As I detailed earlier in the season, Boston’s in a rather stable position going into the 2015-2016 arbitration window. With most of the team’s most critical players either still playing out the string on league-minimum deals (Mookie! Xander! Hooray!) or in the midst of pricey open-market deals and extensions (Porcello! Pablo! Boo!), the Sox are a team without a whole lot of uncertainty going into the arb process.

Recently, Matt Swartz came out with his offseason arbitration projections over at MLB Trade Rumors. Predicting things is a terrible business, but just like the old BP Annuals, Matt’s projections are deadly accurate. Using these arbitration projections as a guide to what a player will end up with is almost always a safe bet, and a great way to manage expectations.

Today, I thought it might be fun to take a look at the team’s current arb-eligible players, and find out what tact the team may take when it comes to the offseason. Knowing what we know now — that the team will likely be looking to build a fresh bullpen and hopefully reload to leap back into contention — I think we can make a reasonable guess as to which players will return, barring a trade or three. And that’s especially true given that all seven players for which the Sox need to make an arbitration decision come from the team’s sketchy bullpen.

The Definites: Junichi Tazawa, Joe Kelly and Robbie Ross

These three relievers (well, two relievers and a should be reliever) are, perhaps, the team’s best relievers under the age of 40, and for that reason it is extraordinarily unlikely that the team would non-tender any of them. In addition, none of these players has the counting stats that become overvalued in the arbitration process: namely saves and innings pitched. Let’s try to break them down one-by-one.

Junichi Tazawa — Projected 2016 Salary: $3.3 million

Unlike most of the pitchers on this list, I think there’s a pretty solid consensus that Tazawa is both an above-average reliever and under-valued compared to the open market. Junichi is heading into his final arbitration season, and for a player with both his pedigree and time in the league, this is a great value.

More than any other pitcher in the Boston bullpen, Tazawa has a proven “true talent” ability. cFIP, which measures this, posits that Tazawa has a score of 84 for his big league career, which is solidly above-average. While his seasonal ERA and DRA were down in ‘15, he got BABIPed to death (.349) and had tough luck with his strand rate (71%). He should be a keeper, and be a fine late-relief option, if not a dominant relief ace.

Joe Kelly — Projected 2016 Salary: $3.2 million

Here’s the thing: if Kelly does somehow transform into a relief ace, then his arbitration cost is just fine. If Kelly continues to be used in the rotation, pretty much at any non-disaster level of performance, then his arbitration cost is fine. But if he’s a bullpen JAG (just another guy), then while 2016 may be an okay term, the team will almost certainly have to trade or non-tender him after next season.

As a swingman, well, you’re probably not very excited about Kelly. Neither am I. I’d love to see if his already-nice fastball picks up a few ticks in short work, and maybe he can mothball his not-so-nice curveball. We already know that Dombrowski has come out in favor of Kelly as a starter, which is fine, I suppose, but on a team that could use bullpen weapons and has good-ish starters galore, I’d like to see them consider converting him.

He’ll be fine. And either way, he’s likely worth the money.

Robbie Ross — Projected 2016 Salary: $1.1 million

Robbie Ross may have been the team’s closer and best reliever near the end of the season, but there’s no circumstance where the team wishes for him to be the ninth-inning guy in 2016. Ross is left-handed and okay, which is great, since no one else currently in the bullpen is both left-handed and okay. His overall numbers for 2015 are pretty average: a cFIP of 99 says that he’s about league-average in terms of true talent, and a DRA of 4.07 says that he about got what he deserved in terms of runs against. Of course, Ross seemed to improve in the second half of the season, and it’s possible that he’ll beat his 2015 numbers rather than fall apart.

Ross’s salary projection is $1.1 million, which is chump change for a slightly above-average reliever. Boston should end up paying this in a heartbeat, if they don’t figure out some sort of short-term extension instead. Going year-to-year on Ross is fine, but extending him on a value contract is great too, as the stability of having a solid ‘pen lefty is a nice thing to have. He’ll be back.

The Maybes: Anthony Varvaro, Jean Machi, and Ryan Cook

Anthony Varvaro — Projected 2016 Salary: $700k

I’m inclined to dump off Varvaro, but mainly because of his injury issue. To put a fine point on it, Varvaro’s flexor tendon tear, which took him out of the bullpen in May after just 11 innings, caused Varvaro to be waived, claimed by the Cubs, and then returned to the Sox after his injury was found to be more serious than anticipated.

Varvaro had been pretty good in the two seasons before coming to Boston, where he saw his walk rate and BABIP get much, much worse. But given his injury issues, I’m not certain that the Red Sox would need to offer him anything above the league minimum to retain him. Varvaro’s reverse platoon split is nice to have when your bullpen isn’t exactly stacked with lefty-killers, but there’s already been a lot of performance variance, and the injury issues are a red flag. I’d think the team could let him fly, and perhaps bring him back on a minor-league show-me deal instead.

Jean Machi — Projected 2016 Salary: $900k

Machi’s ERA in his two seasons prior to this most recent one is immaculate, but his 2015 performance was … not. It’s a long walk from his ERA from being in the mid-twos to five-plus, but Machi’s underlying peripherals didn’t change all that much. You saw how his Boston run was damaged by giving up lots of hits and homers, something that perhaps an improved Boston defense could help mitigate in 2016. At the same time, Machi has never had dominant stuff, and his career cFIP of 100 basically screams league-average.

Though Machi hasn’t looked sharp in his short time with Boston, his 1.3 WARP in each of the two previous seasons shows he’s got the potential to be better than just an okay bullpen piece — those are really good numbers. I’d expect somewhere between half a win and three quarters next season and, on a cost of less than a million, I’d keep that.

Ryan Cook — Projected 2016 Salary: $1.4 million

This is the toughest decision, for me at least. Even though Cook looked pretty good as recently as 2014, his 2015 was a hot mess. You can forgive his terrible eight-and-two-thirds innings at the big league level as a small sample size, but his run at Nashville before coming over to the Sox was pretty shoddy as well. However, his time in Pawtucket was very, very strong in a limited sample.

