Scott got his innings in, all 35.2 of them. Being at the bottom of the bullpen depth chart isn’t exactly thrilling, but as one of the very few left-handed relievers on the 40-man roster, Scott had a pretty solid spot for most of the season. He would bounce back and forth a couple times over the rest of the season, but Scott would still getting southpaws out at a mostly acceptable rate. Right-handed batters, though, that was a different story entirely.

What Went Right

Scott was still a menace to anything left-handed. He held them to a stellar .119/.224/.303 line in over 20 innings, turning him into the most effective reliever on the team against left-handed batters, and that even includes Craig Kimbrel, patron saint of remarkably absurd reliever stats. Scott had his fair share of escapes as well, including this high-wire act in Cleveland where he struck out Jay Bruce and Bradley Zimmer to preserve the tie:

Being a LOOGY isn’t the flashiest thing, but they get their 15 seconds of fame just like everyone else.

What Went Wrong

Everything that wasn’t under the “versus L” split. Right-handed hitters had his number, posting a .814 OPS against the southpaw, and he gave up four home runs in just 15 innings of pitching to righties. It was bad. But don’t worry, it gets worse, because his home/road splits are objectively horrifying.

Cover your kids’ eyes before reading the rest of this segment. It’s not for children nor the faint of heart.

At home, he held all hitters to a .427 OPS. That’s pretty good! On the road, opposing batters lit him up, as he allowed 5 homers in just 15.2 innings and was pinned to a .927 OPS. That’s pretty bad! Thing is, he was still solid against lefties on the road, which speaks to how awful he truly was when there was no same-side advantage working in his favor. I could go on but the theme here is blatantly obvious: if it wasn’t a left-handed hitter, Scott was getting destroyed. They are his hard counters.

What To Expect

As optimistic as I was last year, it’s hard to think he’ll be much more than the second lefty in the bullpen. He has a major home run issue, and his batted ball profile suggests it won’t change much, especially when it comes to right-handed hitters. Scott wasn’t often misused in 2017, and it’s hard to see him being put in worse situations in 2018, seeing how dramatic his splits were. If he can keep the ball from leaving the park so much, he’ll stick around a lot longer than any of use expect.

Photo by Eric Hartline — USA TODAY Sports

You probably have a strong opinion about Drew Pomeranz. He was the apple of Dave Dombrowski’s eye for most of the first half of last season, with good reason. While in San Diego he pitched like, say, a top-5 draft pick. The Sox needed pitching, had prospects to spare and made a move, sending highly-touted youngin’ Anderson Espinoza out west in a straight-up swap. Not long after that, word got out that the Padres had not disclosed some injury issues Pomeranz had – specifically in his elbow – and despite reportedly being allowed the  call takebacks on the trade, the Sox moved forward. Pomeranz then was very meh for most of his time in Boston, flashing occasional brilliance that was too often sandwiched between games where he got crushed.

What went right in 2016

Pomeranz, and the Padres for that matter, benefited from a well-timed run of dominance to start off 2016. In San Diego, he threw 102 innings with stats that included a 2.47 ERA, 1.06 WHIP and 84 cFIP. He was generating a good amount of soft contact; his 20.5 Soft% was in the top-30 of all qualified starters and his 8.8 HR/FB% was the best of his career. Petco, man. His strikeouts were up, with his K% rising from 23 to 28 percent and his K/9 going from 8.6 to 10.1. Interestingly enough, while he was a Padre, Pomeranz’s splits were actually a smidge better on the road:

– 2016 as a Padre, on the road: 54 IPs, 2.32 ERA, 3.00 FIP, 1.01 WHIP, 28.2 K%, 11.1 BB%.

– 2016 as a Padre, at home: 47.2 IPs, 2.64 ERA, 3.31 FIP, 1.11 WHIP, 27.7 K%, 8.7 BB%.

It’s splitting hairs, but it’s splitting interesting hairs!

