On a more serious note, Smith’s injury is just the latest in a litany of them for the team’s bullpen. Tyler Thornburg hasn’t made an appearance this season and is currently being shut down for a few days. Hector Velazquez was put on the 10-day DL recently. Bobby Poyner’s spent some time there, too.

Naturally, news of Smith’s DL stint created an all-too-familiar reaction:

.@EvanDrellich: No use in pretending Red Sox bullpen is fine https://t.co/EoVqYcx8aH

— NBC Sports Boston (@NBCSBoston) May 15, 2018

The trade deadline is 76 days away. The Red Sox will certainly be in the market for bullpen help.

If you're Dave Dombrowski, why wait? https://t.co/M4umftqGTm

— Chris Mason (@ByChrisMason) May 16, 2018

Red Sox NEED to renovate their bullpen. Exceptions, Joe Kelly and Craig Kimbrel. Everyone else needs to go.

— Ozzy Torres (@ozzyunchained) May 15, 2018

I get it. There are unquestionably deeper bullpens in baseball than that of the Red Sox. But before we go smash the panic button, a few things to consider:

• The Red Sox bullpen has pitched 147.2 innings this season, which is good for 19th in baseball. You can choose to view this as a bullpen that’s still relatively unproven or you can choose to view this as a bullpen that doesn’t necessarily need to be relied on as heavily as others, thanks in part to a talented starting rotation. It’s not the strongest point, but that’s why I listed it first.
• Before Wednesday’s game, the top four relievers this year, based on FIP, have been Marcus Walden, Joe Kelly, Craig Kimbrel and Heath Hembree. The latter three are not only healthy but playing a prominent role in the bullpen; outside of Matt Barnes, no pitcher has thrown more innings than the Kelly/Kimbrel/Hembree trio.
• The Red Sox bullpen has the seventh-best FIP in baseball. Their 8.6 percent walk rate is sixth-best in the league, and their 26.3 percent strikeout rate is fifth-best. Teams aren’t hitting the ball hard against them (31.3 hard-hit percentage — seventh-best in MLB), and they’re doing an average job keeping the ball in the park (11.7 HR/FB percentage — 15th in MLB). And people say this isn’t a quality bullpen?
• Losing Carson Smith for an extended period of time again would be a colossal bummer. With that said, Smith’s season… hasn’t been all that impressive so far. His strikeout rate hasn’t quite bounced back yet and he was walking over one more batter per game. There’s been a ton of hard contact this year, too. He hasn’t been bad, per se, but the Red Sox aren’t in danger of losing their best relief pitcher if he goes down for a while.
• Joe Kelly is good this year. We’ve talked about this recently, but it’s worth repeating because hell yeah Joe Kelly is good this year. This could easily open up Joe Kelly: Set-Up Man, which is not great for my nailbeds, but those are of little importance to you and quite frankly, not that important to me either, in a gross kind of way.
• This opens the window for Bobby Poyner, which is an intriguing silver lining. Over The Monster had a nice piece on Poyner the other day, and the addition of another dominant lefty reliever is always a fun wrinkle. In the best case scenario, Poyner settles in as a late-inning lefty, giving the team 100 percent more late-inning lefty options than they had before his promotion.

Let me be clear: the Red Sox could absolutely still use some bullpen help – but they could use bullpen help in the way that every team in baseball could always use more bullpen help. Losing an average-or-barely-above-average reliever is never good, but Smith wasn’t the backbone of the Red Sox’ relief pitching. Telling Red Sox fans not to panic is more often than not an exercise in futility, but please, Red Sox fans, don’t panic about this. Panic about Andrew Benintendi, instead!

Header photo by Kim Klement — USA TODAY Sports

102.2 miles per hour. That’s squarely in Aroldis Chapman territory. And as eye-popping as that is, there are a few key things you should notice. Firstly, had Aaron Judge not fouled it off, it would’ve been a ball. There’s no debating that. It wasn’t going to be in the zone for any umpire, even C.B. Bucknor’s. But before you tell me it was supposed to be there, let me bring up my second point: it’s way off target. Christian Vazquez sets up on the inside corner, and Kelly launches his firecracker up around Judge’s collarbone. Frankly, I’m surprised Vazquez had his glove up there in time, given the velocity and where he originally wanted it to go. Lastly, observe Judge actually fouling that off. If you’re throwing 102 that high and it’s still getting fouled off or hit into play, you’ve screwed up. They’re either counting on it or it’s predictable — maybe both! It’s not as bad as throwing 103 in the zone and watching your lead disappear, but still, it’s pretty bad.

