Boston’s pen currently features seven relievers: Craig Kimbrel, Koji Uehara, Junichi Tazawa, Robbie Ross, Heath Hembree, Tommy Layne and Matt Barnes. We’ll organize them into three tiers. The top tier includes the first three guys on the list. Say what you will about Kimbrel’s increased home run and walk rate, he’s still an elite option. Koji is visibly aging but for now he’s in this class. Beyond the thought of Tazawa facing anyone who has ever been a part of the Blue Jays organization, he’s a rock in Boston’s pen.

Then there’s the next group. That’s Ross and Hembree. Ross has been susceptible to the home run and he still walks more than you’d like, but he’s been effective. Hembree has been, if anything, even better, but he’s such a fly-ball pitcher that the fear of homers raining from the sky is still there. All in all though, two effective if not elite relievers.

Then there’s the back end of Layne and Barnes. Some might put Barnes in the middle tier, but I don’t because he simply walks too many guys. He’s not immune to homers either, though it’s not a huge problem for him. Mostly he’s a competent reliever, but not an option for the back end of pen because he simply doesn’t throw enough quality strikes or, really, enough strikes. Layne is, I’m sure a nice fellow, but he’s really just a guy. The walks are high, the strikeouts league average or a touch below from the pen, and he doesn’t dominate lefties like you’d think a guy with his arm angle would.

When looking to upgrade the pen, it’s this last tier of guys that I’d look to improve upon. You never like to lose talent for nothing, but this team is all in on winning this season and frankly Layne isn’t doing much to help. Barnes could someday move into the second tier if his command improves, but stashing him back in Pawtucket shouldn’t be any kind of impediment to improving the bullpen in Boston right now.

There are two groups from where to draw that improvement. The first is starting pitchers who have flamed out at the major league level. That would be Roenis Elias and Joe Kelly. Kelly is currently hurt, and his groin injury is coming along slowly. If he returns this season, it should be as a reliever in Pawtucket. See if his stuff plays up in a bullpen role and go from there. In the meantime, Roenis Elias represents an intriguing replacement for Tommy Layne, assuming the team needs a lefty-on-lefty only reliever. Elias has been successful against left handers in his career, holding them to a .658 OPS with a 2.67 K/BB ratio. He has some speed on his fastball and deception from the left side, both of which could play up a bit in the pen. It must be acknowledged that taking a starter and making him a situational lefty isn’t exactly squeezing out all the marrow out of the bone, but in this season of Going All In, maybe it merits a shot.

In his last 10 appearances, Light has thrown 12 innings, struck out 13, walked four, and given up six hits and no runs.

The second group is composed of minor league relievers Pat Light and Kyle Martin. Light is likely the better known of the two, having already made his major league debut earlier this season. His fastball sits in the upper 90s and he’s reported to have reached 100 mph at times. He keeps hitters off that heat with a splitter and slider. The overall package can be downright dominating when the command is there, and after an initial bump in the road at Pawtucket after his call up, Light has been dominant. In his last 10 appearances he’s thrown 12 innings, struck out 13, walked four, and given up six hits and no runs. Overall he has 32 strikeouts and 13 walks in 26.1 innings in Triple-A and all with only one homer allowed. He’s spent time in Triple-A and made an appearance in Boston, so it’s unlikely the 25-year-old would be wowed by the lights (sorry not sorry). (Editor’s note: it is indeed Light who got the call to the majors to replace Eduardo Rodriguez on the roster.)

Pat Light isn’t the only one in Triple-A to pitch well out of the pen. Kyle Martin, the Red Sox 9th round pick in 2013 out of Texas A&M University has been putting up numbers that surpass Light’s. His strikeouts are up (11.3 K/9), his walks down (2.3. BB/9), and his ground ball tendencies help keep the homers down as well with just one given up in 35 innings so far this season. Martin does carry a 4.11 ERA, but his K and BB numbers are quite good and he keeps the ball in the park well so his potential as a fifth or sixth bullpen arm isn’t diminished.