What went wrong in 2016

He got traded to the AL East. That’s not entirely fair – there were warning signs that Pomeranz was probably headed for a rough second half.  Padre Pomeranz got to 100 innings for the first time in his career. The only other time he got even close to 100 innings was in 2012, when he pitched 96 ugly innings in Colorado. His .240 BABIP in San Diego wasn’t sustainable either. Poor Drew. Pomeranz’s stats are fun because half the time he’s been in the majors, he’s pitched in traditionally awful pitchers parks (Coors, Fenway) while the other half has been spent in the spacious confines of San Diego and Oakland.

As was well documented, what plagued Pomeranz the most in Boston was the home run ball. After moving to the east coast, that 8.8% HR/FB skyrocketed to 19.7%. Fenway is a notorious nightmare for lefties, but that’s too high a jump to blame on park factors alone. Pomeranz just got hit harder. His Hard% went from 28 percent to 36 percent and his LD% rose three percent while his FB% remained virtually the same. People were putting the ball in the air against him at the same rate, the only difference being that in Boston he was a) no longer in San Diego (analysis!) and b) getting hit harder.

What to expect in 2017

The Red Sox are in a tricky position with Pomeranz. Naturally, they’re going to start him off in the rotation. The team clearly wants to give him a chance on a full offseason of rest as well as a spring under their training program. He has the potential to be a valuable mid-rotation starter and the team is surely aware of the optics of letting go of Espinoza go for someone who they gave 13 starts before sending into middle relief purgatory.

With that said, is that such a horrible idea? The team already has Chris Sale, David Price and Eduardo Rodriguez, all who throw the baseball using their left hand. The team has come out and said they don’t care about stacking lefties, which I’d speculate is just not a true statement at all. The bullpen’s power arms – Craig Kimbrel, Carson Smith, Matt Barnes, Tyler Thornburg and, fine, Joe Kelly – are all righties. If you look for lefties you’ll find names like Fernando Abad, Brian Johnson, and Henry Owens. The list of trustworthy lefties in the Red Sox current bullpen is as follows:

Robbie Ross Jr.

Additionally, taking a look at the two’s career splits vs. lefties will show you that Pomeranz might be a much better option.

– Ross Jr. career vs lefties: 124.2 IPs, 3.97 ERA, 3.56 FIP, 1.31 WHIP, 21.4 K%, 8.5 BB%.

– Pomeranz career vs lefties: 123.1 IPs, 2.19 ERA, 2.85 FIP, 1.05 WHIP, 26.8 K%, 8.6 BB%

So why not put Pomeranz there? That way there’s a more balanced rotation with three lefties (Sale, Price, Rodriguez) and two righties (Porcello, Wright). We’ve already considered the option that Ross may be miscast as the go-to lefty in the bullpen, anyways.  My guess is that the Red Sox know this and that before the season is over, you see Pomeranz come out of the bullpen as the go-to lefty-specialist who can also start a game or two if injuries impact the regular starting five.

Photo by David Richard/USA Today Sports Images

The Red Sox suffered from an inconsistent bullpen for much of 2016, with Craig Kimbrel mostly being backed up by good-but-not-great arms. One of those arms was Robbie Ross, the left-hander Boston received in return for Anthony Ranaudo a couple of years ago. When Ross was acquired, he was a swingman whose role and talent level was largely unknown. Since then, he’s stepped up and become the best left-handed reliever on the roster. Now, that probably says more about the roster than it says about Ross, but it’s also not at all a slight towards the southpaw’s performance. While he’s lumped in with the group of inconsistent arms in last season’s bullpen, he has been underratedly solid for two years in a row now.

What Went Right in 2016

A whole lot went right for Ross in 2016, which is how he ended up with a 3.25 ERA to go along with a 3.23 FIP, a 3.79 DRA (95 DRA-) and a 97 cFIP. That doesn’t indicate a dominant force, but it looks a lot like a pitcher who can comfortably be placed in the middle of a major-league bullpen.

