The goods news is the Red Sox have won eight in a row, 26 out of 29, and 31 out of 36. The bad news is their most recent win in the bananas marathon game on Thursday night might have a poison pill embedded inside of it.
Ranger Suarez lasted just three innings on the front end of a game that went 13, which means the bullpen had to cover ten frames of relentless high leverage situations. Together, all eight men in the pen were used, and they combined to throw 166 pitches. (Not ideal.)
By itself, this
is an issue, but when you combine it with the fact there’s no off day on the schedule until August 20th, and that the Sox already wanted to limit the usage of both Payton Tolle and Jake Bennett who are set to blow by career highs innings pitched, it’s sneaky alarming.
Below is a table noting the number of pitches each arm in the pen has thrown over the last nine days. (I’ve color coded days with zero pitches thrown in green and days where a guy throws more than 15 pitches in red to make things easier to spot.)
Every single player in that pen either threw more than 15 pitches last night, or has been used two games in a row. Yikes!
On top of that, there’s also talk of a potential bullpen game on Sunday to create a temporary six man rotation to limit the usage of Tolle and Bennett. However, Brayan Bello, who would be the most obvious bulk guy in a situation like that has already thrown 114 pitches over three outings the last seven days, so that option becomes problematic.
We may be in a situation where the Sox have to call up Blake Wehunt to start on Sunday if they still want to push everything back. What the hell is a Blake Wehunt? Well, he’s a pitcher who’s only made three starts in Worcester so far after spending most of the year in Portland with the Sea Dogs and would need to be added to the 40 man roster, but he is lined up to pitch Sunday, and that would give you an out to eat some innings.
Also of note following last night’s absurdity, the Red Sox made a move, optioning Greg Weissert down to Triple-A and calling up Raymond Burgos.
As much as some fans probably want Weissert gone, the reality is he had an option and the Sox need anybody else in that bullpen tonight to get some outs in case we get a one sided affair.
As much as any other sport, all the games in baseball are connected, and when you get a game like the Sox played last night on the front end of a long stretch with no off days in the middle of the summer, it creates a whole host of problems that will linger for several days.
My advice to Payton Tolle tonight? Throw strikes. This pen can’t take much more of a beating.