None of these guys are the next Kimbrel, but deployed properly they can be upgrades on the current cast. Send Barnes down and see what Light brings you. See if Elias can help get lefties out better than Layne has been able to, or don’t, just bring up Martin instead. There are, believe it or not, options. And options are good, especially if they represent hope and if they don’t cost the team top prospects like Rafael Devers or Anderson Espinoza. If Andrew Miller is available at reasonable cost, consider making the move, but short of that, there are enough problems elsewhere on this roster that it makes sense to use the team’s resources on a position with fewer internal solutions, which, at least for now, rules out the bullpen.

Photo by Kelly O’Connor/www.sittingstill.smugmug.com

Top Play (WPA)

Clay Buchholz could’ve been worse, but he gave up plenty of hard contact in this one, including during the most important play of the game. Heading into the top of the fourth, things were looking pretty good for the Red Sox. Buchholz appeared to be settling into a bit of a groove, and the offense got to Chris Sale a bit in the previous frame. Then, with one out in the inning, Buchholz left a pitch up to Todd Frazier and Chicago’s third baseman demolished a ball to the Monster Seats (+.110). Statcast had the exit velocity on the homer at 97.8 miles per hour.

Bottom Play (WPA)

For the most part, Boston was completely and utterly shut down by White Sox pitching, which isn’t something to be ashamed of when Chris Sale gets the start. The did get a few chances, though, the best of which came in the eighth after Sale left the game. Nate Jones, another very good pitcher, came on in relief and allowed two singles to bring Hanley Ramirez up with one out and a chance to take the lead with one swing. Instead, he struck out (-.096) in an ugly at bat on a night that was full of them.

Let’s Talk About Buchholz

Like I said on the top, this game could’ve been much worse. Things got off to as poor of a start as possible, when Tim Anderson hit the first pitch of the game over everything in left field. The first inning didn’t get much better, as he followed up the home run with a crushed double off the bat of Adam Eaton, who would eventually come around to score on a sacrifice fly. Outside of that and the Frazier home run, though, Buchholz was solid. Now, obviously you can’t take the bad stuff out and say it was a good start. Life doesn’t work like that. Given the rest of the rotation options, though, he probably earned himself another start. That certainly says more about the team’s depth than Buchholz.

Unheralded Bullpen Heroes Come Through

The bullpen, like the rotation, will probably need some help at the deadline, but it’s not in as rough shape as many would have you believe. Matt Barnes and Tommy Layne came through with big performances on Tuesday night, showing they can perform when needed. The former came in for Buchholz in the sixth and tossed 2.1 scoreless innings and looked good doing it. Then, Layne came in and tossed 1.2 high-leverage innings that included just one base runner despite facing all of the righties in the middle of Chicago’s lineup. The Red Sox avoided what could’ve been a crushing game for this bullpen.

Hanley Ramirez Did Not Have Fun Last Night

In a season that has been mostly disappointing at the plate, I’m not sure Ramirez has had a night in which he’s looked quite that bad. Obviously, facing guys like Sale and Jones contribute to that, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. He was guessing on every pitch, and guessing wrong most of the time. He was defenseless against Sale’s slider, and couldn’t come close to catching up to any velocity. Not only did he have the bottom play of the game, but another strikeout — this time with the bases loaded in the third — came in as the second worst play of the game by WPA. This lineup could really use a hot streak from Ramirez.

Coming Next

The Red Sox will look to turn this series and this homestand around tomorrow night in another lopsided pitching matchup. Jose Quintana has long been among the most underappreciated starters in all of baseball, and he’s making people take notice with his stellar season this year. Meanwhile, Eduardo Rodriguez is trying to turn it around after an abysmal start to his season. First pitch at Fenway will come at 7:10 pm EST.