Among the reasons for this relative success in 2016 was a significant rise in strikeouts. After spending most of his career with a strikeout rate in the high teens, Ross struck out 23.5 percent of his opponents last season. He backed that up with lower contact rates both in and out of the zone. This was likely the result of a change in repertoire that involved leaning much more heavily on his breaking balls and getting away from throwing his fastball 70 percent of the time.

Another side effect of this change in pitch mix is that Ross saw a lack of damaging batted balls coming off the bats of his opponents. The .302 BABIP he allowed is merely average, which is an improvement over the end of his Rangers career when he was allowing BABIPs in the mid-to-high .300s. Meanwhile, he also induced ground balls more than 50 percent of the time and served up just two home runs in his 55.1 innings.

Even beyond the tangible numbers, Ross was successful in a couple of other areas that often go underrated for a reliever. Many people see these bullpen arms as fungible assets that anyone can replace, but keeping your best relievers around all year can go a long way toward stability for a team. Ross was the master of both health and consistency in 2016. He was on the roster all year, appearing in 54 games to accrue those 55.1 innings. Beyond that, he didn’t have a calendar month in which he put up a FIP under 4.00. Now, there was a fairly significant ERA discrepancy, but that was based on sequencing more than anything. While his 4.71 ERA in the first half completely blew away his second half mark of 1.69, the peripherals actually favored the first half. Plus, his opponents performance was essentially the same throughout the year. Small samples can have strange effects on relievers, but for all intents and purposes Ross was the same guy all year and that shouldn’t go overlooked.

What Went Wrong in 2016

For as much praise as I’ve heaped on Ross so far in this, it wasn’t all roses. The main issue for the southpaw was his control. He’s never really been a control-oriented pitcher, but he had the worst walk rate of his career in 2016, allowing a free pass to just under 10 percent of his opponents. This could be another side effect of the repertoire change, as it goes without saying that fastballs are easier to get over the plate than breaking balls. It certainly showed up in his plate discipline stats, as it was the first season in which a majority of his pitches missed the zone.

What’s really strange is that the bulk of these control issues came against left-handed batters. While he struck out nearly a quarter of his left-handed opponents, he walked more than 13 percent of them as well. That’s an atrocious rate, particularly for someone who is supposed to be the best lefty in the bullpen. Again, being a top LOOGY option isn’t really what he’s built for, but it’s what the team could really use. At the very least, he needs to get his control under…well, control, against lefties.

What To Expect in 2017

Looking ahead to the coming season, I would expect nothing but the same from Ross. I’d expect him to be miscast as the best lefty in the bullpen, being flanked by guys like Fernando Abad, Robby Scott and Luis Ysla. In that role, he’ll keep up the strong combination of strikeouts and ground balls, disappointing delusional fans hoping for the next Andrew Miller. By now, though, he should be used to being underrated. If the bullpen falters again in 2017, he’ll keep getting thrown into the mix of underperforming arms, whether he deserves it or not.

Photo by Bob DeChiara/USA Today Sports Images

Top Play (WPA)

There wasn’t much competition for this one – Hanley Ramirez’s game-tying grand slam in the 5th inning had this locked up with a .438 WPA before the game even ended. With the Red Sox getting nothing from Steven Wright (again) and the offense sputtering (again), they finally got to Drew Smyly in the 5th, where Ramirez turned around the first pitch he saw – a high-but-not-that-high fastball over the plate – and crushed it way out of Fenway. Tie game. I think the most shocking part of all this is that the Red Sox finally scored several runs with the bases loaded.

Bottom Play (WPA)

In the top of the 6th inning, Tim Beckham tried to kickstart Tampa Bay’s response to Hanley’s salami, singling to lead off the inning. Then Robbie Ross induced a grounder out of Corey Dickerson that went straight to Dustin Pedroia, and ended in a twin killing. That double play was worth -.123 WPA, and was one of the two innings in which a Red Sox pitcher only saw three batters. The other was the 9th inning, because Craig Kimbrel is very good.