Cook has potential, sure, but I have to think a non-tender is the right move here. Yeah, a million and a half is chump change for this team, but it’s also an unnecessary risk for a squad that needs a complete overhaul. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if a non-tendered Cook finds his way onto a roster only as a minor-league contract guy, so the team should save the money and perhaps put it toward a less risky bullpen option. But I’m not a scout, I’m looking at the stats. The real questions are: (1) are there better options out on the market somewhere and (2) is Cook going to stay healthy AND effective?

My best estimate is that the team rolls the dice on the dicey Machi, lets Varvaro fly, and Cook is a bit of a wild card. The team’s internal scouts and talent evaluators are going to make judgement calls here, and either way they probably can’t go wrong on Machi and Varvaro. When you’re talking about $700k-$900k, arbitration doesn’t drag a player too much up from the league minimum, so risk is low.

Cook’s a different issue. The team acquired him from Oakland despite an awful run there, so they must see something in his work that makes them want to take the risk. Both his bad run in Boston and his good run in Pawtucket are small samples, so I have to imagine there’s something the team likes here, and they keep him, even though I’d personally be more skeptical. Get a guy like this on a minor-league deal, and save a million.

The No: Alexi Ogando

Alexi Ogando — Projected 2016 Salary: $2.4 million

Ogando’s 3.99 ERA belies just how bad his peripherals were last year. Alexi gave up 12 homers in about 65 innings (not good) and walked too many hitters (3.9 BB/9). In fact, FanGraphs’ FIP-based wins above replacement pegged him at -0.9 fWAR, which is only the second-worst career mark of any Red Sox pitcher … in the team’s history. DRA is slightly kinder, as Ogando’s DRA-based WARP put him at 0.1, or right around replacement level.

But whether’s he’s the FIP-centered disaster or the DRA-based replacement-level pitcher, it seems as if investing more money in Ogando isn’t the best option. It’s not like this was an exceptionally down season; his cFIP in each of the last three seasons has been over 100, meaning his true talent level is less than league-average by this metric. There’s little reason to invest money in a low-upside option in the bullpen when low-upside options are in no short supply. The difference between a Jonathan Aro and Ogando is probably only $2 million. He should be non-tendered as well.

Hrm.

So with my guesses on who gets non-tendered, paired with Matt Swartz’s projections, it looks like the Sox will have to drop about $8.5 million in arbitration salaries on four bullpen pieces … and Cook is a $1.5 million wild card, barring trades. Investing in this team’s bullpen is a necessary evil, and all three of Tazawa, Kelly, and Ross could very well be above-replacement options. They’re locks. From a context-free perspective, spending $10 million of five bullpen pieces is great! Look at all the money they’re saving!

However, with all these pieces ranging from uninspiring to shruggie-guy-emoticon, saving a couple million here and leaving Cook / Varvaro / Machi off the roster is less about saving the money, and more about freeing up roster spots that could go to higher-upside or lower-risk options from trade or free agency.

In the end, that’s what Boston’s bullpen arbitration decisions are all about. There are some no-brainers here, but Boston’s choices will be keeping around a good chunk of the existing bullpen at a discount price, or opening up cash and spots for some new faces.

Photo by Bob DeChiara/USA Today Sports Images

After running down the positional side last Tuesday, it’s time to examine the pitching staff. Scary? Maybe. Any cause for hope? A little. Let’s dive into the numbers.

Starting Pitchers

So, uh, how about that Rick Porcello, everyone? We knew going into the season that the notably ace-free Red Sox weren’t exactly going to set ERA records in 2015. Sure enough, they didn’t. But, believe it or not, the starting rotation isn’t what tanked the Red Sox in 2015.

That’s the major league leaderboard for starting pitchers, sorted by BP’s Deserved Run Average. And that’s Boston at #5 in the big leagues. Sure enough, the Red Sox starters performed pretty admirably as a unit. So how’d that happen? Well, it probably has to start with two pitchers who were pretty awesome for half a season each: Clay Buchholz and Eduardo Rodriguez.

Clay and Ed were the yin and yang of the Sox 2015 rotation, slanted reflections of each other. Buchholz was the closest thing to an ace that the Sox had coming into 2015, but couldn’t be counted on to stay healthy. True to form, Buchholz started strong, but his elbow failed him as the season went on. In the end, he logged 113 quality innings, posting a DRA of 3.36 (pretty great!) and an FIP of 2.66 (really great!). Of course, as is Clay’s wont to do when pitching well, he was injured. He can’t seem to make it through a full season, and he closed up shop in mid-July.

At the end of May, Eduardo Rodriguez made his major-league debut and held Red Sox Nation in the palm of his hand. His stellar first couple of starts pushed expectations sky-high. We’ve made covering #Ed kind of a cottage industry here at BP Boston, from comps to Alex Skillin’s continuing “continuing education” series. Perhaps Eduardo wasn’t quite the dominator that Clay was on a consistent basis, but his DRA of 3.46 and FIP of 3.90 were just fine, thank you very much. While the team would love to see his strikeout rate improve, as well as stay whole and healthy, he’s established himself as a perfectly-good middle-of-the-rotation starter, even in the challenging American League.

So with half a great pitcher, and probably one whole good one, that leaves an average guy: Wade Miley. Miley did, well, almost exactly what he should’ve been expected to do. Miley ate innings, and posted good-but-not-great numbers doing so. It’s almost funny; his ERA was 4% worse than league-average and his FIP was 4% better. He posted numbers almost entirely in line with his past two seasons in Arizona, and stuck to an average level of performance like he was glued there.

There were also some small wins in terms of performance here and there. Henry Owens debuted, and he’s looked pretty good over his first 10 starts. He could certainly stick for next season. And I’d write up Rich Hill here, but he’s a goddamned unicorn. All I can say is that he deserves a shot in the rotation during Spring Training, and that I have absolutely no faith that he’ll be any good. But he might be. To be continued.

So not only were there some bright spots in terms of specific 2015 performance, but there’s some hope for the future. Miley should stay Miley. Eduardo Rodriguez looks real, and between Clay Buchholz and/or Henry Owens, another slot in the rotation might be pretty good.

Buuuut … then there’s Rick Porcello. Porcello was an unmitigated disaster in Boston, a failure in the first degree. He needs another chance to prove he’s at least the pitcher he was in Detroit, if not the pitcher the Sox want him to be. According to cFIP, which is a pretty good true talent measure, Porcello was roughly similar to last year as he was last in terms of peripherals. His cFIP in ‘14 was 99, his cFIP in ‘15 was 99.