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The Red Sox entered last season with three lefties in line for the major league bullpen, and PECOTA was not very impressed with any of them. Robbie Ross was pegged for a 0.2 WARP season and Craig Breslow was projected to contribute at a replacement level 0.0 WARP. Tommy Layne, with a recent if small history of success, seemed dragged down by iffy peripherals, and was given a -0.2 WARP projection. As I wrote in April, Layne had been dominant against lefties in particular, making him a promising part of the bullpen as a lefty matchups man. As I found out the afternoon that piece was posted, that didn’t mean Layne was a lock to actually stay in the majors all season.

Layne made his way back to the major league roster by the end of that month, excelling in May (1.64 ERA in 11 innings) and sticking with the club for the rest of the year. Used as a true matchups man, he found success in that role; to the extent that a late-blooming journeyman LOOGY can be a bright spot of the bullpen moving forward, that’s what he appears to be.

What Went Right

Layne’s success starts and ends with the 102 plate appearances he tallied against left-handed hitters. The .248 OBP they managed against him was more “very good” than “outstanding,” but while pitching around the zone meant a predictably high walk rate (more on that later), that approach also had the desired effect: lefties slugged just .170 against Layne, and none of those 102 batters managed to hit a long ball.

Against lefties, Layne fared exactly as well as Dallas Keuchel and Wade Davis. We’ll take that.

Last year, a low slugging mark helped keep Layne’s TAv down to just .136 against lefty hitters; of sixty-three lefty relievers who pitched in at least 30 games in 2014, only Sean Doolittle had a better mark (.097 TAv against lefties). Even in his most wintry of Winter Soldier relief seasons, Zach Britton (.139 TAv) didn’t do better than Layne. Aroldis Chapman (.151 TAv) didn’t do better than Layne.

Still, Layne’s brief but dominant 2014 LOOGY experience seemed to offer little beyond confirmation that Layne threw with his left arm and could have success in that role — not that he would. If the Doolittle-Britton-Chapman company was the kind that Layne needed to keep in order to call his 2015 season a success, the odds seemed heavily stacked against him. And yet…

Layne ended the 2015 season with a .172 TAv against lefties, behind only a who’s who of baseball’s top pitchers who faced lefties for at least 50 PA. He ranked behind only Javier Lopez, Britton, Mark Melancon, Carter Capps, Brandon Maurer and Dellin Betances among relief pitchers. Against lefties, Layne fared exactly as well as Dallas Keuchel and Wade Davis. We’ll take that, even if it’s hard to explain how he did it. When the pressure was on, Layne was only counted on when he was in a position to succeed; according to Baseball Reference, Layne held batters to a .436 OPS in High Leverage situations.

What Went Wrong

No baseball player gets the platoon advantage 100% of the time, and in Layne’s case, he still ended up facing more RHH (105) than LHH (102). Even though his splits were so extreme that on paper, he looks like he was out there for RHH (21 innings) quite a bit less than LHH (26.2 innings). Just as Layne tended to pitch in high leverage situations when he’d be able to face a lefty, he sputtered when used less strategically: a .713 OPS for batters in Medium Leverage situations, and a bloated .795 OPS in Low Leverage.

Layne was no Keuchel against righties, who managed a .310 TAv against him. If you’re going to hack it as a matchups reliever, it makes sense to judge you based on how well you perform in the intended matchups. Still, it’s not like the other innings don’t count. Layne yielded a 26.5% LD% against righties, a not-insignificant sign that they had a pretty easy time squaring him up. A .517 slugging percentage allowed against them tells the same story.

Between Layne’s poor results against RHH on batted balls and very good results against LHH, you can’t really blame him for closing his eyes and wishing as hard as he could that he could just kind of skip RHH. Since he had a little more control over those situations than wishes, the fact that he did skip more than a few RHH is probably not a question of command. Layne’s 6.86 BB/9 against RHH is understandable, but no less horrendous than it sounds. That walk rate is tantamount to an admission that Layne has little business pitching to major league RHH. Layne’s performance against RHH in 21 innings was enough to raise the entire team’s ERA from 4.30 to 4.34.