Key Moment

Having given up the lead late in the game once again, the Red Sox offense finally came through in the bottom of the 8th inning. Up to the plate came Aaron Hill, who hadn’t gotten a hit in his last 20 at-bats, so of course he’d be the one to knock in the go-ahead run. Unlike last night, Erasmo Ramirez couldn’t hold back the Red Sox offense, and they ended up scoring another run in that inning for good measure.

That saved the team from a potentially embarrassing situation, as no one knew who would pitch if they didn’t take the lead or win in the 8th or 9th, respectively. They had no relievers left.

Trends to Watch

1. Hanley Ramirez just had his best month of the year and might just be getting hotter. The infielder is hitting .306/.362/.600 – yes, that’s a 600 in the slugging – with three homers in his last five games. Sure, one of them might’ve been the shortest on record this year, but still, Hanley’s hammering away again.

2. Hoo boy. That bullpen couldn’t hold a lead if it was given a bucket. At this point, you just have to hope they improve, since this group isn’t collectively that bad, and Koji Uehara might return soon. But after the starter goes out, who do you turn to for the 7th inning? No one has been consistently good enough to be trusted as the first one out of the ‘pen, and even Kimbrel and Ziegler have looked shaky at times.

Coming Next

First, the Red Sox have their first off day in three weeks. They’ll use that to travel to the Bay Area, where they’ll take on the Oakland Athletics with David Price on the mound, and he’ll face off against Andrew Triggs.

Happy Moncada Eve, everyone.

Photo by Greg M. Cooper/USA Today Sports Images

Top Play (WPA)

The biggest play of this game will be no surprise for those who watched it. We’ll get more into the sixth inning in just a minute (sorry), but one play in particular stood out in the frame. With the bases loaded and the Red Sox leading by a run, Raul Mondesi came to the plate with Matt Barnes on the hill. The same Raul Mondesi who came into the game with a .504 OPS in limited action. It didn’t matter this time, as he smoked a bases-clearing triple (.317) off the wall in center field and gave the Royals a lead they would never relinquish. Gross.

Bottom Play (WPA)

Win Probability Added can be a fickle beast sometimes, particularly in cases when the winning team also has the worst play of the game. To make matters even weirder, it came in that sixth inning. With Eduardo Rodriguez still in the game after loading the bases and recording zero (0) outs, Alex Gordon had a chance to start the rally. Instead, he flew out to left field (-.101) and wasn’t able to get it deep enough to score a run. Obviously, it didn’t end up mattering.

For the Red Sox, the worst play of the game came in the third inning when they were trailing 2-0. After Jackie Bradley led the inning off with a single, Brock Holt followed it up with a 6-4-3 double play (-.089). It was the team’s third straight inning with a double play to start the game. Gross.

So, About That Sixth Inning…

If I wanted to say what I really thought about that horrible, despicable inning I’d have to put my entire life savings into the swear jar, so I’ll avoid that. In short, it was yet another example of this team failing to come through with strong situational pitching. The bullpen will get much of the blame — and don’t get me wrong, they deserve it — but Rodriguez started it all. After his team took the lead in the previous half-inning, Boston’s starter immediately loaded the bases with two walks and a ground-rule double. The lefty didn’t have his command to start the game, but looked to be regaining it in the middle innings. He hit a wall in the sixth, though, and left a hell of a jam for his bullpen to get out of. Matt Barnes was not up to the task. To be fair, two of the runs he allowed were on soft choppers back to the pitcher. On the other hand, he gave up the massive triple to Mondesi and two hard-hit singles that also scored runs. Robbie Ross came in after and allowed two more hits and two inherited runs before finally escaping the inning. In the end, the Royals scored a whopping eight runs in the inning. Gross.