Porcello went wildly wrong, Joe Kelly went pretty wrong (but he has great stuff!), and the simple fact that the Sox needed to cycle through a fair number of starters is something that went wrong. Beyond that? The rotation is pretty okay.

There is room for improvement here … be it from Porcello, from an improving Owens / Rodriguez combo or, most likely, from a new addition in the last available rotation slot. Dollars to donuts, I’d bet that Dave Dombrowski would be interested in adding another higher-end rotation piece, and likely by trade. Improvement would be good — very good — but things don’t look quite so dire here.

Relief Pitching

Welcome to the danger zone. Here is a comprehensive list of all the Red Sox’ good relievers in 2015:

• Koji Uehara, who is 40
• nope

This isn’t the most fair: Tommy Layne was a bit above-average, and Robbie Ross and Junichi Tazawa were about average. But really, in an era where relievers strike out batters like it’s going out of style (it’s not), the bullpen should be an asset that makes Red Sox starters breathe a bit of a sigh of relief as they hand over the keys. In 2015 it wasn’t, and there’s no reason to think 2016 should be markedly different.

Those four pitchers I mentioned, Uehara, Layne, Ross, and Tazawa, all very well could come back next year, but banking on improvement isn’t really a great plan. The rest of the bullpen? It might be better if they disappear. The only guy with real potential out of the bunch is Matt Barnes, and I think you might be tired of waiting on Matt Barnes’s potential by now.

No, this bullpen needs a complete overhaul. As a unit, the ‘pen had a 4.56 FIP, dead last in baseball. The team’s 4.31 ERA only surpassed the Braves, Rockies, Tigers, and Athletics. These teams all have something in common: futility.

Adding average-or-better relievers could be the ticket to improving this team by wins right from the jump. Though a great bullpen only gives a team a handful of wins above replacement (four to six, if you’re both good and lucky), the Red Sox were either replacement-level or worse, depending on how you pick your poison.

So, it’ll be up to Dave Dombrowski to build a new bullpen, with hardly any exist-

… Oh no.

Well, the good news is that there’s a lot of room for improvement here. Adding two or three people who aren’t Craig Breslow or Alexi Ogando might be a good start. The bad news is, well, you know what the bad news is. It could take some luck to make this work, if not skill.

So after running through all the holes and the weaknesses, after looking back on everything that went wrong, here’s my primary takeaway: the Red Sox have a fair number of holes to fill, but they’re ones that can be filled. No, they can’t be filled internally — the team will have to go out and find these players on other rosters — but the hard work of adding new pieces to complement the existing ones can be done. It’s not likely that everything will break down, and with a couple of savvy acquisitions and some luck, the team could be back in it again within a year or so.

That’s a bit easier said than done, of course. Look at the Padres and the White Sox if you want examples of how reaching out and grabbing external players to serve as all your missing pieces can go sour. But the Sox have resources: money, prospects, and intellectual capital. They’ll be okay. Probably. Maybe. But chances are that 2016 will certainly be more exciting than 2015.

Photo by Dan Hamilton/USA Today Sports Images

Top Play (WPA): This is going to shock you, but the top play was the go-ahead grand slam off the bat of Xander Bogaerts (0.712). Remember when some idiot complained about him only hitting singles? What a moron. It’s also worth noting that a Very Good-Looking Person predicted that grand slam before it happened.

Bogaerts go-ahead grand slam in 5…..4…..3…..

— Matt Collins (@RedSox_Thoughts) September 22, 2015

Bottom Play (WPA): The late-season Red Sox are so good, they’re not satisfied with simply taking the victory and the top play by WPA. Not only did David Ortiz’s first-inning double play (-0.126) register as the worst play of the game, but Boston actually held claim to the bottom five plays. Tampa’s worst play came on Tim Beckham’s groundout to shortstop in the ninth (-0.051). The play immediately followed Rich Shaffer’s solo home run and was yet another example of Bogaerts’ improved defense. He did it all last night.

Key Moment: Besides the genius predicting Bogaerts’ go-ahead grand slam, and the grand slam itself, I’ll go to the top half of the eighth inning for the key moment. The Rays had just finished shelling Alexi Ogando (shocking, I know), leaving Jean Machi with a bases-loaded, one-out situation. Tampa had a one-run lead, and it looked very possible, even likely, that they’d break the game open. Instead, Machi gave up a sacrifice fly and a got a strikeout to exit the inning with just a two-run deficit. Bogaerts would hit the decisive home run in the next half-inning. That’s right, the Red Sox bullpen actually did a good thing!

Trends to Watch:  Bogaerts is good. Like, really good. He showed everything off last night. The grand slam was huge, of course, but he also had a double that likely would’ve been out if it wasn’t for the wind. On top of that, he made at least three plays with the glove that he would have had no shot at last year.

Mookie Betts is also pretty decent. He reached base four times, bumping him up to a .338 OBP and a nice 6.9 BB%.

Rounding out the exciting rookies, Eduardo Rodriguez was impressive tonight despite not having his best stuff. He was rocked in the first inning, and it would’ve been easy for him to implode. Instead, he buckled down and got through six solid if unspectacular innings. Pretty exciting night for a trio of exciting young players.

Coming Next: The Red Sox and Rays continue their series tonight with Henry Owens taking on Matt Moore. Just 13 more games left in the regular season.

Photo by Mark L. Baer/USA Today Sports Images

The whole idea breaks down, though, when it comes to relief pitchers. There are a few who come in for clean innings almost exclusively, but once a reliever is brought in mid-inning even occasionally, ERA is not equipped to answer our questions. It comes down to the effect of baserunners, and the effect of partial innings.

Baserunners give ERA fits on the front and back end. On Friday, Alexi Ogando came in mid-inning in the 7th, allowed four baserunners on three walks, was lifted mid-inning after recording just one out, and ended up allowing just one earned run as Jean Machi got the third out of the inning (on a line out). For his efforts, Ogando saw his outing go into the books with a 27.00 ERA. That would be like allowing three runs per inning — and yet, if one allowed four baserunners for every one out, one’s ERA would end up quite a bit higher than that. And yet, had Ogando done even better than his ERA — say, he allowed four baserunners, but got two inherited runners out — we’d never guess it from his line in the box score.