That’s Joe Kelly in a nutshell. His velocity is there, the Stuff is Great, but the results you’d expect never materialized, due to either bad control or, like last year, a frustrating inability to strike guys out. Nearly a year ago to this day, Chris Teeter wrote about Kelly’s lack of strikeouts in these same webpages, and noted that Kelly was just one strike away from really becoming a reliable contributor in the bullpen. The ineffectiveness with two strikes really did show last year, as Kelly routinely could not turn those advantageous counts into outs. He was fine on 0-2, with a .171 opposing OBP on batters through that count. But anything more than that, and you’d be hard-pressed to find good numbers. Through 1-2 counts, over 30 percent of batters reached base. When it went to 2-2, that number jumped to 35. In full counts, Kelly allowed 25 of 51 total batters faced to reach base. He had 21 walks and seven strikeouts. That’s downright repulsive.

So far in 2018, Kelly’s been much better. Ever since the Opening Day implosion, Kelly’s faced 49 batters, allowed six hits with one(!!) walk, and struck out 15 of them while allowing zero runs, earned or otherwise. That’s good for a 30.6 percent strikeout rate, a two percent walk rate, and a 1.45 FIP over that span. And he’s doing all that while still throwing as hard as he ever was. It’s seemingly the same old Joe Kelly, but what’s really going on here?

Pitch selection is key, so let’s start there. Go back to that video of the 102 mph bullet Kelly threw. The ending clip of that is a good slider that Judge simply has no chance on. The slider wasn’t Kelly’s go-to secondary pitch for the vast majority of 2017 — he liked using a curveball that didn’t really do much of anything. It was fairly middling in terms of results. The slider, however, raked in the whiffs.

Other than August, his curveball was really bad at getting swinging strikes. Last June, he threw it 35 times and got zero whiffs, then last October he threw it 10 times with zero whiffs, and so far this month, he’s thrown it four times and gotten (surprise!) zero whiffs. At this point, you’re clamoring for him to use something, anything else. And so, Joe Kelly adjusted.

His slider became his best friend. Couple that with changeup that getting a swing and a miss 33 percent of the time and he’s actually got a pair of useful, potentially wipeout pitches. The changeup is an especially good development, since it seems like common sense to pair a fastball that sits 98 with a changeup — a pitch designed to look like a fastball until the last 15 feet — that averages an 11 mph difference between it and his fastball. With that kind of velocity, you could get whiffs on those two pitches alone. Add a slider in there that isn’t too shabby either, and that’s a potentially great pitch repertoire. At the very least, it’s shown to be quite effective so far in 2018, as his 11.8 percent whiff rate is the highest of his career, while his 72 percent contact rate is the lowest of his career.

It might just be a case of Kelly being more emotive, but he seems to be pitching smarter as well, since trying to beat batters on stuff alone isn’t always a good idea. Back during the Anaheim series, the Red Sox had a plan to exploit Shohei Ohtani at the plate, and Kelly followed suit, blasting a 98 mph fastball down and in for a swinging strikeout. Kelly tapped his head to acknowledge a smart plan of attack — maybe a plan by Vazquez, and then executed by Kelly. That same gesture made an appearance once more in Texas, during a nerve-wracking Joey Gallo plate appearance. He blew past Gallo with a — you guessed it! — 98 mph heater high, and did the same thing afterwards. Stuff alone won’t make you a good pitcher, but stuff in the right spot? That’ll get you places.

This isn’t going to be all optimism, obviously. Kelly has only thrown 14.1 innings so far this year, so we’re stuck dealing with a small sample size until, well, August. Then we’ve got to deal with a .212 BABIP, a 33 percent line drive rate, and a 42 percent hard-hit rate — a rise of eight percentage points from last year. The groundballs disappearing and him throwing first-pitch strikes less than 50 percent of the time are both something we need to keep eyes on. Everything here is more than a little foreboding.

But right now, he’s striking out and walking batters at career-best rates, and finally seems to be rounding into a really good and potentially reliable late-inning arm during a point in time where the Red Sox desperately need one. It’s about time Joe Kelly started, for lack of a better term, punching people out.

Header photo by Kelley L Cox — USA TODAY Sports

1. This is about as obvious as a retaliation pitch as you’ll see. Joe Kelly legitimately steps towards Austin on the pitch. People who subscribe to the notion that there’s a certain way of doing this type of thing all seemed to think Kelly did it the “right” way, and I hate myself a tiny bit more for even writing that sentence. And then leaving it in here.