Playoff Implications

The good news is the Red Sox, frustrating as they may be, are still playing meaningful baseball in late August. We are officially in scoreboard-watching season, and every game is important in a race with as many teams as this one. With Sunday’s brutal loss, they obviously lost some ground. The Red Sox now find themselves two games out of first place in the American League East behind the Blue Jays, who won on Sunday. Baltimore also won, giving Boston just a one-game lead for the top wildcard spot. Meanwhile, they have just a three-game cushion on a playoff spot, with four other teams within 4.5 games. This will go down to the wire.

Coming Next

The Red Sox will look to rebound from this frustrating game with the final series of this mini homestand. They start a three-game series against Tampa Bay on Monday night. They need to take advantage of their upcoming schedule that includes nine games against the Rays, A’s and Padres. If they play well in that stretch, they’ll put themselves in a good position with a final schedule that includes only AL East teams, including 13 against Baltimore and Toronto. It all starts at 7:10 on Monday with Rick Porcello facing off against Matt Andriese.

Photo by Greg M. Cooper/USA Today Sports Images

Acquired from the Rangers in January for one-time top-100 prospect Anthony Ranaudo, Robbie Ross cemented a place in the middle of Boston’s bullpen in 2015. There’s nothing exceptional about him—he owns a low-90s fastball and a 104 career cFIP—but he bounced back nicely from an ugly 2014 campaign and he gets righties and lefties out with equal effectiveness. All told, he’s durable enough to serve as a longman and good enough to take on the occasional high-leverage situation without making you change the channel. For the 2015 Red Sox, he qualified as a bright spot.

What Went Right in 2015

Ross avoided the starting rotation, a gig he probably isn’t cut out for. The Rangers tried him in the rotation at the start of 2014 and, after three solid starts, Ross posted a 7.76 ERA over his next five tries. The Rangers promptly shipped him back to the ‘pen, save for three starts later in the season, and the results immediately . . . well, they stunk too, as Ross racked up an even uglier 7.85 ERA and 1.50 K:BB ratio in 18 and 1/3 innings of relief work.

The Red Sox aren’t a team to get hung up on small-sample performance, so they gambled that Ross would turn it around given another 50 or 60 innings back in the ‘pen. They were mostly right: last season both Ross’ BABIP (.351 to .296) and his LOB percentage (58.9 percent to 74.8 percent) returned to the land of normalcy, and his ERA also took a sharp turn in the right direction, down from 6.20 to 3.86.

But Ross’ 2015 was due to more than just positive regression; he also regained a couple ticks in velocity (Brooks Baseball):

In 2014, Ross’ fastball velocity was predictably down as a starter, but it remained similarly low even after he switched back to relieving. In fact, out of his 17 relief appearances in ’14, Ross posted an average fastball velocity of under 92 mph in 71 percent of them. Flash forward to 2015 and that number dipped to 3.3 percent while his average heater reached 94 mph in September. The jump in velocity also helped Ross’ offspeed stuff, as his slider induced ground balls at a 72.2 percent clip and his slider and curve combined to allow a total of six extra-base hits in 364 pitches.

What Went Wrong in 2015

Despite the return to form, Ross remains a store brand variety middle reliever—he’s fine and all, but if you’ve got a few spare bucks lying around, you’d rather splurge for the Cheerios. Last season, among pitchers with at least 30 innings, both Ross’ DRA and cFIP ranked right around 200th in the majors (out of 439 pitchers), and that includes starters.

And while his ability to handle righties with some effectiveness makes him more than your typical LOOGY, his struggles—given his handedness—against lefties makes him someone you don’t necessarily trust against Chris Davis in a late-and-close situation.

Beyond that, though, there really wasn’t much that went wrong in 2015. You’d like a few less home runs and a few more strikeouts, but 2015 Robbie Ross is probably a decent representation of who this guy is. And gosh darnit, Great Value Toasted Whole-Grain Oats ain’t bad.