Outlook for 2016

To the extent Layne finds success, it’s probably always going to feel fluky; that’s the nature of cutting up a reliever’s small sample of innings into even smaller pieces. But there is hope. In the calculation of WARP that depends on FAIR_RA, Layne was barely helpful in 2015: a 0.2 WARP. In the newer calculation of WARP that depends on DRA and more variables we’ve come to trust, Layne’s WARP skyrockets to 0.7, a strong figure for a pitcher with an innings total under 50. Not all walks are made equal; if you’re walking the right batters on purpose, maybe it’s not luck when you then seem to get more than your fair share of ERA credit.

Despite its overall lack of success, the Red Sox rotation did surprisingly well in 2015 in terms of pitching deep in games, ranking 11th in baseball with an average of 5.85 innings per start. If the Red Sox can maintain or even improve that figure, they won’t be tempted to lean on Layne for several batters at a time the way they did last April. And the more Layne pitches to his strength, the better off he’ll be.

Photo by Dan Hamilton/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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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.

Photo by Kelly O’Connor, www.sittingstill.smugmug.com

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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The problems are many among the relievers. Koji Uehara and Junichi Tazawa are the strength at the back, but to me Tazawa looks tired. He leads the group in innings and the results from two of his last three outings support the idea that fatigue is affecting him. Tommy Layne has been the next best, a sentence I never thought I would write, and we have probably seen his peak. After that, things get ugly quickly. There is really no bridge to the quality arms at the back end. Craig Breslow performed tremendously in the postseason in 2013 — a stretch that should not be diminished as the Red Sox likely don’t win the World Series without his effort — but since then he has been one of the five worst relievers in the game (among qualified pitchers). It is hard to justify giving him any more innings. Alexi Ogando seemed like a nice buy-low signing for the Sox this year (1-year, $1.5 million), but he has been sub-replacement level, giving up dingers at an alarming (also unsustainable) rate, and is striking out fewer batters than is typical for him in a relief role. I could go on, but the take home message is that something needs to change.

This brings me to Joe Kelly: the man with the 96 mph fastball and not much to show for it. It is no secret that Kelly has struggled as a starter. He has recorded a quality start in just 49.2% of his 61 starts, a mark that ranks him 106^th out of the 142 pitchers that have made 50 starts since 2012. He has never thrown more than 150 innings in a season, or made more than 20 starts. This season he is sporting an ERA that is 33 percent worse than league average, and his peripherals suggest he is worse than a league average starter (105 FIP-). Without Yadier Molina, Kelly appears to be a man stuck on an island without a plan for getting to shore. Seemingly every start he tinkers with his approach for incorporating secondary pitches, but the results have simply not come. Kelly just turned 27 years old. He is what he is as a starting pitcher. At this point, I think he can provide more value to the Red Sox as a two-pitch reliever who is used in high leverage spots along with Tazawa and Uehara.

Failed (or struggling) starters who move to the bullpen generally require a strong fastball and one secondary pitch that can get swings and misses. Kelly has both in his arsenal. His fastball, which is already good, could see a velocity jump with a move to the bullpen, and then he could adopt his changeup (or slider) as his secondary pitch. His changeup already rates as an above average offering, with the combination of horizontal and vertical movement helping to generate a high percentage of whiffs per swing. Combining it with his fastball could make both significant weapons. Much of this could also be said about his slider, so he would have options for which pitch he focuses on mastering.