2. This is a STRONG reaction from Austin. He wastes absolutely no time letting everyone know exactly what’s about to happen. The most memorable baseball fights all have immediate mound-charging, and Austin slamming the bat is gravy. And then we get Joe Kelly beckoning too? Top-notch theatrics. Baseball fights are dumb, but if you’re going to do it, do it big.

3. Shout out to Christian Vazquez for taking his mask off, seeing Austin charge the mound, and immediately putting his mask back on.

4. Aaron Judge singularly moves entire piles of players. He just sort of picks up Joe Kelly and walks away.

5. Overall game strategy is probably the last thing on Joe Kelly’s mind at any given point, but Frequent Red Sox Tweeter @OverTheMonster has a point:

Always a good idea to waste a pitcher for petty bullshit in a game where you're already burning through your entire bullpen

— OverTheMonster (@OverTheMonster) April 12, 2018

6. What’s the rule about hitting guys? Do you have one pitch to do it? Kelly not only missed him with the first attempt, but hit Austin in his second at-bat after the aforementioned slide. People don’t forget:

The only thing I would had done different than Joe Kelly tonight, is I would’ve hit Tyler Austin at his previous at bat. Other than that, Kelly executed perfectly #YankeesvsRedSox

— Pedro Martinez (@45PedroMartinez) April 12, 2018

Sorry but it’s very Joe Kelly that he missed the first time he tried to drill Tyler Austin.

— Lindsey Adler (@lindseyadler) April 12, 2018

7. Joe Kelly won, right? It seems like Kelly definitely won.

Joe Kelly literally brough Austin to the ground but Yankees fans think he didn’t win the fight pic.twitter.com/SrBqJgpBRw

— . (@GetMeAnOffense) April 12, 2018

Joe Kelly just won an entire fanbase over again in one night. That’s impressive.

Header photo by Winslow Townson — USA TODAY Sports

This is all a long and drawn out way to say that we’re going to be talking about a relief pitcher, one who’s been prone to doing both of the acts described above: Joe Kelly.

We’ve become accustomed to seeing two different Joe Kellys. Most recently, we’ve seen 2017 Kelly, the one with the 2.79 ERA, an 8.1 K/9 and a career-high average fastball velocity of 99.2 miles per hour. This, for lack of a better term, is Effective Joe Kelly.

But the year prior to that — his first season mostly as a reliever, it was a different Kelly. He had a career high 5.18 ERA, home runs per nine (1.1) and walks per nine (5.4). His fastball average? 97.3. This (bear with me on this one) was Ineffective Joe Kelly.

So that raises the question: which Joe Kelly is Boston going to trot out of its pen?

It’s still far too early to make any concrete judgement’s on Kelly’s 2018 season based upon his first three outings. But, if it so behooves you, the counting numbers haven’t been astounding. He’s posted a 10.80 ERA in 3.1 innings pitched on four earned runs. Of course, all four of those came in the Opening Day meltdown against the Rays, when he recorded just a single out, allowed a hit and walked three.

He’s coming off of a season in which he posted his best year as a reliever, and a big part of that was due to his dominant fastball. Kelly was running it up at 99.2 miles per hour, and it was his clear-cut, go-to pitch — he used it 64.1 percent of the time, the highest usage percentage of any pitch in his pro career.

The usage percentage of his pitches could be a better area to hone in on. The last time Kelly threw less than 50 percent of his pitches for fastballs was in 2015.

Through just 3.1 innings this season, both his velocity (97.6 mph) and usage rate (28.3 percent) are down from last season. The velocity is less of a question. It’s likely to rise as the season changes and Kelly’s arm stretches out more. On the off chance it doesn’t, settling somewhere in the mid-97s will still mirror his 2015-16 campaigns.

To me, the usage percentage of his pitches could be a better area to hone in on. The last time Kelly threw less than 50 percent of his pitches for fastballs was in 2015 — back when he started 25 games. The highest percentage of fastballs he threw as a starter was 18 percent in 2012, with St. Louis. But starting and relieving are two different things. If Kelly is tasked with getting just three batters out as opposed to an entire lineup, he can rely heavier on his heat, as he’s done the previous two seasons.