Outlook for 2016

Ross apparently entered once too often in the eighth inning of a one-run game last season, so the Red Sox doubled down on relief pitchers this offseason, acquiring Craig Kimbrel and Carson Smith and effectively banishing Ross to a role more suited to a reliever of his ilk.

Suddenly the bullpen’s a crowded place, with Kimbrel and Smith joining Koji Uehara and Junichi Tazawa as late inning options while a group of southpaws like Tommy Layne, Roenis Elias and Ross left to sort themselves out for lower-leverage work. If all goes as planned, Ross should find himself in a less prominent bullpen slot in 2016, and that’s a good thing for all parties involved.

Photo by Rick Ostentoski/USA Today Sports Images

Just take a look at the players who were brought in between last winter and the trade deadline during the 2014 season. Rick Porcello, Wade Miley, Justin Masterson, Joe Kelly and even Robbie Ross were all brought in with some starting experience, and all of them leaned heavily on ground balls. Each one of those pitchers consistently produced ground-ball rates greater than 50 percent from season to season before coming to Boston.

Overall, that group came in and helped form a pitching staff that was atrocious by some measures, but perfectly fine by others. If you look just at ERA, they were among the worst groups of pitchers in baseball, ranking 25th. Even FIP pegged them as a bad unit, as the Red Sox ranked 22nd in that category. However, things get a lot better when you look at BP’s cFIP and DRA-. Boston put up marks of 100 and 99 in these statistics, respectively, making them an essentially average pitching staff by both a predictive and a descriptive stat. So, depending on how you choose to look at things, the Red Sox either lost because their pitching was so bad, or their pitching did exactly what the team was expecting, and other areas of the roster just failed to meet expectations. The question I’m curious about, though, is whether or not ground balls played a big role in this success (or lack thereof).

Boston’s pitchers induced ground balls just over 45 percent of the time, which ended the year as the 23rd highest mark in the league. It seems fairly obvious that the Red Sox were trying to finish higher than that.

As a staff, it appears the whole ground ball strategy didn’t really work out according to plan. Boston’s pitchers induced ground balls just over 45 percent of the time, which ended the year as the 23rd highest mark in the league. It seems fairly obvious that the Red Sox were trying to finish higher than that. In fact, this is the third straight year in which Boston has finished 23rd or 24th in GB%. Of course, when talking about this pitching staff, one has to mention that it started looking much different than planned relatively early on. By the end of the year, guys Eduardo Rodriguez and Henry Owens had made a big impact on the team’s pitching numbers. So, is that the reason for the lack of ground balls, or did the new acquisitions just not do their job?

We’ll start with Porcello, who was in some ways the face of Boston’s pitching staff. He was the most high-profile addition, and represented that mid-rotation ground-ball-type that they appeared to be targeting. In his first season with the Red Sox, he changed dramatically as a pitcher. For the first time in his career, Porcello finished with a ground ball rate under 51 percent, and it was just the third time he finished under 54 percent. Among the 141 pitchers with at least 100 innings, Porcello’s 47 percent ground ball rate ranked right in the middle of the pack at 71st. The reason for this dramatic drop off is quite simple; he changed who he is as a pitcher. For one thing, he started to lean on his two-seamer rather than his sinker, something he changed as the year went on which, unsurprisingly, led to better results. On top of that, however, his approach on the mound changed. Instead of pounding the bottom of the zone, he tried to attack up in the zone much more often.

It’s entirely possible that many of these pitches were just missed spots from Porcello, but he had enough control this year to suggest that at least a significant part of the difference between these plots were because of a changed approach. While the approach led to more strikeouts, it also led to fewer ground balls, more hits and more home runs. The tradeoff was not worth it.

