTON, Texas — Hours before the world shut down and spring training came to a halt because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tanner Houck stood on the back fields of the Boston Red Sox complex in Florida and tried, for the first time, the pitch that would make him an All-Star.

Before earning the All-Star nod, he had to first convince the Red Sox he should remain in the starting rotation.

“I think everything I’ve done in my life,” Houck said, “is to reach a goal like this.”

Houck has become Boston’s breakout starter about a year after being called into a Fenway Park office to discuss a move to the bullpen. Chaim Bloom, who was then the Red Sox chief baseball officer and is now an advisor with the St Louis Cardinals, was there with Manager Alex Cora. They told Houck early last season that to make room for returning players, he would be removed from the rotation.

Houck’s reaction was essentially: No.

“I want to stay a starter,” he said. “I know I can start.”

So he asked what he had to do to change their minds.

“I was a little stubborn in that sense – knowing what I wanted to do,” Houck recalled Monday at Globe Life Field on the eve of his first All-Star Game. He’s 8-6 with a 2.54 ERA in 19 starts for the Sox and received mention as a potential American League starter.

“It was more a matter of proving to them that I could do it,” he said. “It was kind of the moment where I learned to stand up for myself and know that this is my career, and sometimes it’s hard to have conversations with people who are in authority. They can be scary. At the same time, it’s growing as an individual.”

Although he threw seven innings in a start soon after that meeting, the results were not immediately consistent. He threw more strikes – which the Red Sox insisted he do – but finished the 2023 season 6-10 with a 5.01 ERA. He walked 41 batters in 106 innings. The 24th overall pick out of the University of Missouri in 2017, Houck’s career already had featured a previous recasting as a reliever, a facial fracture when struck by a hit, and back surgery. And here he was this spring having to assert himself as a starter again.

Enter the splitter.

That pitch he started working on during the final minutes of 2020’s spring training had been rolling around in his hand ever since. He knew he needed a third pitch to stick as a starter, and that splitter had the depth and movement to be that pitch.

This past spring, with a tip from new pitching coach Andrew Bailey, he shifted his grip on the split-finger. Now the pitch comes off his middle finger, like a change-up, and it plunges. He’s more than doubled his use of the pitch to one out of every four pitches. Opponents are hitting .188 against it, slugging .234.

At the same time, again at the urging of Bailey, Houck ditched his four-seam fastball, pocketed his cutter and did something different in today’s game – stopped reaching for velocity.

“I know I’m a better pitcher throwing 91-94 mph than I am at 94-96,” Houck said. “Why? Because I execute the pitch better if I get it down in the zone better. I get better spin on all of my pitches, and ultimately that’s a better combination than chasing a little bit of (velocity). I always believed that I had the ability. It was just a matter of putting it together. Sometimes the best way to put things together is to subtract. We think more is better, and ultimately I’m throwing my best three pitches as much as I can now.”

And it all began with that first pitch he made in that meeting when – “Calm, cool, collected,” he said – he insisted he could be a starter and asked how.

“I’ve always wanted to take it myself,” Houck said. “For me, it’s more satisfying to know that I put in the work. I put in the time. I put in all this effort to go out and pitch every fifth day. I love what I do. This is the greatest job on Earth. If I didn’t earn it, it’s fine. I will, though. I’ll keep going.”