His off-speed pitches remain relatively similar to what they’ve always been. His career average percentage for his slider is 11.9 percent, although it might be higher if you take away an outlier 2014 season in which he threw it just 5.7 percent of the time. So far in 2018, he’s tossed his slider 17.9 percent of the time. His sinker percentage is up — more than his true fastball, actually (42.5 percent to 28.3 percent). His velocity on the pitch is the highest in his career, too (98.2, which is up from his career average of 95.6). The last time he was chucking this many sinkers was back when he was a starter.

So, what does this all mean? It means Kelly (historically) is most effective out of the bullpen when he leans on his fastball. But, early on, his sinker has been even faster, and he’s using it more than his standard fastball, something he’s shied away from doing since he was a starter.

It’s still too early to tell if these numbers are just outliers. This time next month, they might revert back to their 2017 numbers. Or maybe they don’t, and we see a version of Joe Kelly out of the bullpen that’s a mix of his 2017 self and his 2012-13 self, when he posted back-to-back sub-3.53 ERA seasons as a starter.

Photo by Kim Klement — USA TODAY Sports

Perhaps some quick history is in order. The first trade Dave Dombrowski made after taking over the team from Ben Cherington in August of 2015 was to acquire Kimbrel to anchor the bullpen. And that worked. But after Kimbrel? The ’15 Red Sox bullpen was a bit of a hodgepodge. To fix that, Dombrowski dealt for Carson Smith from the Mariners. Smith was coming off a fantastic season in Seattle, and was slated to be the primary setup man in Boston in 2016. He looked great, too, for 6.2 innings before he needed Tommy John surgery. Then last year, with Smith out of action, the Red Sox needed to solve that same problem again. Dombrowski again hit the trade market (because it worked so well the first time) and got Tyler Thornburg from the Brewers. Thornburg didn’t even make it as far as Smith’s 6.2 inning before needing surgery to relieve Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. That necessitated missing the entire 2017 season. Because they were without Smith and Thornburg, the Red Sox traded for Addison Reed during the season, but he became a free agent after the season ended and signed with the Twins.

Somehow Dombrowski managed to avoid dealing for another soon-to-be-hurt reliever this past offseason, which brings us to the present day. It seems we’re back where we started, but in fact, we’re not, because Smith is now healthy and throwing spring training innings. To be precise, he has nine strikeouts, two walks, and two runs allowed in six spring innings. Thornburg threw off a mound for the first time almost three weeks ago, but I can’t find any updates beyond that. Recovery from thoracic outlet syndrome is no sure thing, far less successful on average than Tommy John surgery, which has become somewhat rote in the baseball world.

It says here the Red Sox are planning on handing over the eighth inning to Smith, but there should be some caution exercised as Smith is coming off a major injury. That’s not to say he can’t handle an eighth inning reliever’s workload. There are numerous pitchers who, once they’ve returned from Tommy John, have immediately slotted back into their previous workloads. Yu Darvish and Lance Lynn come to mind, as does reliever Greg Holland. The future may be bright for Mr. Smith when it comes to health, but pitchers returning from Tommy John often don’t have full command for up to a year post-surgery. Maybe Smith will be fine, but there is at least some question about it, and Thornburg is a complete question mark given his current health (?) and the track record of players recovering from similar procedures (what’s now left of Matt Harvey springs to mind).

Beyond Smith and Thornburg, the Red Sox have a lot of that same smorgasbord of hard throwing somewhat erratic relievers they had back in 2016 and since. Last season it worked. Boston’s bullpen ranked fourth in baseball by FanGraphs WAR. That’s not the perfect measurement to rate relievers, but the point is clear: Boston had an effective bullpen in 2017. But! Half of that WAR came from Craig Kimbrel. The rest was split between a ton of mediocre relievers. Boston had 16 relievers throw six or more innings for them last season, and 11 threw 17 or more. That’s partially just the nature of relievers nowadays, but it’s also because the team struggled to find consistency in the late innings outside of Kimbrel.

This year promises more of the same on that front, as Matt Barnes and Joe Kelly will bring their fast fastballs and extremely walky walk rates to the eighth inning party. Barnes was a frequent and often ill-timed victim of the long ball last year. while Kelly probably should’ve been victimized more than he was. Both players could improve — they are relievers after all — but barring that, there likely needs to be some sheltering from specific matchups and bad platoon splits. Doing that limits their availability, and thus their overall value to the team. Brandon Workman merits a mention as well. He’s cut from the Matt Barnes cloth, but minus the strikeouts, which isn’t ideal for a late inning reliever.

Beyond those guys, the ‘pen is mostly just guys who seldom have the stuff or command to advance past the seventh inning. The farm system offers some intriguing arms, but they’re almost universally still starters in the low minors, which is to say bullpen help won’t be coming this season.