Moving to a role as a reliever brings obvious advantages: he would not have to navigate a lineup three times and would not have to worry about pacing himself, which could allow him to really fire the fastball. Kelly, like any other pitcher, is subject to the times through the order penalty. His opponents have been 35 points of OPS better after having seen him once in a game, which is almost entirely driven by an increase in their slugging. Strangely, from the second to the third time through Kelly’s OPS against drops to a level lower than his first time, but that is largely a selection bias, sample size issue. As mentioned above, Kelly does not throw a lot of innings, so he has only faced opposing lineups a third time in roughly 70 percent of his starts, which is another point in favor of converting him. Regardless, the jump from first to second time through could be avoided if he was used as a one- or even two-inning reliever.

To project how Kelly’s numbers could change with a move to the bullpen we can look at his previous marks in the role, and consider Tom Tango’s ‘Rule of 17‘. Kelly spent parts of 2012 and 2013 as a reliever for the Cardinals, which is nice as it means the role would not be entirely new to him. Here are his splits:

Obviously there is a sample size issue with the relief statistics, but it gives some idea of how he could perform. Relying on Tango’s Rule of 17, which states that BABIP is 17 points lower as a reliever, strikeout rate is 17% higher, home runs per contact is 17 points lower, and walk rate is the same, to translate Kelly’s career numbers as a starter would give something like the following as a reliever:

Those numbers don’t jump off the page, and frankly they look a lot like what he has done as a starter this year, but that fact is actually reason to think that the K% could be higher than this Rule of 17 projection, perhaps more in the 21-23 percent range. The likely increase in strikeout rate coupled with having him avoid facing a lineup multiple times are compelling enough reasons to make the change.

The obvious question in all of this becomes: if Kelly is moved out of the rotation, who takes his spot? The first four spots seem pretty well settled with Clay Buchholz, Rick Porcello, Wade Miley and Eduardo Rodriguez. Justin Masterson is an option for the fifth spot, but he ranks only two spots higher than Joe Kelly on that quality start percentage list since 2012, with only 49.5% of his outings being of the quality start variety. Plus, the team appears to be planning to add him to the bullpen upon his return. While Masterson does not have the big fastball that is common among relievers these days, at this point he really should be limited to facing an opposing order once. In his career, Masterson’s .675 OPS against the first time through has jumped to .739 on the second trip, and then .752 on the third trip, although none of those numbers are likely representative of the pitcher Masterson is in 2015. Also, every pitcher suffers these times through the order penalties, so that is not the only reason to move a player out of the rotation. If a pitcher is struggling as a starter, as Kelly and Masterson have been, and there is a viable role for him as a reliever, then it is incumbent on the team to organize their players in such a way as to best limit the damage.

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If Masterson is out of the mix, then a tandem of Steven Wright and Brian Johnson could be the answer. At this point there is not much of a difference in the projections for Wright and Kelly as starters (~ 0.5 difference in ERA the rest of the season), and the left-handed Johnson has been excelling at Triple-A Pawtucket (2.51 ERA, 3.27 FIP in 68 innings). Pairing them in the fifth rotation spot would ease the pressure on each pitcher, help with TTOP, and make it more difficult for opposing lineups to stack themselves in such a way as to consistently gain a platoon advantage. That is, unless they elect to go right-on-right against the knuckler Wright, which some teams do. Platooning lineups aside, this sort of approach – limiting back-end rotation pitchers to shorter outings – is something that has worked well for the Tampa Bay Rays this year. They have limited a few of their pitchers to 15-20 total batters faced per start, which has in turn reduced the extent to which they get into trouble. Once again the Rays seem to be ahead of the curve with on-field strategy, and it has helped propel their team of interesting parts to the top of the division.

If the rotation is set as I have suggested the bullpen becomes Uehara, Tazawa, and Kelly as the primary high-leverage guys, Layne and Masterson as xOOGYs, and then two of Matt Barnes, Robbie Ross Jr., Alexi Ogando and Heath Hembree to round things out. I would even consider promoting Henry Owens into a bullpen role. It would allow him to get his first real taste of the big leagues as a reliever, which is an approach many teams have taken with top pitching prospects, and it has worked fairly well. Executing this plan, or something similar, would give the Sox a 13-man staff, which is at least one too many, but it is the number the team is currently working with and probably for the best until things are settled and relievers accept throwing more than one inning at a time. Getting the pitching staff down to 11 and having a deeper bench is more advantageous in my mind, but that is an article for another day.

