The Boston Red Sox Have A Bullpen Problem
Red Sox lastest closer Matt Barnes
Photo Credit: Maddie Meyer
It’s a real shame that the Boston Red Sox have found themselves in such a predicament when it comes to the bullpen. It’s almost as if they didn’t have a future hall of fame closer the last couple of seasons that they decided would the best player to part ways with after out World Series triumph. Closers are easy to come by so why would you pay the big bucks for a top of the line closer when you can literally stick anybody in the 9th inning and have them close out the game for you. That must have been Dave Dombrowski’s school of thought heading into this year and boy oh boy is it coming back to bite this team.
The Red Sox currently sit in 3rd place in the AL East, 9 games out of first place, with a 44-38 record, after blowing yet another game this afternoon. It’s not the best position to be in but it’s definitely not the worst. While the Red Sox chances at winning the division are slim, they’re only 1 game out of the wildcard spot and with a loaded line-up that they have they could easily snag one of the wildcard spots. But what makes all this worse, is where the Red Sox could be, if they had a competent closer. As things stand the Red Sox have blown 16 save opportunities this season. This ties them with the Pittsburgh Pirates for the second most blown saves and 2 behind the NY Mets with 18 blown saves But think about that, 16 blown saves and yet the team still has a winning record. Neither the Mets or Pirates have a winning record. Today it was Matt Barnes blowing his 6th save opportunity of the season. Ryan Brasier has blown 3, Marcus Walden 2, Brandon Workman 4 and the list continues of Red Sox relievers that have blown leads late in games. Again, it’s a damn shame that we don’t have a guy who converted 42 of 47 save opportunities last year and a guy who has over 300 career saves with a 90%+ save percentage. Through the first 9 years of Craig Kimbrel’s career, he has been consistently the best closer in the MLB and the Red Sox just decided that he was the piece we could do without going forward. Well it looks like we definitely screwed that one up. I’m a big fan of Nathan Eovaldi but for 4 years at $68 million when we could have had Kimbrel for 3 year $43, seems like a no-brainer. One is on pace to be a hall of fame closer and the other is a guy who was great for the Red Sox when we traded for him in the 2nd half of last season and was big in helping us win the World Series but is also a guy who’s had tommy john surgery and a slew of injuries throughout his career. Guess what, he’s on the 60 day Injured List currently. I think we can all agree that money would have been better spent on retaining Kimbrel’s services and who knows maybe we’d probably be leading the division if we had.
Oh what could’ve been
Photo Credit: Chicago Tribune
Thanny