The Red Sox are clearly going to try to sort this thing out again over the course of the season. That’s fine. It worked out pretty well the last two seasons, and really, it’s extremely difficult to build a bad bullpen when your starting point is Craig Kimbrel. But Kimbrel can’t pitch all the time. Smith returning as the same guy the Sox thought they were getting from Seattle two years ago would be the best possible scenario, since it would fill the hole in the eighth inning without asking Dombrowski to head out on the trade market where things can get a bit expensive, not to mention dangerous. If Smith can’t be Smith though, the Red Sox will be facing the one part of their roster not ready to compete for a World Series.

Photo by Kim Klement — USA TODAY Sports

Presenting the full list 2017 Roster Recaps, listed with the authors that wrote them. An asterisk denotes a player who has, as of March 13th, dearly departed the Red Sox. We’ll miss them all terribly.

Catchers

• Sandy Leon (Cam Ellis)
• Blake Swihart (Jake Devereaux)
• Christian Vazquez (Brett Cowett)

Infielders

• Xander Bogaerts (Chris Teeter)
• Chase d’Arnaud* (Matt Kory)
• Rafael Devers (Kory)
• Marco Hernandez (Cowett)
• Brock Holt (Devereaux)
• Tzu-Wei Lin (Cowett)
• Deven Marrero (Cowett)
• Mitch Moreland (Cowett)
• Eduardo Nunez (Teeter)
• Dustin Pedroia (Kory)
• Hanley Ramirez (Devereaux)
• Josh Rutledge* (Cowett)
• Pablo Sandoval* (Cowett)
• Sam Travis (Teeter)

Outfielders

• Andrew Benintendi (Ellis)
• Mookie Betts (Kory)
• Jackie Bradley Jr. (Cowett)
• Rajai Davis* (Daniel Poarch)
• Steve Selsky (Ellis)
• Chris Young* (Cowett)

Pitchers

• Fernando Abad* (Ellis)
• Matt Barnes (Cowett)
• Blaine Boyer* (Cowett)
• Roenis Elias (Poarch)
• Doug Fister* (Kory)
• Heath Hembree (Kory)
• Brian Johnson (Teeter)
• Joe Kelly (Ellis)
• Kyle Kendrick* (Poarch)
• Craig Kimbrel (Cowett)
• Austin Maddox (Ellis)
• Kyle Martin (Poarch)
• Drew Pomeranz (Ellis)
• Rick Porcello (Teeter)
• David Price (Ellis)
• Noe Ramirez* (Poarch)
• Addison Reed* (Ellis)
• Eduardo Rodriguez (Cowett)
• Robbie Ross* (Cowett)
• Chris Sale (Cowett)
• Robby Scott (Cowett)
• Carson Smith (Teeter)
• Ben Taylor (Cowett)
• Hector Velazquez (Devereaux)
• Brandon Workman (Ellis)
• Steven Wright (Kory)

Header photo by Winslow Townson — USA TODAY Sports

I’m going by the rotations as listed on Roster Resource, which of course may change during spring training. As for the order, I’ve organized them by their WARP projections.

Rotations

Red Sox:

1. Chris Sale (6.1)
2. David Price (2.1)
3. Drew Pomeranz (2.1)
4. Rick Porcello (1.2)
5. Eduardo Rodriguez (1.2)

(12.7 total WARP)

versus

Yankees:

1. Luis Severino (4.1)
2. Sonny Gray (2.5)
3. Masahiro Tanaka (2.4)
4. Jordan Montgomery (1.0)
5. CC Sabathia (0.6)

(10.6 total WARP)

Not unlike the two team’s lineups, their rotations aren’t too far apart in overall talent. Perhaps the Red Sox enjoy a bit more at the top of the rotation, whereas the Yankees have more overall depth. But the end result is roughly the same, as you can see from their respective WARP totals.

Is Luis Severino as good as Chris Sale? No, probably not, but he’s not wholly far off. Sale is the best player of either group and the one who the Red Sox hope can put them over the top, both during the regular season and in the playoffs. Severino has the potential to be that guy for the Yankees. Still, the advantage is with Sale.