Coming in mid-inning can throw even more of a wrench in things. On Saturday, Tommy Layne relieved Joe Kelly after the first out in the 8th, striking out Curtis Granderson, walking Yoenis Cespedes, and finishing off the inning with a Daniel Murphy pop out to second. Layne had himself a 0.00 ERA outing. But he did allow that walk — if he hadn’t come in with one out already recorded, what are the chances that Cespedes would have come around and scored? Not high, but not zero, either. Mix it in a cocktail with the irrelevance of inherited runners and the lack of control over the runners a reliever leaves behind, and ERA isn’t just a poor estimate of relief performance — it can miss routinely and wildly to one side or the other, depending on that pitcher’s normal usage and how his approach to pitching affects baserunners.

I’m not sure there’s a better way to evaluate relief pitchers than through run expectancy. Here’s the 2015 run expectancy table from BP, current through Saturday’s games:

Each of these numbers is the average number of runs scored in each of these situations so far this year (in over 2,000 games so far, but who’s counting), from the situation indicated through the end of the inning. So regardless of how an inning actually unfolds, we expect an average of .472 runs in each inning. Having a runner on second with no outs has led to an average of just over one run.

RE24 is a stat that makes use of these different run expectancies in each of the 24 different base-out states in the table above. You can calculate it for any player, but it really shows its muscle for relief pitchers. The stat is a counting stat, something you can accumulate over a season like strikeouts, so you have to keep a pitcher’s innings or games totals in mind, but I think it does everything we’d want in a relief pitching stat.

It’s a pretty simple calculation. If you come on with no outs and the bases loaded, well, we’re expecting some runs to score (2.246, on average). If the relief pitcher lets one runner score, but ties up the inning with just the one run, we’d subtract the one run from 2.246, giving the pitcher an outstanding single-game total of 1.246. But let’s say that pitcher did something we like — a ground out that resulted in a force play at home — but he had a runner reach. Now run expectancy has changed from 2.246 to 1.524. If he’s then pulled in favor of another reliever, he’s still reduced run expectancy, and his positive RE24 from that game (2.246 – 1.524 = 0.722) reflects that he did something positive, regardless of whether the runner he allowed (then on first base) comes around to score.

RE24 solves both kinds of baserunning problems. If the reliever who comes on with the bases loaded and no outs lets all three runners score, he’s done something we don’t like — and unlike with ERA, he gets penalized. If he’s lifted mid-inning, RE24 gives him credit for the exact situation he left behind rather than evaluating him through the next pitcher’s success or failure. In the Ogando example from Friday, he started with a run expectancy of .252 (one out, no runners). When he was pulled, run expectancy was .689 (two outs, bases loaded). So in terms of RE24, Ogando gets dinged for the full run that scored, and for the negative change in run expectancy (-0.437). A -1.437 RE24 in one day is a poor total indeed.

But RE24 also helps express the partial innings problem. If you come in for a clean inning and finish it with no runs scoring, you get a nice little RE24 bump of .472. When Layne handled the last two outs of the seventh on Saturday, though, he earned an RE24 of .252. Whereas ERA rewards him for a clean two thirds of one inning, RE24 is conscious of which two outs it was. Based on what we’ve seen for run scoring in innings with no one on and one out, if baseball changed its rules and only had two outs per inning, run scoring wouldn’t be two thirds of the current total — it’d be more like just over one half. Pitching toward the end of innings is easier, at least from the perspective of ERA. Layne allowed Cespedes to walk with two outs, and had he been lifted right then, Cespedes probably wouldn’t have scored. But the chances would have gone up if Layne had walked him with no outs — why should Layne get the benefit of frequently coming in mid-inning?

In the end, RE24 frequently matches our own evaluation of relief pitchers in a way that ERA does not.

In the end, RE24 frequently matches our own evaluation of relief pitchers in a way that ERA does not. Some guys are more likely to get the double play with an inherited runner, and that’s still real value they’ve added for the team. Pitching involves choices, too. If a reliever can “go for the strikeout” with a runner on third and fewer than two outs, and if he happens to do that and do it well — that helps in the RE24 department, and it helps the team, too.

If you’re still with me, here’s the payoff: RE24 puts part of the Red Sox relief leaderboard on its ear. Minimum 20 innings pitched:

*I used Baseball Prospectus’s version of FIP for all but Wright and Barnes, which are from FanGraphs as they were calculated for relief only. RE24 totals also from FanGraphs.

Since RE24 is keyed to the average number of runs that are scored in each situation, it’s zero sum — there’s as much negative RE24 to go around as there is positive. Layne’s -0.66 RE24, for example, says that in his near-full season, he’s been near-average — quite a bit better than replacement level. And Koji Uehara is as good as we thought he was, and Matt Barnes as bad as his other statistics have advertised.

The surprises are Ogando and Junichi Tazawa. Ogando has had a very high home run rate and a very, very high left on base rate (89%, per FanGraphs). He’s also had much better success than expected on balls in play (.253 BABIP), and a fairly high walk rate (3.67 BB/9) to go along with a good-not-great strikeout rate (7.67 K/9). That makes him look lucky to an ERA estimator like FIP, which hangs an amazingly high 5.62 around his neck. Maybe he has been lucky, or maybe is just successful in an unusual way — after all, Ogando does have 460 career MLB innings to his name, and suppressing hits on balls in play is a trick he’s accomplished all his career (.265 career BABIP against), and his left on base percentage has tended to be high, too. Whether it’s sustainable or strange, and regardless of whether it’s partly a byproduct of how he’s been deployed this year, it’s happened — per RE24, Ogando has been an above average pitcher in the Red Sox bullpen (even with that -1.44 total on Saturday!).

Junichi Tazawa’s high strikeout rate, low walk rate and low homer rate get translated to the second-lowest FIP on the team. He’s got the second-lowest ERA, too, but just as FIP made Ogando look extraordinarily lucky, it makes Tazawa look cheated, by a fair margin (three quarters of a run). But not so on RE24, which spits out a below-average total for Tazawa. He’s been nails with respect to his own baserunners this season (albeit less so than he was earlier this season), but a little more forgiving when he inherits them. That may be why RE24 hasn’t been as impressed with his work this year. But just like with Ogando, BABIP also holds some answers: while FIP ignores Tazawa’s fairly high .329 BABIP, it’s very much in line with his career BABIP (.324), and maybe that’s not something to ignore.