The decision to move Kelly to the bullpen and rearrange the roster to accommodate the move depends, at least to some extent, on if the Red Sox think the season is lost. If Ben Cherington, John Farrell and the gang think it is lost then I suppose there is some sense in letting Kelly wail away as a starter for the rest of the season in the hope that he can figure it out. But if the thought is that this team can make a run at the postseason, and I’ll admit it is getting stark as their BP playoff odds are down to 8.0%, then it seems reasonable that the team will be better with Kelly coming out of the bullpen. Of course the whole thing could just be an exercise like moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic.

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Top Play (WPA): With a .202 WPA, Mike Napoli’s homer in the top of the sixth inning takes the cake here, just barely edging out Pedro Ciriaco’s game-tying single (.201 WPA) in the bottom of the sixth. It was no cheapie, either. Alex Wood threw a changeup that didn’t dive down far enough and Napoli parked it in the left-center field seats. It’s always nice when 2013 Napoli decides to show up.

Bottom Play (WPA): Kelly Johnson struck out for the first out of the bottom of the sixth, and with runners on first & second, that play was good for a -.099 WPA. For the Sox, Blake Swihart tried his best to earn this one, as he struck out with runners on second and third with one out in the second inning to rack up a -.087 WPA. If you wanted to qualify for this, uh, honor in the game, striking out with RISP seemed to be the way to go.

Key Moment: Junichi Tazawa giving up the go-ahead RBI single to Nick Markakis. The wheels didn’t just come off for the Red Sox after that – they blew off at Mach 1. They barely got a force out at home, then lefty Tommy Layne came in and walked lefty AJ Pierzynski, he of the 4.3% walk rate, to double the lead. To be fair – and I’m trying not to sound as bitter as possible here – Tazawa was getting squeezed by umpire Brian Knight, who had such an inconsistent strike zone that Jerry Remy took to saying that some of those pitches were undoubtedly strikes. Combine all of that and you get a game that left you with a feeling that can best be described as depressingly numbing.

Trend to Watch: The bullpen. Oh my dear lord, the bullpen. It was nothing short of terrible tonight, Brian Knight notwithstanding. Robbie Ross was the only one to even seem effective, and even he let AJ Pierzynski on base. What’s even more terrifying is that Justin Masterson looks set to join that merry band of relievers soon, in an attempt to turn a disaster into a full-blown catastrophe. I’m no sailor, but I think this ship is taking on water fast.

Coming Next: The Red Sox unleash Clay Buchholz upon the Braves, as he’ll look to bounce back from two consecutive 4-run outings. Opposing him is Shelby Miller, who has only recorded one start this season in which he didn’t go at least five innings.

Photo by Jason Getz/USA Today Sports Images

The Closer

All bullpens start at the back end and work their way forward, and Boston’s is no exception. As has been the case for the last year and a half, Koji Uehara is the ninth-inning man when he’s healthy. Despite some premature worries after a couple of rough outings to start the year, Uehara is still one of the better relievers in the game. It’s true that he suffered from a visible drop in velocity a few weeks ago, but that’s mostly rectified itself now. What’s always made Uehara so great has been his absurd ability to rack up strikeouts while limiting his walks. In one stretch between 2013 and 2014, including the playoffs, he struck out 54 batters between walks. He’s back to that level in the early part of 2015. The 40-year-old has 11 strikeouts in 6 1/3 innings without allowing a single walk. The age means injury and fatigue may be an issue, but as long as he’s able to pitch, the Red Sox will be just fine at the end of games.

