Pop quiz: If the Red Sox have a narrow lead in the eighth inning, who are Alex Cora’s go-to relief options out for the last six outs?
The potential answers became even less certain shortly before Monday night’s game against the Orioles when the Red Sox placed lefthander Matt Strahm — their most reliable reliever this year — on the COVID-19-related injured list. Before exploring the remaining possibilities available to Cora, it’s worth acknowledging the incredible distance that the Red Sox have already veered from their preseason plans.
In spring training, the Red Sox anticipated that the back end of their bullpen would most likely be formed with some combination of Matt Barnes, Ryan Brasier, Jake Diekman, and Hansel Robles, with an occasional multi-innings appearance from Garrett Whitlock to anchor the final outs of a game.
Whitlock is now in the rotation. Robles landed on the injured list on Saturday morning with back soreness. Diekman has been employed chiefly in medium-leverage situations in the sixth and seventh for the past month. Barnes is getting work only in lopsided games while attempting to rediscover his stuff and his command. Brasier was banished to Worcester before being recalled on Saturday due to the Robles injury.
Of late, the Sox have mostly used Strahm and Rolaids ex machina John Schreiber in their highest-leverage spots, while seeking a couple of innings from Houck every few days. But there are no set roles. Each night requires a retaking of inventory preceding refitted and sometimes reimagined parts of a puzzle.
“Ideally, sure, we have guys that pitch in the same role every day and it’s very structured, but we have to get to that point first,” said pitching coach Dave Bush. “These are the pieces we have right now. I think every team would love to have a guy in the seventh inning, a guy in the eighth inning, a guy in the ninth inning that you can rely on every time, but it takes certain personnel to do that. And most teams don’t have that. Short of that, we’re just trying to get the pieces in the right spots, let guys kind of filter themselves out and pitch where they can perform the best.”
In the same fashion that the team’s desperate offensive struggles through the first six weeks of the season exaggerated the team’s bullpen deficiencies, the eruption of the lineup allowed the bullpen room to breathe.
Friday’s brutal loss to the Orioles — in which an 8-2 lead in the seventh turned into a 12-8 defeat — marked the first time in nearly three weeks that the Sox had lost a game in which their bullpen had been entrusted with a lead. The team’s bullpen had delivered generally solid work during that time, forging a 3.26 ERA (5th best in MLB) and 24.7 percent strikeout rate (11th) from May 8-29.
Schreiber’s emergence (1.42 ERA in 12⅔ innings) as a pitcher whose mix and deceptive delivery generates awful swings has certainly offered the Sox an important and unexpected contributor. Strahm had been excellent (1.88 ERA and .347 opponent OPS) before his Friday meltdown. Austin Davis (1.77 ERA in 20⅓ innings) and Diekman (3.63 in 17⅓ innings) have mostly been fine in middle relief.
Still, the Sox lack the late-innings firepower of most playoff aspirants. That makes it worth asking: Outside of their current bullpen, are there options on the horizon?
The potential return of Chris Sale by the All-Star break could allow the team to move one of its current starters into the bullpen as a multi-innings option. Righthanders Josh Winckowski and Kutter Crawford have both shown mid-90s stuff that could play in that same sort of multi-innings role.
In the minors, multiple starters who are either in Triple A or soon will be are having success that suggests the possibility of late-season bullpen contributions. Righthander Brayan Bello has been electric in three starts since his promotion to the WooSox, with multiple 10-strikeout games. His long-term future is as a starter and the Sox won’t want to mess with that development path, but late in the year, he could become a big league bullpen option.
Righthander Bryan Mata, 15 months removed from Tommy John surgery, has featured a triple-digits fastball while building towards a rehab assignment that could begin within days. He, too, will remain on a starter’s routine for now, but could become a multi-innings big league option late in the year.
Lefthander Brandon Walter will make his Triple A debut this week after posting a 68-to-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio in Double A Portland. His sinker/slider/changeup combination from a low arm slot shows promise. And WooSox reliever Frank German has a 37.1 percent strikeout rate between Double A and Triple A this year while topping out at 99 miles per hour.
Still, as promising as those prospects are, their lack of big league track records makes them possibilities but not certainties to become part of the late-innings solution.
“There are guys doing an amazing job in the minor leagues,” said Cora. “As an organization, in that aspect, it’s a lot different than in ‘19. We were very thin or [the prospects] were in the lower levels. Now that we’re talking about Double-A, Triple-A, they’re right down the street. You never know if they’re going to have an impact this year but obviously in the future they’re going to be very impactful.”
For now, barring a revelatory turnaround by current bullpen member, it remains hard to imagine the Sox finding the sought-after structure to navigate a succession of close games without additions from outside the organization. The pieces of the puzzle have not yet been identified, let alone connected.
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him @alexspeier.