The thing about PECOTA and really all projection systems is its innate pessimism. It’s not really even pessimism though because players get hurt all the time and age gets everyone at some point and then there’s the guys who just have bad seasons because of who knows what. That all said, it’s not difficult to expect more than PECOTA projects from a few guys on each team, and not coincidentally the two I’d expect more from are the same guys I’d point to when discussing the most pivotal pitchers of the rotation. That would be Price for the Red Sox and Gray for the Yankees. Both have been top pitchers before, as recently as 2016. In Gray’s four seasons he’s been above 4 WARP in three of them including last season, so his 2.5 projection seems a tad short. But there it is just the same.

Price likely has a similar issue to Gray, namely injuries. Price spent a significant number of days on the DL last season, the first time he did that in his career. The result was a one-win season after averaging six wins per over the three seasons before that. Still, the Red Sox are depending on Price this season in a way that I’m not sure fans have fully grasped. If Price gives the team 75 innings of 4.50 run ball and then exits stage left, the Red Sox are going to need a lot of quality innings from Steven Wright and/or Brian Johnson. To paraphrase the words of a former Yankee manager, that’s not what you want.

But if Price is healthy, he’s Boston’s second ace, and he changes the completion of the team completely. The same thing could be said for Gray, whose reputation took a hit during an injured and ineffective 2016 season. Peak Gray probably isn’t the equal of peak Price, though it seems that Gray reaching his previous heights is the more likely possibility of the two (though as of this writing both claim to be fully healthy).

Past the top two guys, the Yankees need Tanaka’s arm to remain attached to his shoulder, possibly a difficult ask considering his previous medical history. If he’s healthy though, a caveat that should probably be applied to all pitchers, Tanaka offers what any team would look for in a third starter: namely quality and dependability. The Red Sox are more on the first of those attributes and less on the second with their third starters (yes, two) in Pomeranz and Porcello. Porcello can’t be as bad as he was last season (can he?), but he’s probably not going to win another Cy Young either. As such, sure, two wins seems perfectly adequate, even if you maybe would hope for more given his $20 million salary. Pomeranz is hitting his stride as a starter after a late start to his career, but he’s always been on the fragile side. Together they’re probably in the five-win range, which is what the Yankees will likely get out of the combination of Gray and Tanaka.

The back end of the Yankees rotation is C.C. Sabathia and Jordan Montgomery, both of who had stronger seasons in 2017 than you’d have guessed given their respective ages and, in Sabathia’s case, everything else about him. And yet here he is again. Note that PECOTA is as unimpressed with him as you are. The Red Sox back end features the aforementioned Wright and Johnson unless, and this is the key, Eduardo Rodriguez gets healthy. Say what you will about Montgomery, but the Yankees don’t have a pitcher of Rodriguez’s quality in the back half of their rotation. If Rodriguez comes back healthy with no knee troubles, he gives the Sox rotation depth few teams can match.

If there is one place where New York has a step on Boston, it’s in previous injuries. Why are they important? A wise person once said the greatest predictor of future pitcher injuries is past pitcher injuries. With that as a background, the Red Sox are at greater risk with Price, Rodriguez, and deeper down, Wright and Johnson all having missed significant time in recent seasons. Only Gray fits that description with the Yankees (though Sabathia has pitched through injuries, he’s not particularly injury prone).

Bullpens

Predicting what will happen with bullpens is the greatest of impossibilities, like jumping across the country using only trampolines, or drinking an entire bottle of Gatorade without your tongue jumping from your mouth and running screaming down the street. The Red Sox have one of the two or three best relievers in baseball in Craig Kimbrel. That’s a good start. After that, they could have a very deep pen with Carson Smith and Tyler Thornburg splitting eighth inning duties and Matt Barnes and Joe Kelly covering the sixth and seventh. Or all those guys could spontaneously explode like Spinal Tap drummers.

Like the rotations, the Red Sox have that one top guy, but the Yankees have quality and more depth in their pen. And yet, Aroldis Chapman wasn’t so hot last season, and Dellin Betances wasn’t either. Both were fine overall, and very good at times, but showed real moments of shakiness. Tommy Kahnle was less than spectacular after putting up an amazing first half in Chicago, and David Robertson was good, but not amazing either. Still, those guys have track records of (mostly) excellence, so few are likely to flame out. It could easily turn into the Craig Kimbrel And That’s It Show in Boston, whereas the Yankees have too much depth and not enough Craig Kimbrel for that to occur to them.

Where things stand now, the Red Sox have a slight advantage in the rotation, but when you factor in the bullpens, that lead dwindles. Like their offenses, and like the teams of 2003 and 2004, picking which one is truly better is likely a fool’s errand (thus these articles). We never know what will happen over the course of a baseball season, but often times we kinda know, right? Here I legitimately have no idea. Except to say this: even after 162 games it’ll probably be quite close.

