The frightening and unfortunate injury to Tanner Houck led to the Red Sox bullpen being overused for the majority of the summer.
That’s significant because the overwhelmingly prosperous modern era has produced some real stinkers.
Seven starting pitchers who were all unable to achieve an ERA under 5.00 caused 2011’s “Best Team Ever” to crumble. The fork-in-the-back 2012 group, led by Bobby Valentine, actually had a worse record than the year before (7-22 vs.
7-20).
The mutinous group of 2001, led by ill-chosen replacement Joe Kerrigan.
The 2019–2020 double last-place finisher.
On pure numbers, these Red Sox might beat them all.
The staff’s September ERA increased to 5.51 after Brayan Bello’s gaffe on Wednesday in Texas; it is now tied with 2012 for second-worst in franchise history, trailing only 2011 (5.84).
And that’s despite them having a decent week, which included the entire rotation—Tanner Houck, Bello, Chris Sale, Nick Pivetta, and Kutter Crawford—throwing six innings back-to-back immediately following Chaim Bloom’s dismissal.
The difference is minimal.
A new baseball operations manager will be appointed in time for an offseason rebuild, and we will meet again in the spring feeling somewhat optimistic about whatever they accomplished.
The official playoff elimination occurred on Wednesday night.
Think about how quickly those terrible Septembers above gave way to contending ones and how tenuous the line is between making the playoffs and not in the modern game.
(If Houston drops out of a playoff spot, the October 2023 field will differ from the October 2022 field by 50%.
).
There will be enough time to decide which way to jump after carefully considering your options.
Let’s consider how this could have gone so drastically wrong.
Three instances come to mind right away.
The Rays are Zach Eflin’s selection.
In Bloom’s final season with the Red Sox, there was a fair amount of staff turnover, but almost none of it involved the starting lineup.
Adam Duvall, Justin Turner, and Masataka Yoshida are on the cast list.
For the bullpen, among others, Kenley Jansen and Chris Martin.
Expectations were low for Corey Kluber, the big addition, even before the 37-year-old struggled.
With Boston’s defense ranking in the top five of the league for groundball rate, Eflin, who leads Tampa Bay with 30 starts, a 15-8 record, and a 3 point 44 ERA after he struck out 10 in five innings on Thursday, probably wouldn’t have been the season’s only hope.
However, he unquestionably would have altered the staff’s opinion of him, and he very well could have given Bloom another winter.
The Sox reportedly offered the former Phillies swingman the same three years and $40 million that the Rays did, but Eflin chose to sign with his hometown team instead.
An Orlando native who had a soft spot for both teams growing up, the Sox made a strong effort to sign the swingman.
Given his performance and the fact that the franchises are not exactly on an equal financial playing field, it stings a little more.
The Sox did not have the option to increase their offer after the Rays matched, at least not on the latter point, where the Globe claims that Tampa used the Sox offer as leverage.
A bad turn for Tanner Houck.
Given a wider variety of pitches, Whitlock has traditionally been thought of as the more likely starter in the Garrett Whitlock and Houck pairing.
With the addition of a cutter for 2023, Houck, a right-handed sinker-slider pitcher who spent his first three seasons primarily pitching out of the bullpen, hoped to change that.
Mixed results were obtained: they were used against lefties about 20% of the time and missed on about 5% of their swings.
Houck had largely stopped using it by the time he took a line drive to the cheek on June 16 against the Yankees, despite the fact that it has a .234 batting average against for the season.
To be fair, the Sox won just two of his nine starts before that one, which included a 5 point 44 ERA. Houck had proven himself to be able to play late in games in a way the team lacked the entire season, and they also scored two runs or fewer in each of their seven losses.
His inclusion in the lineup was already a recognition of the Red Sox’s injury-related resiliency.
For his turn during the two months he was away, they mainly used bullpen games from June 17 to August.
The second-most innings in the sport were thrown by Sox relievers in 21 games, and the grind hasn’t really abated since his return.
In addition, the Sox bullpen has a 5 point 46 ERA since Houck’s comeback, which is the fifth-worst in baseball.
The Hush At The Deadline.
You could argue that each of the aforementioned factors was largely outside of Bloom’s control.
He couldn’t change the Red Sox’s distance from Orlando, and he had no control over an accident injury.
He could, however, have made the hard decision and sold on this team in either of the last two years.
Stories about some of the trades Bloom didn’t make have surfaced since his dismissal.
Following his broken finger in 2022, sale, and all of the money he was owed. Rich Hill and Nate Eovaldi, two upcoming free agents, last summer.
This summer, James Paxton and Turner could have been traded to the Marlins for “Edward Cabrera, a 25-year-old right-handed starter with a potentially dominant fastball, and more,” according to the Boston Globe.
“.
The baseball owner ultimately decided to cross his fingers this summer in the hopes that a group of “underdogs” can put together a run to a wild card spot after trying to thread the needle between contention and selling last season.
Last winter, the baseball owner failed to make a big potential addition.
I was more comfortable with it than most, but it was a dubious wager at best at the time, and it only gets worse with time.
It is likely that, if history remembers it at all, it will be as the last instance of inaction that cost Bloom his job.
And contributed to another unpleasant September in this region, on which another administration will hopefully have the same success as those before it.