Rick Porcello alludes to it, but doesn't really talk about it. He toes the line, but doesn't cross it. It's in the past, after all, and the Boston Red Sox right-hander doesn't see much sense in rehashing it.

But in telling the story of how Porcello got here -- to a 16-3 record and a 3.30 ERA entering Friday night's start in Detroit against his former team -- it is impossible to ignore what happened last season.

On paper, at least, 2015 was Porcello's first year with the Red Sox. He arrived in an offseason trade that sent outfielder Yoenis Cespedes to the Detroit Tigers and signed a four-year, $82.5 million contract extension before throwing a regular-season pitch. But the real Rick Porcello didn't show up in Boston until last September, when the Sox had already fallen from playoff contention.

Not to get overly existential about it, but Porcello endured what amounted to a pitching identity crisis. After years of living in the shadows of Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, Anibal Sanchez, Doug Fister and David Price in the Tigers' star-studded starting rotation, Porcello stepped out into the sun with the Red Sox and forgot everything that got him there. The result: a 9-15 record and 4.92 ERA that matched his career high from 2010, when he was in his second big-league season at age 21.

"I can't really point to why," Porcello said. "There's a lot of obvious reasons on why guys come to Boston and struggle and have problems dealing with the things that you have to deal with playing here. But even coming into spring training this year, I felt much more comfortable, just a lot easier to focus on my task at hand day to day. That's kind of how I'm wired and how I go about my business. It was much easier for me to eliminate any outside distractions and things I might be doing that are uncharacteristic to me."

Things like, for example, trying to change his entire style of pitching.

Rick Porcello (pictured here in Anaheim) is 12-0 with a 2.96 ERA at Fenway Park, where he routinely exits to standing ovations from many of the same fans who nearly booed him out of town. AP Photo/Reed Saxon

For six seasons with the Tigers, Porcello relied on a heavy sinker that causes hitters to roll weak grounders. When Porcello's sinker works well, he is typically successful. The reason he decided to stray often from his signature pitch last season in favor of trying to overpower hitters with his ordinary fastball remains a mystery that would be at home in any Agatha Christie novel.

Porcello has hinted that he might have been trying too hard to impress his new team or to live up to his first big contract. Or maybe he felt like he needed to strike out more batters to have success in AL East ballparks that tend to be less forgiving than those in the AL Central. Regardless, through his first 20 Red Sox starts, he threw his sinker 28 percent of the time to left-handed hitters and 41 percent of the time to righties, down from 41 and 51 percent, respectively, for his career. In those starts, he gave up at least four runs nine times and posted a 5.87 ERA.

By the time Dave Dombrowski took over as Red Sox president of baseball operations last August, Porcello was barely recognizable.

"I think that's one of the difficulties that comes sometimes when you sign a big contract like that. You try to do too much at particular times," said Dombrowski, who drafted Porcello for Detroit in 2007, brought him to the big leagues less than two years later and traded him to the Sox because he doubted the Tigers would be able to re-sign him, then wound up reuniting with him when Dombrowski joined the Red Sox. "He's always been a successful pitcher by throwing the sinker primarily. He just got away from being the pitcher that made him successful in the past."

It went on that way for four months, Porcello pitching like some sort of imposter. It wasn't until late August, when he returned from a monthlong stint on the disabled list with a strained right triceps and badly bruised confidence, that he began trusting his sinker again. And voila, he has given up more than three runs only twice in his last eight starts.

That brings us to this season. Porcello has completed six innings in all but three of his 24 starts. He's 12-0 with a 2.96 ERA at Fenway Park, where he routinely exits to standing ovations from many of the same fans who nearly booed him out of town. He has been so consistent that if the Red Sox were faced with playing a winner-take-all wild-card game, they would have to strongly consider starting Porcello over even Price, their $217 million ace.

"It was tough for Rick, for sure. He spent six years in Detroit. That was the only thing he ever knew. That first time that you're traded, it's completely different. I don't think fans really understand that. And then he signed his extension, and there was a lot of expectations for him. It's tough. You've got to be able to move forward, and he's done that extremely well. He hasn't harped on what went on last year. He turned the page and looked for ways to get better."

"I got my approach back and my game plan back. That was really the biggest thing that got away from me," Porcello said. "Talking to [pitching coach] Carl [Willis] and [manager] John [Farrell], we made a huge commitment to execute the sinker down in the zone and use the elevated fastball accordingly a handful of times whenever I need to. But getting my game plan back and understanding how I'm going to get guys out, how I'm going to set guys up, how I'm going to limit damage, getting back on track with that -- once that clicked, I had something that I could kind of grab onto and build off of."

Said Farrell: "He's more comfortable. I just think the environment, the expectation, it's more of a known commodity to him this year than it was a year ago. It's allowed that relaxation to let his natural abilities come out. That filters over to his execution."

Porcello wouldn't be the first pitcher to have a rough first season in Boston. In 2006, Josh Beckett posted a 5.01 ERA, well above his 3.88 career mark. Four years later, John Lackey notched a 4.40 ERA that wasn't indicative of his 3.89 ERA over 14 seasons. And Price has fallen short of expectations this season with a 4.19 ERA through 26 starts.

Surely Porcello can relate.

"We've talked about it a little bit," Porcello said. "When I watch David pitch, there's a lot of things that are similar, but there's a lot of things that are different. For his standards, he's not having a very good year. But for the AL East, he's doing just fine. He's leading our team in innings, he's leading our team in strikeouts. In my mind, for me to come up and just address that with him, it would be like [dismissing] what he's doing out there. It's tough."

Price remembers coming to Boston last September with the Toronto Blue Jays and chatting with Porcello about the challenges of pitching in what Price calls "the toughest place to play in all of Major League Baseball."

"It was tough for Rick, for sure," Price said. "He spent six years in Detroit. That was the only thing he ever knew. That first time that you're traded, it's completely different. I don't think fans really understand that. And then he signed his extension, and there was a lot of expectations for him. It's tough. You've got to be able to move forward, and he's done that extremely well. He hasn't harped on what went on last year. He turned the page and looked for ways to get better."

Porcello got better by simply being himself again. And with each start he has made this season, he has gotten closer to the pitcher the Red Sox always believed he would be.