Miley was the next most prevalent pitcher brought in this year, and was essentially what everyone thought of him before the year. He’s a boring back-end guy who will get ground balls and limit damage most of the time. His ground-ball rate did fall a bit this year, but it wasn’t as dramatic as it was with Porcello and stayed at 50 percent, just missing the top 40 in ground-ball rate. There wasn’t much change in his approach either, as he continued to pound the bottom of the zone and relied on roughly the same pitch mix he always has. The real difference was likely he fact that he faced a DH every time through the order rather than an opposing pitcher.

Next, we look at Masterson, who many have probably forgotten was even on the team for most of the first half. I don’t think it’s unfair to say the Masterson experiment failed on every level, as he was with the team for its worst stretch, and he struggled virtually every time he took the mound. That extended to his ground ball inducing ability as well. While his 52 percent rate looks good in a vacuum, this is a guy whose GB% typically sits near or above 60 percent, making his 2015 mark the lowest of his career and a significant downtick. Like Porcello, Masterson stopped throwing his sinker so much, and also started to throw up in the zone more. However, unlike Porcello, it’s unclear how much of this was strategy and how much was just a bad pitcher pitching badly. With Masterson, it was never clear that a high pitch was part of the plan. Instead, it looked more like a pitcher with very bad command.

Finally, we have Joe Kelly, one of the most strangely divisive pitchers in recent memory. Before coming to the Red Sox in the John Lackey trade last year, he consistently carried ground-ball rates closer to 60 percent than 50 percent. Then, in 2015, he watched that number plummet to 46 percent, a below-average rate. What’s odd is the fact that, per Brooks Baseball, he started throwing more sinkers and sliders. It’s clear his [editor’s note: great] stuff just didn’t work the way it was intended. Once again, we have a Red Sox pitcher who attacked the upper portion of the zone more often than he had previously in his career. However, with Kelly, the change wasn’t dramatic and poor command could easily be to blame.

So, in the end, Boston’s strategy to induce more ground balls in 2015 was a clear failure. The team stayed in the bottom-third of the league, and it’s individual pitchers all watched their ground ball rates fall this season. Of the new acquisitions, only Miley stayed at a 50 percent ground ball rate. Some of this was a change in approach, like with Porcello, that appears to be a misstep by both the pitcher and the coaching staff. Some of it was just a bad pitcher struggling with location. The moral story appears to be building a pitching staff around contact-oriented pitching can easily lead to bad results.

Photo by Bob DeChiara/USA Today Sports Images.

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

Anyway, this is just a long way of saying that for all the excitement many hold regarding the upcoming offseason, it might actually be a relatively boring winter. Sure, the Red Sox will be in on David Price and Johnny Cueto. There will be a bunch of crazy trade rumors involving star pitchers, and some of them may even be true! However, most of the action is going to involve the bullpen.

Boston’s relief unit is so bad that I’ve *literally* run out of ways to describe it besides Not Good. Dombrowski is going to need to focus on basically every role in the bullpen, from the ninth inning to the long man. It’s another role I want to focus on today, though. The Red Sox lacked a strong left-handed option out of the bullpen for the entirety of last season, which is something I wrote about last offseason. They simply haven’t been able to find anyone who possesses anything vaguely resembling Andrew Miller’s skill set. It’s clear that the new-look front office can’t have the same approach in this area as the old regime did, so let’s look at some possible options to serve as the team’s top lefty.

(It’s worth mentioning that Aroldis Chapman will not be included here. He is a potential target, but he transcends handedness.)

In-House

Options: Tommy Layne, Robbie Ross, Henry Owens, Brian Johnson, Edwin Escobar

To put it nicely, this is an underwhelming group. To be fair, most of these guys can be part of legitimate major-league bullpens. We’ve seen Layne be a solid LOOGY, even if he’s an almost guaranteed disaster if forced to face a right-handed batter. Ross was far and away the best reliever on the team over the final month of the season. Both of those guys have a case to stick around next year, but neither should be the number one left-handed option.