Photo by Robert Mayer/USA Today Sports Images

Top Play (WPA): Undoubtedly the biggest play of the night was the seventh-inning double by Trayce Thompson (.433).  This play gave Thompson his third hit of the night and put him a homer shy of the cycle.  Melky Cabrera and Avisail Garcia came in to score, giving the White Sox the 5-4 lead and ultimately the victory.  After this debacle Alexi Ogando, who really should have been in the game earlier, came in to put an end to the bleeding.

Bottom Play (WPA): The bottom play of the night comes to us by way of the White Sox’s best player, Jose Abreu (-.114), who grounded into a double play with Adam Eaton headed to third base during the fifth inning.  One positive take from the night was at least Abreu was held to just a lone single.

For the Red Sox the bottom play came from Josh Rutledge, who struck out vs. Quintana in the fifth inning with men on first and third (-.089).

Key Moment: The lead changed four times before Thompson sealed the deal with a double in the bottom on the seventh.  Miley shouldn’t have been in a position to give up that double anyhow considering a meeting took place at the mound earlier in the inning with the Sox leading 4-2 and Miley sitting at 98 pitches.  The 99^th pitch was an RBI by Melky Cabrera and then things just unraveled.  Someone should have been warm in the pen with a lead and Miley up against 100 pitches. This was a coaching mistake.

I understand that the bullpen is overworked with so many poor starts this season but with a chance to win a baseball game this mistake cannot be overlooked.  Anytime you can get a lead and close to 100 pitches out of your starter you need to turn that over to your pen, especially when your starter is lucky to have gotten to that point.

Trend to Watch: Hanley Ramirez: first baseman? Four hours before the game today Ramirez was seen taking grounders at first accompanied by David Ortiz and Brian Butterfield.  Twitter subsequently blew up with talk of this possible move.  The decision was said to have come top-down from Dave Dombrowski and was discussed with John Farrell and Torey Lovullo.

To me the sooner that this switch can happen the better, any clarity we can have about Ramirez’s ability to play first base gives the Sox more information going into the off-season.  He certainly would be hard pressed to perform worse than he has in left field.

Coming Next: The return of Rick Porcello. As if he didn’t need all the help he could get in any contest opposing him on the mound is Chris Sale.  If there was ever a time to pick a night to go to the movies, tomorrow may be the night.  The impending beatdown of Porcello may be “R” rated in its own right.

Photo by Matt Marton/USA Today Sports Images

Part of that re-tooling includes free agents and trades, sure … but also decisions on arbitration-eligible players. Every offseason, teams make tough arb decisions. Tender or non-tender? Go to arb court or settle before things get too testy (a tried and true Red Sox tradition)? Go year-to-year or try for a longer-term extension?

Fortunately for the Sox, this coming offseason isn’t going to posit a host of mission-critical arbitration decisions. As of this writing, the team only has six players for whom they’ll need to consider arbitration. The Sox’s long-terms commitments are a mix of really young pre-arb guys (your Mookie Betts/Xander Bogaerts/Eduardo Rodriguez types), and guys with big ol’ contracts like Dustin Pedroia, Hanley Ramirez and Rick Porcello.

No, the Red Sox’s arbitration cases will determine some roster spots on the fringes, primarily in the team’s bullpen. That’s hardly a major concern. And, of course, there’s a slight chance that one or more of these players could be gone in the next few weeks. Let’s take a look:

We’ll start with the most important player from this group — setup ace Junichi Tazawa. Tazawa’s going into his final year of arbitration, and his performance this year harkens back to his stellar run in 2012. While Tazawa isn’t a lockdown setup guy in the Wade Davis mold, he is quite consistent, and more than capable of striking out a batter per nine.

There’s no question Tazawa would have a contract tendered were he to make it to this coming offseason in a Sox uniform. The bigger question is just that — will the Sox deal him for another piece at the deadline? My gut says no, because he’s a solid contributor, and even though he’s reaching his final round of arbitration I’m not so sure he’s due for a powerful raise. Arbitrators tend to look at “traditional” stats … and for relievers, saves are still king. While Tazawa’s strikeout rate and WHIP are good, I’d imagine he’s in for a raise that would max him out near $3.5 million or so if the team and Tazawa agree to terms and avoid a hearing.

 With all that in mind, Tazawa’s a pretty useful piece for a more-than-fair contract, even through arbitration. I’d guess that Boston keeps him, wrings him dry before free agency, and then sweats a real decision on whether to try to retain him after 2016.

Daniel Nava looked like a steal coming into 2015 at a measly $1.85 million, but after a stinker of a performance this season, there could actually be an argument to dump him via non-tender and cut bait. I mean, his .192 True Average is really, really awful … even for the Sox. He wouldn’t make the Mets lineup at this point. (Just kidding, he’d be batting cleanup for the Mets or the Phillies.)

And yet … he’s another guy where I think that if he remains with the team — and I don’t think the Sox are trading him — the Red Sox will look to retain him through arbitration. Nava’s not exactly covering himself in glory this season, but it isn’t making him any more expensive either. The arbitrator probably won’t see 20-30 career homers and downright-awful 2015 performance and think “let’s give this guy a huge raise.” Nava might see a slight bump, maybe something around $2 million, and the Sox could probably still use a guy at that low of a cost. At least so long as he can get halfway back to his pre-2015-apocalypse performance.

Make all the jokes you want about Joe Kelly’s dumb-ass Cy Young prediction, but he hasn’t been a complete mess. Yes, he’s given up a boatload of runs, but his FIP (4.11) showed there was room for improvement. His future in the big leagues may be in the bullpen, but any workable starter is worth a couple million dollars per year.

Kelly is jumping up from the minimum salary into his first arbitration-eligible season, and he’s doing it with an ERA that keeps climbing and no more than two dozen wins. If Ivan Nova took home about $3.3 million last year, I think Kelly could be worth about that much coming into 2016. Do the Sox want to spend that kind of money on Joe Kelly? I’m guessing that even if Brian Johnson is the next big thing, the team could really use that kind of depth, and that they wouldn’t want to cut bait on Kelly just yet.

