The 62-68 Boston Red Sox have virtually no hope of making the postseason.
They are last in the AL East, already six games behind the fourth-place Baltimore Orioles.
Yes: one year after making it all the way to the American League Championship Series, the Red Sox are dead last in their division and even the Orioles are better than them.
Injuries, key players underperforming, and iffy roster construction certainly have contributed to this situation.
There is a unit, however, that keeps getting battered game after game and it’s really affecting the outcome of games: the bullpen.
Boston’s relief corps are not just mediocre: they are downright bad.
Even MLB personality Jared Carrabis, famously a Red Sox fan, concedes that the bullpen is hard to watch.
“The Red Sox need to be up by a minimum of five runs before they go to the bullpen or they have no shot of winning a baseball game,” the Jared Carrabis Podcast Twitter account posted.
The Red Sox need to be up by a minimum of five runs before they go to the bullpen or they have no shot of winning a baseball game.
— Jared Carrabis Podcast (@carrabispod) August 31, 2022
Red Sox’s Bullpen Is Frustrating
That’s clearly an observation made out of frustration using the eye test.
However, the numbers back that up.
The Red Sox have the fourth-worst bullpen in the Major Leagues by ERA, with a 4.58 mark.
They are better than the Colorado Rockies, the Cincinnati Reds, the Kansas City Royals, and that’s it.
It’s hard to shoot for the moon if the bullpen, one of the most important units for MLB teams in the roster construction phase, keeps throwing away games.
Now, it’s too late to make significant changes to the unit, but the Red Sox should use the remainder of the calendar auditioning minor leaguers and veterans from free agency for the 2023 campaign in mind.
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