FORT MYERS, Fla. — Until it became too ragged, Daniel Bard used to wear a black T-shirt around the Red Sox clubhouse with “I’m That Dude” across the front.
He was that dude, too, one of the best relief pitchers in baseball. Bard had a triple-digit fastball and a treacherous slider, pitches that produced a 2.88 earned run average over a three-season span starting in 2009.
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I get that the common narrative is the shift to starting messed him up. But I don't see much about his 10.6 ERA and 1.8 WHIP during the chicken and beer month of September, 2011. Granted that other things were going on with the team, but it sure looks like he went into 2012 with a problem that largely went unrecognized and unresolved.