A Damned Fine Pitcher and a Sputtering Offense is No Formula for a Sox Victory
Brayan Bello should be taken out of the rotation, it pains me to add
Unis: yellow city uniforms. Opponent: Tarik Skubal and that team he plays for. Oh, right, the Tigers of Detroit.
Talk about a tall order: coming off a 1-0 victory in extras, the Sox face off against Skubal, or “Tarp Skull” as my spellchecker wants to correct it to. As in, best pitcher in the majors whose name is not Paul Skenes. I guess we could argue about Skenes vs Skubal (“Scenes vs. Skull”).
And, Brayan Bello is starting to make me look at the box scores for starters down in Worcester. He’s been maddeningly inconsistent in pitch quality, and a consistent loser all the way. It’s almost as if the Sox planned the matchup as a sacrificial loss. I mean, here’s your first inning: single, strikeout, single, walk, strikeout, walk a guy in, groundout. One run across like that. Nothing drives me more ape than walking in a run, unless it’s walking in a guy in the first.
Bello then goes on to retire seven straight and you think, oh, he’s bearing down. But then a solo shot to Kerry Carpenter (always a nail in our feet), and the wheels come off a bit with a double and a batter later a sac fly and like that we’re down 3-0. And then a single and we’re down 4-0. I mean, Bello is generating swing and miss, when he’s not generating swing-and-easy-contact, when he’s not walking guys. 84 PC in 4, 4 runs on 5 hits and Alex pulls the plug to start the fifth.
Moran has a terrific outing in relief I will note: three innings, no runs, hit and a walk and three Ks. Nothing loud. He’s really done a good job for us. He left the game with a 1.35 ERA and if the Sox manage to come back and win, he’s my player of the game. (Barring somebody hitting four homers in extra innings).
And the offense: oh lordy here we go again. Load the bases with nobody out in the fifth…and we get away with only one run, knocked in on a groundball double play no less. That’s one way of reducing our LOB count. That’s five baserunners we’ve either left on or had doubled up in innings where we were pressing Skubal against the rock, three left in scoring position.
“Red Sox will strand two” is not what I wanted to hear at the end of the sixth inning where we got two on with nobody out. That was the last chance to get to Skubal; he’s yanked to start the seventh, threw a 4 hitter and struck out 10 Sox. We’re going to see two guys and then our old friend Kenley Jansen.
What the team needs is a genuine rally: crooked numbers. They got used to not scoring yesterday and it’s a habit that’s hard to quit, apparently. But: we send 10 men to the plate in the last three innings, and the only one who gets on is Willson Contreras. Poof. We can’t even score on the relievers.
Kenley indeed gets the save, which I guess is nice for him (he’s one of those closers who needs to reach some milestones to be considered for the Hall of Fame. He’s now at 481, three ahead of Lee Smith and in third all-time, but it took Lee a loooooong time to get into the Hall, and the guys ahead of him are Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman. Behind him is Kimbrel at 440 (and not counting, since he’s not closing), and we skip over John Franco (who deserves to be in IMHO), F-Rod (marginal call there), Billy Wagner and Eck already in, Joe Nathan at 377, and our own Aroldis Chapman at 370.
Now this is an interesting split because Jansen, Kimbrel, and Chapman are all 38 years old and each pitching in their 17th season. Chappie had rough patch of four years where he was nobody’s closer, and average only 9 saves a year, working as a set up guy and day-off closer. Factor in another 80 saves if he’d been closing them, he’s right up there with Kenley and Kimbrel.
Now, I don’t think Kimbrel’s ever going to make it. He was indeed a completely dominant pitcher at one point, and a quite effective one for a while longer, but his late-career erosion is going to stick in the craw of voters. But here’s the thing: Kimbrel has a WAR Of 22.4 Jansen has a WAR of 24.4; and Aroldis has a WAR of 24.6. Hoffman’s was 28, and Rivera an unholy 56, which is maybe the largest deviation between a guy first in his category and one second in his category.
For a long time it looked like relievers were going to be the Kickers of MLB (there’s something like 2 1/2 place kickers in the NFL Hall of Fame, one of whom probably doesn’t belong, awaiting maybe 2 others who do), meaning specialist players who just weren’t considered the equal of other pitchers. But pitching has changed, analytics helps (although WAR is not the sine qua non here, since 28 is a paltry number relative to any position player who’s lasted 10 years and most mediocre starters), and while the saves statistic is actually pretty ridiculous, it has grown in importance, not faded, in the last few decades, despite the fact voters ought to know better.
So do I think Chappie has a shot? Indeed I do. But he’s going to have to work longer than Kenley. Jansen was associated with the dominant years of the Dodgers (relatively speaking, since the 90s at least) and Kimbrel’s associated with no team in particular (I know he seems like a Red Sox, given his role on the 2018 team, but he was only with the club for three years and is now on his…takes off socks…12th team! Yoiks!) Chapman had a string of good years with the Yankees, before his unfortunate 2022, and was a dominant closer in both leagues, always good when it comes to sticking in voters’ minds. But Jansen and Kimbrel have both topped 100 MPH on fastballs — barely — while Chapman is still throwing 105 MPH fastballs and average over 100 on some outings at the age of 38. I have a feeling that with two or three good years — one hopes with a memorable winner so he can finally get a ring — he might have a shot at it, ten years into the Statcast era and with new metrics playing more of a role in quality assessment.
To get back to Jansen, whose stint with the Sox was short and sandwiched between those of Kimbrel and Chapman, I think he’s likely a lock on the hall if he reaches 500 saves. That may seem arbitrary, since it is arbitrary, but it’s what it’s going to take to develop that 75% consensus in the hardest category of player to assess properly, the relief pitcher.
Chapman: realistically it’s a long shot just because of the saves number, but heck, people came to appreciate Billy Wagner for the magnificent pitcher he was despite having fewer saves than non-HoFers ahead of him on the saves list, and I think — if he pitches well through the end of his Sox contract, and has one more key career highlight, like walking off the mound in the clinching game of the World Series — he will also get in eventually.
So why did I yammer on so long about these three Red Sox — two of them ex-Red Sox? Because I am disappointed with the game result and all I can say is Tarik Skubal (Tarp Skull, to you and me) is a fantastic pitcher and while I think the game was in reach, maybe it really wasn’t. Good pitchers get out of jams and that’s what Skubal did. And absent another Ranger Suarez-like performance from our pitching, it wasn’t coming today.
So I am going to dust myself off and put the yellow jersey back in the closet for tomorrow’s game.
Takeaways: Brayan Bello does not deserve to keep his spot in the rotation. It is that simple. If he can’t pitch more than four, let him labor in long relief for a while, since Jovani Moran has actually put in more quality innings than Bello has, the only problem with that plan is we’d be stuck with Brayan in middle relief. Although one expects one of the triple A guys to come up instead. Tarik Skubal is an amazing pitcher and we likely would have lost even without blowing two really good opportunities to put up crooked numbers. The concern about the lack of offense continues but maybe we can give the boys a mulligan for today.
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Post-Game Addendum:
I did a little poking around and...Bello has two more minor league year options, and is not close to the five year service threshold (he's at 3.082 coming into today's game) so a visit to AAA is entirely within the realm of possibility. And I think something the Sox should consider.