Also, the Houston Astros are better than both teams.

Photo by Noah K. Murray — USA TODAY Sports

With that said, PECOTA gives us approximately 50,000 projections per team, so there’s plenty to get sincerely angry about. As literally every single Kansas City Royals fan will tell you, PECOTA doesn’t always get it right. I took a look through the Red Sox projections and cherry-picked a few, sorting them into arbitrary groups that have very little to do with one another. Let’s see how it worked!

Three Projections That Stood Out

1. Chris Sale’s 2.44 ERA

I’ll be honest: when I saw this, I immediately went to check how it stacked up against Corey Kluber’s ERA, and hell yeah, Sale’s is marginally better, so 2018 Cy Young confirmed.

But yes, that is an absurdly low ERA, even for Sale. The only two starters to post an ERA lower than 2.44 last season were Kluber (2.25) and Clayton Kershaw (2.31). It would be Sale’s lowest ERA since the 2014 season and mark the first time he ever posted back-to-back seasons with a sub-three ERA. What makes things even more interesting is that most of Sale’s other projections predict a small regression, so something doesn’t match up. This might be more of an argument against the reliability of solely looking at ERA more than anything else, but that’s a really low number.

2. Joe Kelly coming for Matt Barnes’ innings

Man, PECOTA did Barnes dirty this year. After (barely) leading the bullpen in innings pitched last year, Barnes is projected to be fourth on the totem pole this season. Craig Kimbrel, Carson Smith, and Joe Kelly are all projected to throw more innings than Barnes. The first two make sense, but it’s interesting to see Joe Kelly sneak in front of Barnes. Granted, a healthy Tyler Thornburg also means less innings to go around for righties, but Barnes really feels that the worst. Kelly threw 58 innings last year and is projected to throw 51 this season. Barnes threw 69.2 innings last season and is projected to come in at 46 this year. Kelly doesn’t get the strikeouts that Barnes does, and they both walk way too many batters, but the latter was undeniably bad in important situations last year and probably needs to earn some trust back. Maybe this should be titled “Tyler Thornburg coming for Matt Barnes’ innings” but my bet is Kelly starts the year as the seventh inning guy.

3. Rafael Devers hitting .258

Devers’ value to the 2018 Red Sox is hardly (if at all) connected to hitting for average, but .258 feels low. He hit well throughout his time in the Red Sox system and slashed .284/.338/.482 during his 60-game stint in the majors last season. Even if he can’t hit above .280 during his first full season in the bigs, .254 seems underwhelming. He’s a free-swinger who doesn’t draw a lot of walks, yet he posted a league-average OBP last season. His natural talent as a hitter makes me think his floor is closer to .265-.270, and that’d be just fine. And on that note, some quick hits:

Three Projections I Loved

1. Rafael Devers hitting 21 home runs
2. 22.9 Fielding Runs Above Average – best in the AL East, third-best in the AL, and top-five in all of baseball.
3. Mookie Betts looking a lot more like 2016 Mookie than 2017 Mookie.

Three Projections That Spooked Me

1. How similar Drew Pomeranz and David Price’s seasons look.
2. Steven Wright getting the fifth spot in the rotation over Eduardo Rodriguez.
3. Xander Bogaerts having a lower TAv than Hanley Ramirez.

Photo by Patrick McDermott — USA TODAY Sports

Over a year ago, Travis Sawchik at Fangraphs took note of a particular claim to fame Boyer had: batters couldn’t barrel him up at all. Sure, he couldn’t strike anyone out and he didn’t induce grounders, but getting weak contact? That’s intriguing. Batters can exert a ton of control over how hard they hit something, but can pitchers affect that? It’s something to look into, at the very least.

The Atlanta Braves were willing to roll the dice on it, as they signed Boyer to a minor league deal with a spring training invite a mere four days after that piece was written. He nearly made it onto their 25-man, but was cut on March 25th. Boyer was scooped up by the Red Sox in mid-April on a minor league contract, got called up at the end of May, and has stuck with the organization ever since.

What Went Right

He started striking people out. Boyer had a 9.2 percent strikeout rate in 2016 and it jumped all the way to 18.5 percent in 2017. Not many pitchers can more than double their strikeout rate like that, so that’s just a tad bit insane. One possible source of this was an improvement in velocity for his fastball, as his four- and two-seamers both saw at least a 1 MPH jump in their average velo from last year, while both his slider and curveball registered drops of at least 1 MPH. When your fastball sits in the mid-90s and your Uncle Charlie comes in below 74, you’re gonna catch some batters swinging early. Boyer was now 1) touching 95 with regularity and 2) getting more whiffs than ever before. Naturally, the contact rate dropped, and Boyer sure looked like a contributor out of the bullpen, especially when he first showed up.

