The injury bug keeps nipping the Red Sox at the worst times.
Brayan Bello and Lucas Giolito are back, hooray! Giolito looked fantastic in his Red Sox debut (finally) and Bello…well, he’s at least a Major League arm in the rotation. Avery had some astute analysis that he’s still not up to snuff with his stuff. Regardless, the dream of finally having a full rotation to guide the pitching staff as whole in the right direction was realized for a brief moment.
And then the news came out Thursday night.
Walker Buehler went back to Boston after experiencing right shoulder issue. Bello starting tomorrow
— Rob Bradford (@bradfo) May 1, 2025
Oy vey.
The Red Sox have a collective 4.05 ERA, the 17th-ranked team in the Majors, no thanks in part to a rough bullpen and some less than top-level starting arms in the back of the rotation. Yeah, I’m looking at you Sean Newcomb and Hunter Dobbins. Dobbins may be 2-0, but only one of his starts was stress-free; then again, it was against the White Sox. On the other hand, Newcomb had shifted into a bullpen role starting in the rubber match against the Guardians—he hadn’t gone more than 5.0 innings in any of his outings as a starter this season.
The bullpen ERA is 4.26, but it feels like a knock-on effect from the lack of consistency in the rotation. Garrett Crochet is absolutely stellar, make no mistake about it. Crochet’s 2.05 ERA is the eighth-best in baseball, he’s been the pig the Red Sox staff has needed for years. It just can’t be Crochet and nothing else.
Tanner Houck dropped his ERA a whopping 1.20 runs in one outing after a stellar game last night against the Blue Jays. Bringing it down from 7.58 to 6.38 still shows his season has been—for lack of a better word—abysmal. Walker Buehler has been a solid enough middle of the rotation piece, but this injury now throws the rotation in flux again. Frankly, these three have been the only constants in the rotation a month in.
It’s led to some harsh usage of critical pieces. Garrett Whitlock has thrown 17.2 frames — the seventh-most amongst all relievers — and has been up and down. Greg Weissert is at 12.1, Aroldis Chapman is at 11.1 and only four savesd. Justin Slaten can be lights out for weeks at a time and then have one complete blow up outing a month, like the one against Baltimore on March 31 or last night against the Jays.
Where are Liam Hendriks, Justin Wilson, Luis Guerrero and Zack Kelly being used? Do I really want to see Kelly at this point? Not really, but diversification of arms in the bullpen feels important.
I don’t know who to blame more a month plus into the season. Is it on Alex Cora for poor usage or Craig Breslow for not fixing the bullpen, when all offseason it looked like the weakest part of the team? What about Andrew Bailey and the entirety of the Run Prevention Unit? Should we just be cursing out the baseball gods for the injuries to the arms? While parts of the offense are a concern, it’s a majority of the pitching that worries me. It has to be addressed and quickly to turn these Sox from ducks treading water to taking flight in a division still ripe for the taking.