The next two names are more intriguing, but the role obviously isn’t a perfect fit. Owens in particular has stuff that could be lethal in short stints, but he is also likely to be the first or second line of depth for the rotation. It’s possible to carry a swingman who stays stretched out and still pitches in high-leverage situations — look at Alfredo Aceves in 2011 — but it’s very hard, especially for such a young pitcher. Johnson, meanwhile, is likely further down on the starting pitcher depth chart, but he’s also a worse fit in the bullpen. Neither guy is likely to be a part of the 2016 reliever corps.

Escobar has no shot of playing such a large role to start the year. His best-case scenario would be emerging and becoming a major player in the second half. Clearly, there are no comforting in-house options, which leads us to the guys out of the organization.

Free Agency

Options: Antonio Bastardo, J.P. Howell, Oliver Perez, Tony Sipp

To be fair, there are going to be more options than this after teams decide who they are going to non-tender. For now, however, the options in free agency are relatively slim. Howell may be the most intriguing on the list, but the Dodgers have a $6.25 million option on him for 2016. If they decline it, Boston should be all over it, but it seems unlikely. After him, Bastardo (or Tony No-Dads) represents the best free agent option. Though he’s prone to erratic performances at times, he’s the power-throwing strikeout lefty this bullpen sorely lacks. He has six full seasons under his belt and he’s never finished a year with a FIP above 3.34, and his career-low K% is 26.3%.

Perez has always been a personal favorite of mine, and has taken a similar, albeit less drastic, road to Miller’s. Once a top starting pitching prospect, Perez transitioned to the bullpen and quietly turned into a very solid left-handed option. He now has four seasons as a full-time reliever and has pitched to a 3.31 ERA and a 3.21 FIP with over eleven strikeouts per nine innings. Sipp has redefined himself in the last two years with Houston, and could serve as something more than a LOOGY with very small platoon splits.

The good thing about this group is they are all similar in talent, and none of them will demand anything close to a prohibitive contract.

Trade Market

Options: Will Smith, Boone Logan, Marc Rzepcynski, Mike Dunn, Adam Morgan, Drew Pomeranz

The thing about the trade market with respect to relievers is it’s impossible to guess who will be available. These names all stood out as possibilities to me based on their team, but many more will likely be out there. With that being said, it’s hard to imagine anyone being more desirable than Smith. Even beyond sharing a name with the greatest actor/rapper of our time, he is one of the more underrated young bullpen arms in the game. Over the past two years, the now-26-year-old has thrown 129 innings with a 3.21 ERA and a 2.87 FIP. Among the 329 pitchers who tossed at least 50 innings this year, he ranked 64th in DRA- and 17th in cFIP. The Brewers are likely in rebuild mode, but Smith could cost a lot in a trade given his talent and the four years remaining before he hits free agency.

Logan, Rzepcynski and Dunn are all basically the same guy, and don’t need too many words spent on them. They’re all veterans on teams that could go on a selling spree this winter. Each of them have solid track records, but haven’t been so great that they’ll cost a lot in a trade. These are the boring, but potentially effective, members of the lefty reliever trade market. The Michael Bluths, if you will.

Finally, there are Morgan and Pomeranz, who are incredibly intriguing but not locks to be available. The credit to the Morgan idea goes to Brian MacPherson, who brought his name up in this column. He would be a coin flip and probably shouldn’t be relied on as a number one option right away, but he could emerge as one relatively quickly. Pomeranz, meanwhile, excelled as a reliever in Oakland last season. While it’s hard to see why the A’s would trade him, it’s a fool’s errand to try and guess what Billy Beane will do.

As Dave Dombrowski tries to solve the Boston Bullpen Crisis, one of the key situations he’ll need to address is the lack of effective left-handed arms. The in-house options are less than ideal, but there are plenty of available options, and none of them will be overly expensive to acquire. My personal favorites would be Smith, Howell or Bastardo, but any of the options listed above would be an improvement over the current situation. Really, the only way the front office can fail is to stand pat.

Photo by Nick Turchiaro/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.

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