So, after going three-for-three on these gents, the next three arbitration cases are all relatively insignificant bullpen pieces: Alexi Ogando, Robbie Ross, and Varvaro. Ogando is a third-year arbitration-eligible guy, so he’d be the most expensive of the bunch. While I thought he could be a dynamite part of a strong bullpen, his home run issues (eight in 40+ innings) have robbed him of almost any positive value. If he’s going to earn a big raise — and he might since he’s had a nice little run of success early in his career — it may not be worth it for the team to hold him at $2 million and change.

Ross and Varvaro are, well, a nice matching pair. They both are making close to the minimum, and they’re both hovering around replacement level. Ross probably has the better pedigree, with two strong seasons in relief before stumbling in the rotation last year, and he’d be the guy I’d want to hold of the two. But I’d imagine neither are going to earn much more than a million in arbitration, and have take-it-or-leave-it written all over them. They’re more fungible than not.

So, in the end, arbitration may not be the big deal for the Sox that it can be for other teams, but the team may swing four-to-six reasonably priced players out of the process. Sure, they’d be a setup guy, a 25th-man on the bench, a backup starter and some back-of-the bullpen options, but no one is going to command a king’s ransom. The game can be won at the margins, and these marginal guys could turn out to be a terrific value at a low risk.

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Top Play (WPA): Oddly enough, Hanley Ramirez’s two-run homer in the bottom of the seventh with David Ortiz on base takes the cake here at a whopping .419. I’m not going to go back and check, because I’m lazy, but I think that’s the highest-WPA play of the year for the Sox. Give plenty of praise to Hanley, but don’t forget the tough at-bat Ortiz put up against LHP Tony Sipp to get on base in the first place.

The next-best plays come courtesy Carlos Correa (.285) and Evan Gattis (.226), who hit back-to-back homers off of Alexi Ogando in the seventh. This was a good game, but Boston needs to fix this bullpen.

Finally, Pablo Sandoval’s RBI double to left in the sixth (.180) and Mookie Betts’ double in fifth (.135) round out the top five.

Bottom Play (WPA): In the bottom of the fifth, Xander Bogaerts came to the plate with two men on and one out. Bogaerts grounded out softly to second base, but Ryan Hanigan was off with contact at third, which was ill-advised given his lack of speed and Houston’s defensive alignment. Hanigan was out at the plate, and while Bogaerts reached first safely Hanigan’s out was still enough to register this as the worst play of the day (-.116).

Houston’s two worst plays came in the bottom of the ninth, courtesy Carlos Correa and Colby Rasmus (who fouled out bunting), while Boston’s next-worst plays came in the form of Shane Victorino and Ramirez GIDPs.

Key Moment: Ramirez’s homer, for sure. This game had a very “here we go again” quality when Ogando gave up back-to-back bombs, but Ortiz and Ramirez answered the bell, as you’d hope the middle of your lineup would. Ramirez looks like an offensive force again, and if he plays defense the way he has for the past two weeks and not the way he did the first two months of the season, that contract will work out just fine.

Trend to Watch: There are a few trends here.

For starters, the Red Sox finally look like the offense we all thought we’d see at the season’s start, and that’s with Dustin Pedroia on the DL and Mike Napoli MIA. Betts, Brock Holt, Bogaerts, Ortiz, Ramirez and Sandoval all feel like real threats to do damage in any given at-bat, and contributors like Alejandro De Aza, Shane Victorino and even Ryan Hanigan all seem capable of pitching in, too. This is more like it.

#Ed had a strange start, dominating in the sense that he struck out eight Astros in just five innings but struggling in the sense that he only lasted five innings. Still five innings of one-run ball against the AL’s best team is pretty decent for a guy who was in Triple-A six weeks ago. He continues to be a hugely important addition to the rotation.

Finally, the Sox have now won seven of their last 10 games. They need to keep playing at this pace to matter, but it’s great to see nonetheless.

Coming Next: The Red Sox have today off before hosting the Marlins for two games. Wade Miley is set to face off against Dan Haren on Tuesday. Sweeping the Ms before the division-leading Yankees come to town later in the week could make the AL East race a lot more interesting in short order. We’ll see!

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If the Red Sox can’t turn it around completely by the trade deadline, the bullpen could be the focal point of their strategy in late July. Most of their other chips carry such little value that, if they want to get a relatively significant return in a deal this year, one or both of Koji Uehara and Junichi Tazawa would need to be dealt. However, both players are also under control for 2016 at prices that won’t stop the Red Sox from shoring up other areas. If the team decides the most value they can provide comes as trade chips, there will be a lot of work to do over the next nine months to rebuild a broken bullpen.

First, we’ll look at the scenario in which both of these guys are dealt. In this case, the team would need to find a new relief ace plus at least one other dependable option. In the days of shorter starts and a more specialized bullpen, having at least two potentially dominant relievers is hugely important, and typically teams like to have three options back there. Just look at the Royals and their three-headed monster of Greg Holland, Wade Davis and Kelvin Herrera. Unfortunately for the Red Sox, those kind of guys likely don’t exist in the organization right now.

In the days of shorter starts and a more specialized bullpen, having at least two potentially dominant relievers is hugely important.

The first job would be filling the closer role, but that could be easier said than done. The trade market is always unpredictable in the offseason, and that goes double for relievers. Ben Cherington hasn’t had a ton of success in these kind of trades, either. As such, I’ll just look at the free-agent pool, and there are a few closer options right now. Specifically, we’re talking about Tyler Clippard, Joakim Soria and Santiago Casilla. They have all been very good this season, and all have a track record of success. However, they are going to cost a lot of money on the open market, and it’d be somewhat surprising to see Boston shell out the kind of money it will take for a reliever of this caliber. Because of this, I can’t see both Tazawa and Uehara being dealt this year, even if the Sox go into rebuild mode.