What Went Wrong

He couldn’t dodge barrels like Mario anymore. Boyer registered exactly 130 balls put in play against him, and he had the 231st-best barrel rate among all pitchers with 130 or more balls put in play against. There were only 375 qualified pitchers, so Boyer wasn’t even average. So if he wasn’t getting weak contact, what was he getting, exactly? A whole lot of nope. Of all the relievers that threw at least 20 innings for the Sox, Boyer had the lowest groundball rate by far, at 34.1 percent. He didn’t have the highest fly ball rate within those qualifiers, but he did have the highest line drive rate — at 29.4 percent. For reference, Joe Kelly came in second with 23 percent. Sure makes that .370 BABIP and 5.44 DRA look justified, doesn’t it?

Left-handed batters crushed Boyer to the tune of a .919 OPS. Thankfully, he didn’t see many, but that wasn’t the only mark against him here. There wasn’t a leverage bracket here he really excelled in. His best work was during the 8.1 innings of medium leverage he had, but his strikeout rate would shrink back down to 9.7 percent in those spots, and make that .726 OPS against look really flimsy.

A couple injuries turned him into a piñata in July and August, contributing to a terrible 11-inning stretch. A right elbow strain early in July produced a .900 OPS against until he was put on the disabled list on the 16th, and a neck strain affected his entire August, causing him to miss two weeks and saddling him with horrid 1.278 OPS against in that month. There’s a lot of BABIP inflation and small sample size warnings here, but with Boyer’s batted ball profile being what it is, it doesn’t seem like it’s entirely bad luck.

What To Expect

Boyer is 36, is a reliever, and despite honest improvements in getting whiffs, his batted ball profile has taken a turn for the worse. That’s a recipe for disaster when it comes to projecting his next season. There’s some hope he can rediscover his barrel-avoiding magic that he showed in 2016, but that’s more of a pipe dream than anything. Expect very little out of Boyer in 2018, and cherish anything he does well. Wanting more than that will probably end in disappointment.

Photo by Bob DeChiara — USA TODAY Sports

WHAT WENT RIGHT

Reed wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t the pitcher they traded for, either. His strikeouts increased after coming over from the Mets, although there’s even a caveat there, because of course there is. He posted a sub-one WHIP (0.93) during his stint in Boston, and his batting average against by close to one hundred points. If you squint hard enough, you can see some good things that Reed did for the Sox.

WHAT WENT WRONG

Having to cherry pick small statistical improvements is a pretty glaring sign that not a lot went right. He wasn’t used nearly as much as he was in New York – after throwing 49 innings with the Mets, Reed only got 27 innings in a Red Sox uniform. The difference between Reed’s Boston ERA (3.33) and Boston FIP (4.60) indicates that he was benefiting from a fair bit of luck. His Boston BABIP (.175) backs that up, too. And while the strikeouts did increase, Reed also walked a ton of batters. After walking three percent of batters during the first half of 2017, Reed went from July 31st to the end of the year walking almost nine percent (8.5) of the batters he faced.

Reed was brought in so that the team didn’t need to rely on Matt Barnes and Joe Kelly as heavily. So, was he actually any better? Here are how Reed, Barnes, and Kelly all performed from the time Reed was traded for through the time the Astros mercifully put an end to them:

Kelly (21.2 IPs): .220/.319/.321 against; 3.62 FIP, 1.34 WHIP, 16.0 K-BB%, 2 HRs

Barnes (19.2 IPs): .256/.310/.474 against, 4.07 FIP, 1.32 WHIP, 23.8 K-BB%, 4 HRs

Reed (27.0 IPs): .167/.248/.358 against, 4.60 FIP, 0.93 WHIP, 17.9 K-BB%, 5 HRs

I honestly don’t know what’s more surprising: that Reed was that mediocre, or that Joe Kelly was probably the second-best right-handed reliever in the Red Sox bullpen for the final ten weeks of the season. The Red Sox tried to upgrade from Barnes/Kelly, and instead just got another one.

WHAT TO EXPECT 

Reed pitching in the NL East. Again.

Photo by Bob DeChiara – USA TODAY Sports