FORT MYERS, Fla. — The Red Sox finished last in the AL East standings with a 24-36 record in 2020, a brutal season that was shortened due to COVID.

Fenway Park was empty every night without fans being allowed in. Night games didn’t start until 7:30 p.m. And manager Ron Roenicke used 16 different starting pitchers over the 60 games, nine of whom haven’t made a start in the majors since then. Zack Godley, who was third on the team in starts (7) has made just one start and pitched in two big league games since then.

There were few highlights. Tanner Houck’s MLB debut was one. A busy trade deadline that included then-chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom acquiring Nick Pivetta was another.

Then there was Robert Stock’s wife roasting him on X (formerly Twitter).

“She’s very funny,” Stock said at JetBlue Park.

Stock, who is back with the Red Sox this year after signing a minor league deal in the offseason, was struggling during a relief appearance Sept. 1, 2020. He gave up two runs on three hits and one walk while recording just two outs out of the bullpen in a 10-3 loss to the Braves. He took the loss.

An X user @aaronkessler tweeted, “I implore you all to put on the Red Sox game, they have this dude Robert Stock pitching, and he looks like he’s twice-divorced and completely given up on life. I can’t stop watching him. It’s transfixing.”

Like many people at the time, Stock hadn’t gotten his hair cut since before the shutdown and looked a little unkempt.

Stock’s wife, Sara Stock, quote tweet it, writing, “0 times divorced, but if he keeps walking the lead-off batter, I’ll consider filing.”

“She had texted my brothers like, ‘Hey, I think this is a funny tweet but before I send it, what do you think?’” said Stock, who now has a much cleaner haircut.

Stock’s brothers told Sara not to send it out. So she waited until the game ended to ask Stock if it was OK to tweet it.

“Because she knows me so well, right?” Stock said. “And she’s like, ‘You think I should tweet this?’ I’m like, ‘You definitely should. That’s hilarious, right?”

Does he realize Sara provided one of the few highlights of 2020?

“That’s good. I’m glad that good jokes are something that can live on,” Stock said.

He said Sara’s tweet was somewhat accurate.

“Obviously the biggest thing that’s been (holding) me (back) in my career is throwing strikes, right?” he said. “It’s a funny tweet, but it’s also exactly what I needed to work on.”

Strike throwing is something the 35-year-old worked on in his many different stops — including South Korea, Mexico and with two different Indy Ball teams — since last pitching in the majors in 2021.

“ Changing my mechanics to allow for better strike throwing,” Stock said.

Stock throws hard. He said he has found that one of the common strategies mechanically for throwing hard is at the cost of a pitcher’s control.

“But there’s a better mechanical strategy that allows you to do both. Just improving my mechanics,” he said.

Stock also has worked on a cutter the past couple of years.

“And that’s really good for me, although my last outing that was actually my underperforming pitch. But typically it’s good,” Stock said. “And I throw like sidearm now.”

His sidearm angle developed naturally last year.

“I had been throwing sinkers and I was finding when my arm slot would be lower, it would be more effective,” he said. “So just over time, it got lower and lower and lower.”

What else does Stock remember from the 2020 season?

“That season was such a blur because it was so unlike regular baseball,” Stock said. “What I remember most from that season probably was our lockers being set up in the suites up above but then the showers being in a trailer on the concourse. And so you would walk downstairs in a bathrobe. Usually like in a locker room obviously you would walk in your underwear. And it’s like, ‘Oh, hey, look. There’s (people) outside the stadium while I’m walking in the showers.‘”

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