Now, if we assume at least one of them is hanging around, the top goal is finding a new primary setup man. Once again, there is no one in the organization who has earned that kind of role just yet. That’s not to say it won’t happen, but the Red Sox can’t go into next season just hoping it will. Luckily, there are a few intriguing names in free agency. Jim Johnson has bounced back in a big way after a rough 2014. Shawn Kelley has always posted strong peripherals, and could be had for cheap in the hopes that the results finally start to match that. Darren O’Day has dominated in Baltimore for years. Guys like Jonathan Broxton and Chad Qualls could be available depending on what happens with their options. None of these names are particularly exciting, but they also have much better track records than the players Boston currently has.

The problem right now, though, is after the top two of Uehara and Tazawa, Boston’s bullpen has been remarkably inconsistent. As I mentioned above, it’s nice to have a third option in the back of the bullpen, and one is severely lacking right now. With that being said, there are some options who can blossom into that guy. Matt Barnes’ stuff hasn’t been as dominant as many anticipated with his shift to the bullpen, but maybe one more offseason working out in this role can fix this. If Joe Kelly doesn’t stick in the rotation, maybe we could finally see how his stuff looks in the bullpen, and hope for a Wade Davis-like transformation. Alexi Ogando has looked much better lately, and while his peripherals tell a different story, he’s probably the best bet at this point, at least of guys who have already spent time in the major-league bullpen. Guys like Heath Hembree, Jonathan Aro and Dalier Hinojosa have outside shots as well.

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The most intriguing name, however, is Pat Light. The former 2012 first-round pick had been starting for his pro career up until this season. Now that he’s being allowed to let loose in short stints, he’s shown dominant flashes. The transition has taken him from organizational fodder to a legitimate prospect who could help later in 2015. He’s been able to get his velocity up to the triple digits on a few occasions, and scouts see a back of the bullpen ceiling for him. If anyone will come up from the organization to become dominant next season, he’s likely the best bet.

Finally, the Red Sox still need to find one more left-handed reliever. It’s been a problem for them since they traded Andrew Miller last summer. Tommy Layne continues to shock a ton of people with his success, and has definitely carved out a role for himself as a true LOOGY who inexplicably dominates at time. The team still needs one more option, and it’s not around right now. Robbie Ross Jr. has been a failed experiment this season, and it’d be hard to see him starting 2016 on the roster. An intriguing in-house option would be Henry Owens in 2016. Obviously, the hope is still that he’s a starter long-term, but if the rotation is full, would he really benefit from another year in Pawtucket rather than getting major-league experience? We’ve seen the reliever-to-starter development method work before with guys like Chris Sale. It’s something to keep in mind, at least. If they decide to look elsewhere, free agents Tony Sipp, Manny Parra and James Russell could be intriguing.

Although it won’t be the primary focus, the Red Sox need to rebuild their bullpen next season if they want to be contenders in 2016. Depending on what they do with Uehara and Tazawa, it could be anything from a massive overhaul to a minor retooling. Whichever the case may be, they’ll probably need to look outside the organization for a few of those additions, but the names are out there in free agency. Good teams have multiple options at the back of their bullpens, and the Red Sox are falling behind on that front. If they’ll find it in the organization, there’s a good chance that will come in the form of Pat Light.

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And that’s kind of the problem. The cast of players likely to be cast off by next year — Mike Napoli, Shane Victorino, and Justin Masterson — are not doing so hot. As things stand today, the Red Sox are unlikely to pick up any meaningful prospect in a trade unless they include a player with more years of club control, like Koji Uehara, Junichi Tazawa, or maybe even Clay Buchholz, Wade Miley or Steven Wright. We can expect the team to keep trying to win games, but we might also expect them to begin to take trade positions into account.

Assume teams value players more or less the same way, or that — with respect to MLB trade targets, anyway — most teams know who guys are. That being said, a version of a player who’s “hot” will often fetch more than a version of said player who’s “cold.” This especially true if you can point to some kind of change, some adjustment that helps you buy into a hot streak and explain away a slump.

It just so happens that relievers are probably the type of player most affected by chance, in part because of small samples. It just so happens that relievers are probably the type of player the Red Sox are most likely to trade. And it just so happens that two relievers most likely to go — Craig Breslow and Alexi Ogando — are not doing so hot. Not bad, exactly — just cold. But good enough that a hot 4-5 weeks of pitching could upgrade the potential return for either player from a non-prospect and salary relief to someone that could be seen on the prospect map without a microscope.

There’s no Andrew Miller this year, and there will be no Eduardo Rodriguez — not from trading a departing free agent. But the Red Sox have every incentive to tweak something, anything with Breslow and Ogando (move Breslow to the third-base side of the rubber?). With respect to Ogando, there may be an easy, visible way to make a change that could help build value if he happens to improve — by changing his pitch mix.

Ogando doesn’t have the velocity he once did with Texas. This is the first odd-numbered year in which he pitched in an MLB uniform and didn’t start most of the time; in this velocity graph from Brooks Baseball, you can see an expected dip in fastball velocity in 2011, when he moved from the bullpen to the rotation and started 29 games. Returned to a relieving role in 2012, Ogando was again a monster in the pen, albeit without monstrous success; he had a 9.00 K/9 with a four-seam that averaged almost 98 mph. But when he pitched mostly out of the rotation again in 2013, his velocity sunk even lower than the last time he was a starter. Shoulder issues probably played a role in that, but unlike when he returned to the bullpen in 2012, 2014 did not see a meaningful tick back up.

The dip in fastball velocity corresponds with Ogando’s strikeout rate, as well. For his career, he holds a 6.49 K/9 as a starter and 8.22 K/9 in the bullpen — but this season, he’s been striking hitters out at a mediocre rate of 6.23 per nine. It’s not a question of pitching to contact — he’s averaging a low but not super-low rate of 3.87 pitches per plate appearance, within a handful of pitches from his career 3.97 rate. In fact, his percentage of pitches in the zone is down to 48% — down 2% for the third consecutive year from 54% in 2012.

Ogando has faced just 105 batters this year, nearing his total in 2014. Check out how he’s pitched differently:

We can’t go nuts over changes in a few percentage points, not with each one representing just three or four pitches thrown — but surely there’s something that can be shoehorned into a narrative for the trade deadline.

