On Depth: The Silent Killer

Plus notes on yesterday's game, Chris Sale's return, and other things in Red Sox land

It hit 102 today in Portland, Oregon. That’s too hot for a town where most people don’t have air conditioning. It wasn’t 102 all day though. It was too hot all day, don’t get me wrong, but it didn’t actually hit the high until later in the afternoon. Most of the day was spent leading up to that number. It got progressively more unpleasant as the day went on until we reached prime unpleasantness at around 4pm. And hey that reminds me of the Red Sox!

That progression is pretty much what happened yesterday during the Red Sox game. Things started out fine, Tanner Houck was fantastic through five innings and two turns of the lineup. This is when the heat started to get turned up. Cora asked Houck for another inning. Cora should know better than to make that request but he made it and the predictable happened: single, home run, double. Anyway, we’ll come back to this. Let’s stay on the weather analogy.

The heat got turned up more and more as Cora called the next relievers into the game: Josh Taylor, Hansel Robles, Austin Davis, and Yacksel Rios. Taylor is off his stretch of being the best reliever in the game, but he’s still a very good bullpen piece. The next three though… oof. The Rays meanwhile went with a straight bullpen game. They got four one-run innings out of Drew Rasmussen, two scoreless out of Colin McHugh, and one scoreless each from J.T. Chargois, Louis Head, and Ryan Sherriff.

At some point the Rays are just pulling dudes out of the upper deck, handing them a ball, and they’re going 1.2 scoreless with two Ks. And that’s really the difference between these two teams right now. The Rays prevent runs. The Red Sox allow runs. There are lots of reasons for this but the one that stood out most of all last night was the depth of the two respective pitching staffs. The Rays guys combined for nine innings of one run ball. The Red Sox bullpen, well, didn’t. The Rays guys show up and are immediately good. Why? I don’t know. Look at Louis Head’s FanGraphs page. Here. Seriously. Look at this.

In 2019 he was 29 years old and in Triple-A with a 8.25 ERA. That same season he spent time in Double-A and had a 3.38 ERA. I know ERA isn’t a great stat to measure relievers but just go with me for a second. Flash forward two seasons and he’s in the majors with Tampa and is sporting a 1.29 ERA. That’s it. That’s the difference.

It’s not that everyone the Red Sox touch turns to crap. Far from it. Just look at Garrett Whitlock. He’s been exceptional! But he’s one guy. The Rays have a bullpen full of Garrett Whitlocks, or it sure feels like it. The Red Sox, well, don’t. They have Hansel Robles who, I’m sorry, but he’s just bad. They have Austin Davis who, I’m sorry, is just bad. They have Yacksel Rios who, well, he isn’t bad, but he’s not good either.

So while the Rays went to Garrett Whitlock after Garrett Whitlock, the Red Sox turned to Robles, Davis, and Rios. While those three were in the game, 3.1 innings, the Red Sox were out-scored 4-0.

This isn’t an isolated incident either. In fact, the same damn thing happened on Tuesday. The Red Sox bullpen, including the real Garrett Whitlock, gave up six runs to Tampa in the final 3.2 innings of the game. The Rays bullpen pitched the final three innings of that game and they gave up zero runs. The bullpens combined to turn the Red Sox 4-1 advantage when the starters left into an 8-4 loss.

Of course some of this is on the offense too. Four runs in Tuesday’s game is okay, but it’s hardly enough to put a game away. The one run they scored in today’s game simply isn’t good enough. You score one run in a game and you’re going to lose 95 percent of the time. The Red Sox hitters need to do better, but the Rays bullpen is really good and so sometimes, often even, they hold teams down, and then you get what happened in this series, where a team with a desperate need to win (Boston) loses two of three at home because they can’t score off the bullpen.

This is a depth problem. This is Chaim Bloom’s big thing. He’s talked about depth depth depth for as long as he’s had the job of running the Red Sox and you can see, the team’s depth and the depth of the organization as a whole have been greatly improved since he took over. But they’re not where they need to be yet. They don’t have Tampa-level depth yet. I’m convinced the acquisitions of Davis and Robles were attempts at that. And maybe they both work out. We’re still early in their tenures, though I’ll say the results so far have been abysmal. Right now we’re closer to DFA’ing them than we are to having them as a part of the 2022 Red Sox bullpen.

But that was the big thought I had while watching this game go from a close contest to a Rays blowout. Just like Tuesday’s game. Once the bullpens get involved the Rays score runs and the Red Sox don’t. It’s not always that way. The Rays aren’t perfect. Their bullpen isn’t flawless. But they’re the best in baseball and I bet most baseball fans couldn’t name a single member of the Rays pen.

One more point: Cora pushed Tanner Houck to pitch one more inning, the sixth, for two reasons. The first was Houck was cruising. Now, the Red Sox are a smart team and Cora is a smart manager and the Red Sox have communicated to Cora and Cora knows that Houck isn’t as good a pitcher the third time through the order. That’s not uncommon but for Houck it can be especially pronounced due to his side arm style of throwing. And yet Cora pushed him. Why? Well now we get to the second reason Cora asked Houck for another inning. Once Houck had to leave the game and the Red Sox bullpen stepped to the mound, the specifics of that reason became clear. The more Boston’s starter throws, the less Boston’s bullpen has to, and I’m sure that’s what Cora was trying to avoid. Yes, it bit him in the butt cheeks, but now we’re back to Robles and Davis and not improving the bullpen at the deadline. I hate to keep harping on this, I know it was exceedingly expensive to make big bullpen acquisitions, but, well, this roster was a choice, is all I’m saying. Cora kept Houck in even though I’m guessing he knew he shouldn’t because this was what he was given and quite frankly he didn’t want to use it.

Here Come The Cavalry!

There is some good news though: Chris Sale is scheduled to start tomorrow, Saturday, against Baltimore. More good news: Ryan Brasier could be back as early as early next week according to Christopher Smith of MassLive. Brasier should be an upgrade on several members of the bullpen, so that’s good thing.

Also, Alex Verdugo, Christian Arroyo, and Christian Vazquez should return to the roster soon as well, and so we may be in for a bit of a roster shakeup.

A Bit Of Goal Reorientation

Boston is now five games behind the Rays for the division, so it’s probably time to stop worrying about that particular goal and focus on the Wild Card. The Sox currently hold the second Wild Card spot by two games over the Yankees and 2.5 games over Toronto. If there’s to be any playoff games at Fenway this season it’s time to dig in. The Orioles come to town for three games, then it’s three against the Yankees, Rangers, Twins, and Cleveland. That’s a lot of winnable games if the Red Sox can start playing decent baseball again.

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