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BOSTON -- Say this for the Boston Red Sox: They know how to save on the overhead. On Monday, the Chicago Cubs introduced Jon Lester. Wrigley Field did not suffice for the occasion. The Cubs rented out a trendy Italian bistro on Michigan Avenue. Lester's wife and two kids were there. His parents were there. His wife's parents were there. The owner of the Cubs was in the back of the room, along with most of the front office. Lester wore an expensive suit. So did Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer. The news conference, with dozens of media types in attendance, was aired on live TV. Lunch was catered by the restaurant.  The Sox, meanwhile, in the past week have introduced their three new starting pitchers. Wade Miley and Justin Masterson got conference calls. On Friday, Rick Porcello showed up at Fenway Park for what was billed as an informal media session in a meeting room behind the press box. He was accompanied by his agent, Jim Murray. The Sox owners weren't there. Neither was general manager Ben Cherington, nor the manager, John Farrell. Porcello, dressed in a Sox pullover and sweatpants, walked into the room and sat down in front of a microphone set up for the occasion. There was no introduction. The dozen or so reporters and half-dozen TV crews were invited to ask questions. No photo ops with Porcello modeling a Red Sox jersey. There was a table with sandwiches and soft drinks. No one-on-one standups afterward. Just as unobtrusively as he arrived, Porcello left. And maybe that's the way it should be. The new guy in Chicago is a bona fide ace, presented as someone with the pedigree to deliver a World Series to a fan base that has gone more than a century without one. The three new guys in Boston come with far more modest credentials and tempered expectations. For the Red Sox to try and sell them as anything more would have invited ridicule, especially in the same week as the Lester unveiling. Low-key was clearly the flavor du jour. The Sox had already done the pomp and circumstance with Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval. And none of the new guys seemed to mind a bit. Certainly not Porcello, who has had some practice being overshadowed, having spent his formative years in the same Detroit Tigers rotation as Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer and, last season, David Price. He showed no inclination to cast himself as something he is not, turning aside a question as to whether he was capable of assuming the mantle discarded here by Lester. "I think you have to have five aces," Porcello said. "Each one of us has to have pride in their job." Porcello has some experience with inspiring grand visions. In 2007, he was regarded as the best high school pitcher in the country, drafted out of Seton Hall Prep (N.J.) by the Tigers with the 27th pick of the first round, and would have gone much higher if not for signability issues. Porcello signed for $7.28 million, at the time breaking the record for a high school pitcher set by Josh Beckett in 1999. By the time Porcello was 20, he was in the big leagues. But while he has become an accomplished big league pitcher, the 6-foot-5 Porcello never quite lived up to the hype. The stuff that so dazzled scouts when he was in high school has not produced the same effect on major league hitters. The velocity leveled off and did not produce the projected swings and misses, especially from the left side. The Tigers might have been guilty of rushing him to the big leagues. There were struggles, which he acknowledged Friday, and which he said made him better. "Coming to the big leagues at a young age, it took me a little while to develop into the pitcher that I was going to be," Porcello said Friday. "I think the use of my curveball has been a big plus for me, changing speeds -- especially against left-handed hitters -- and also changing eye levels with a four-seam fastball and not just pounding the bottom of the zone with a sinker. I think those different looks, they make my sinker better." He tightened up his breaking ball, did a better job of getting ahead of hitters and induced lots of ground ball outs with his sinker while showing more life on his four-seamer. The 2014 season was his best to date, the first time he cracked the 200-inning threshold. He won 15 games. He posted a 3.43 ERA (the FIP was 3.67), walked just 1.8 batters per nine innings, and, while his strikeout rate was just 5.67 per nine, his groundball rate was 49 percent.  And now, a year away from free agency, he comes to Boston with the chance to prove his career is trending in the right direction. He smiled Friday when asked if he'd consider signing an extension to stay here. "I just got here today," he said. "I want to just meet everybody and familiarize myself with the clubhouse and really just fit in and get to know everybody on the team and let them know that I'm here to work and here to win." To that end, agent Murray said Friday, Porcello intends to be in Fort Myers, Florida, by mid-January. First, though, he will be spending some time in southern Vermont over the holidays, a family tradition. Porcello's parents and another couple bought some land on a lake not far from Brattleboro, and it has become the place to gather at Christmas. He enjoys fly-fishing, he said, and has become acquainted with some of the better spots in western Massachusetts. And while Fenway Park has hardly been a safe haven for him -- with a broad smile, he brought up, without prompting, his Fenway appearance in 2009, when he hit Kevin Youkilis in the back with a retaliatory pitch, Youk charged the mound, and both players were ejected -- that might be changing, too. He noted that in his one start in Fenway this past season, he had his best outing to date, allowing just six hits and one run in eight innings in a 6-1 win in May. That was a much better memory than being on the losing end of a 20-4 game in which he allowed nine runs in five innings, or giving up a single, wild pitch and walk-off single to Jarrod Saltalamacchia in the David Ortiz grand slam game in the 2013 ALCS (Game 2). "That was a nice game for me," he said of his last start. "I had a lot of my family here. I remember that one for some reason. It's funny -- my first year and my last year are the two most memorable moments I have in this ballpark up until this point." The plan, of course, is to accumulate a few more memories worth preserving. "I'm thrilled," he said. "I couldn't have asked for a better organization to get traded to. The winning tradition here, and everything that they're trying to do going forward, I'm extremely excited. It's a great opportunity."
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