Two pitches have been thrown more frequently, and both have been hit harder. Not that either is really alarming — a .517 slugging against on a four-seam isn’t great for a reliever, but he’s been in the mid-400s the previous four seasons anyway. A .429 slugging against on his slider might be more of a problem even though he’s thrown the pitch less often. Ogando has thrown the slider at a normal-ish frequency of 20%-30% for most of his career, but it’s done better in the past when thrown even more often than the 28.9% he’s thrown it in 2015. As you can see from the velocity chart, he’s throwing the slider much harder this year than he did in the previous two seasons — but that may not be helping.

Whether Ogando’s string of recent earned runs will continue may have more to do with luck than anything else — over the next five weeks or so, he may turn in the equivalent of a start and a half, and anything can happen. But what if increased success could be traced to increased changeup usage?

Batters have only hit Ogando’s change on the ground so far this year when hitting it into play — and over his career, he’s had a whiff rate of over 30% with the pitch. Maybe it’s something? Pump up the rate at which Ogando throttles down, and if it corresponds with an improvement, maybe trade discussions go just a little bit differently.

Or, everyone could go really crazy, and Ogando could throw more pitches like this one on Saturday, classified as the first (unintentional?) curveball of his major league career. Having what amounts to an option for 2016 means something, but realistically, what would Ogando command in trade right now? Can a curveball really hurt that much?

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While most chances for changing a lineup coming in the off-season, building the bullpen is a constant endeavor. Relievers are forever pitching terribly, then somehow pitching amazingly, then pitching horribly again, then getting hurt. You can’t predict, with a very few exceptions, who will be any good in any given year without using error bars large enough to require rent control.

This is the best possible news for the 2015 Boston Red Sox because this means the bullpen the Red Sox have now will not be the same as the bullpen the Red Sox will have in a few months. This isn’t to say the bullpen the team has now is terrible. It’s not. It’s not great either, and in truth, that even oversells it. There is, as in other areas, much room for improvement. And now that I’ve mentioned “other areas” I am tempted to trash the script and write about how frustrating the Red Sox offense is, but I promised Ben a piece on the Red Sox bullpen and Matt Barnes’s place in it and Ben is a very nice person who lets me write for you people, so I’m afraid I’m stuck writing this. I’d appreciate it if you’d stick with me here. Maybe we’ll learn something together! And if not, it’s Friday! Whatever!

The Red Sox don’t possess many hard throwers and while that isn’t the kiss of death, it generally means, as it does in this specific case, fewer strikeouts.

Cumulatively, which is to say the Red Sox bullpen as presently and previous constructed under the banner of 2015, ranks 26th in strike out percentage. They strike out 19 percent of the hitters they face, not good in a relative sense. Strikeouts have been, in this age of big strikeout bullpens, comparatively infrequent. Part of the problem is a lack of velocity out of the bullpen. The Red Sox don’t possess many hard throwers and while that isn’t the kiss of death, it generally means, as it does in this specific case, fewer strikeouts. Red Sox relievers average 91.8 mph on their fastball, good for 24th in baseball. It’s not a perfect relationship, but Dodgers relievers strike out almost 30 percent of the hitters they face, and throw, on average, the third hardest. Yankee relievers throw the fourth hardest and get the third most strikeouts. For Boston, there is, in the words of the captain of the Titanic, some room for improvement. I award myself 10 Timely Reference points and I move on to the next paragraph full of hope!

The first real fix the Red Sox have tried this season is Matt Barnes (if you don’t count Robbie Ross and please, I beg you, don’t count Robbie Ross). Barnes is a former first round draft pick out of the University of Connecticut with a mid-to-upper 90s fastball and a strong curve. He’d been a starter in college and coming up through the minor league system, but he’s not been able to harness a third pitch as of yet and his first two aren’t so amazing that he’s capable of running through lineups multiple times with them alone. That might change, but for now he’s 25 and Boston’s bullpen is in need of help so we have ourselves a perfect little match! According to Brooks Baseball, Barnes’s fastball has averaged 96 mph during his time in the majors. That’s the fastest in the bullpen by a good bit. Alexi Ogando and Tazawa are the only other relievers to average over 93 mph and neither averages 95. Barnes is supposed to deploy his heat and hammer curve to full effect in the later innings, giving Boston three hard throwing relievers from which manager John Farrell can choose. Yay!

So far the numbers look dreadful (boo!) but don’t judge yet. Barnes has thrown all of eight innings and has five strikeouts and three walks. That’s whatever because that’s eight innings. Barnes may not ever be a great reliever, but eight innings are far too few to say for sure, and the combination of the fastball playing up, the curve, and the fact that he’ll only have to face hitters once makes him a potential weapon in a bullpen badly in need of such.

Matt Barnes can help but he is not going to fix the Red Sox bullpen single-handedly. The group is going to need to get better, and that likely means bringing someone else up or in. The next shoe to drop might be Craig Breslow, whose ERA says has not been very good and who other stats say has been significantly worse than that. The Red Sox might want to give Heath Hembree another shot as he has a 94 mph fastball and 17 strikeouts and two walks in just under 17 innings in Triple-A. He’s likely not the savior either, but he’s better than watching Robbie Ross struggle again. Otherwise it might be time to look outside the organization.

Matt Barnes can help but he is not going to fix the Red Sox bullpen single-handedly.

This team has some holes, maybe more than we thought coming into the season. There are significant concerns on defense, the starting rotation seems to be rounding into form but has been a huge problem until recently, and now it seems the Red Sox turn to icicles whenever a runner gets on base or a left-handed pitcher stands on the mound. The front office will have to make some difficult choices about where to best allocate their capital and I won’t sit here and advocate for another bullpen arm in the face of this mountain of potentially more pressing issues.

It does strike me, though, that the likelihood of the bullpen fixing itself, like could happen with the offense, like could happen if to a lesser degree with the rotation, is remarkably slim. The Red Sox already have what has to be considered full Koji. Tazawa has been better than anyone had a right to expect, and the same could be said of Ogando considering his history. Throw Barnes on that and it isn’t a bad starting spot, but it’s only a starting spot. The Breslows and Laynes of the world are place holders for the better relievers Boston needs. No team has eight Wade Davises (Davi?) coming out of the bullpen, but at this stage the Red Sox barely have one. It’s going to take more from the pen if this team wants to compete in October. Matt Barnes’s fastball is a good start but it’s only a start. The organic reformulation of the Red Sox bullpen must continue!

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