Why I can’t wait for opening day, reasons 5 through 11: the bullpen

Written by: Josh Wilker on 20th March 2009

Why I can't wait for opening day, reasons 5 through 11: the bullpen | read this item

There have been times during the Theo Epstein era when this middle-aged Red Sox fan has wondered if this whole thing is some kind of an intricate morphine dream, and that when I finally come down from the pain-killing narcotic I’ll be suffering in a hospital bed in a full body cast after having thrown myself out of my third-story dorm room window on a particular October night in 1986.

I am most suspicious about the reality of the Red Sox world I am witnessing when the various successes of the team seem to stem from symmetrically perfect replies to Red Sox deficiencies in the past. For example, the most hallowed moment of the current boom times, Dave Roberts’ steal in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, was the perfect—perhaps too perfect—negation of decade upon decade of the station-to-station offenses of the lumbering, one-dimensional Red Sox.

The steal of course catalyzed a comeback of unprecedented proportions, a comeback so immense that it actually made an astounding comeback by the team three years later, also in the ALCS, seem, if not mundane, at least somewhat unsurprising. In other words, the Boston Red Sox, a team that for most of my life had been associated with coughing up big leads, has now become the team most likely to rise up from seemingly insurmountable deficits. Again, I have to wonder: is this real?

I’m going to say that it is. Even if it isn’t real, I might as well enjoy it as such as long as the morphine keeps coursing through my veins. If it isn’t real, and I am indeed snarled in IV tubing with a broken back, I am in my current hospitalized state due not to an ailing veteran first baseman’s inability to field a bad hop but because the Red Sox, as had been the case throughout my life until I jumped out the window, did not have any depth in their bullpen. In some years, they had had a guy or two who figured out a way to be effective for a month or a few months or even a couple years, but that state of grace would always dissolve, and meanwhile everyone else in the bullpen was doing their best impressions of gasoline streaming toward an open flame. Worst of all was when the thin bullpen got exposed in big spots. For example: the 1986 World Series. The half-season-long morphine illusion of rookie Calvin Schiraldi’s effectiveness wore off—Schiraldi had been in the Met organization and so the Mets knew they could cream his straight fastballs—and beyond that there was nothing. Steve Crawford? Joe Sambito? God help us, Bob Stanley really is the best option now.

So anyway, I’m looking forward to opening day (or to a continuation of my happy narcotic illusion) in large part because this year’s team seems to boast the best curative yet to the old wound of never having a deep and effective bullpen. Papelbon heads the group, of course, but there’s also Masterson, Ramirez, Saito, Lopez, and Okajima. Plus—and I seem to keep coming back to this guy in my “looking forward to opening day” ramblings—Daniel Bard and his rumored 102-MPH fastball may well join the team sometime this season.

Tyler Hissey has an excellent analysis of this battalion of arms at Around the Majors. It has just the kind of in-depth statistical data to suggest that if this is all a dream, it’s a very complex one. I mean, I don’t think I have the imagination, even unconscious and morphine-fueled, to dream up the detail that Papelbon may be even better this year than last because his “BABIP” last year was the highest of his career. Anyway, don’t wake me. I’m enjoying this.

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Topics: Bard, Lopez, Masterson, Okajima, Papelbon, Ramirez, Saito

Tyler says:

March 20, 2009 at 2:31 pm

Josh,

Thanks for linking to us. It certainly is a great time for you to be a Red Sox fan. Who knew that science could solve the Curse of the Bambino?

Thanks again and take care,

Tyler
Josh Wilker says:

March 20, 2009 at 3:01 pm

Hey Tyler,
Thank you for writing such a cool piece. I’m looking forward to reading your upcoming take on the Boston starters.