The Set-Up Men

The next man down on the totem pole is Junichi Tazawa, who has become a borderline dominant reliever since converting from a starter in 2012. He’s become something of a middle class Uehara in terms of racking up strikeouts and limiting walks. Since becoming a full-time reliever Tazawa has struck out exactly a quarter of the batters he has faced while walking just under five percent. On top of that, he’s been able to hold up despite appearing in 71 games in each of the last two seasons. He’s by no means invincible, though. He’s been very prone to hard contact over his career, allowing about a home run every nine innings and a .308 opponents’ BABIP in that same time frame. Those issues aside, he’s been one of my favorite pitchers to watch over the last few years and gives the Red Sox a consistent threat in the eighth inning, as long as the Blue Jays aren’t the opponent.

This is where things start to get a little shaky. Coming into the season, Edward Mujica was the next man in line. In fact, he started the year as the closer while Uehara worked his way back from injury. There’s no way to sugarcoat it, though: He’s been a train wreck in 2015. He’s getting lit up with hard contact and isn’t striking out any batters to offset that. There’s a chance that he can bounce back like he did last year, but there have been no signs of life from him thus far, and he’s been relegated to medium- and low-leverage situations for the time being. [Editor’s note: WELP]

Taking his spot as the secondary set-up man has been Alexi Ogando. The former Ranger has always had electric stuff, but injury and shuffling back and forth between the bullpen and the rotation made him available for cheap this offseason. Thus far, he’s performed above my expectations. His velocity is as high as it’s been since 2012 and it’s only climbing, averaging above 95 mph over his last couple outings. With that velocity has come a good strikeout rate with surprising control. He’s given up a couple of homers that have hurt his overall numbers, but he’s looked very good so far. Given the team’s wariness towards putting Tazawa in the closer role, Ogando may very well be the one to replace Uehara in case of injury.

The Lefties

This is about as uninspiring of a group as one could imagine, especially after we were spoiled by Andrew Miller the last few years. Alone, Craig Breslow, Tommy Layne and Robbie Ross Jr. can all be effective middle relievers. Needing one of them to step up as the top lefty is asking a lot, though. To his credit, Breslow has looked much better than he did in his disastrous 2014, but he’s allowed runs in three of his last four starts and doesn’t have the stuff to be a true dominant force. Layne continues to be a solid producer against all odds, but he’s a career minor league who carries an underwhelming profile and will likely go downhill at some point. Ross may be the most intriguing part of this trio, which says more about the group than him. He still comes with relative youth and the Red Sox have seemingly given him higher-leverage situations than the other lefties. However, he’s never been able to strike batters out, and hitters have roughed him up so far this year. Given the way the last few weeks have gone, it’s not going to be too high on their list of priorities, but the left-handed reliever situation will need to be addressed at some point.

The Future

Luckily for the Red Sox, the shaky part of their bullpen can be addressed with some young arms. Guys like Heath Hembree, Dalier Hinojosa, Noe Ramirez and Steven Wright can all help out when needed, but they won’t move the needle. Pawtucket’s starters, on the other hand, could. Matt Barnes jumps to mind first, as he worked as a reliever in spring training and has stuff that could play up in that role. With a few more poor outings from Mujica, it wouldn’t be surprising at all to see the veteran designated for assignment with Barnes coming up to take his place.

The other three big names in Pawtucket’s rotation intrigue me the most, though. Eduardo Rodriguez, Henry Owens and Brian Johnson all throw from the left side and could be ready for the majors soon. The rotation will obviously be the main concern, but it’s unlikely that three spots open up. If all three are ready to make an impact at the big-league level, it would be great to see at least one shifted into a bullpen role a couple months down the road. Not only would it help Boston’s atrocious lefty reliever situation, it would also give the pitcher a valuable taste of major-league competition.

With the lackluster rotation and sputtering offense, the bullpen is the least of everyone’s concerns right now. Once the offense starts hitting, though, there will be a lot of close, winnable games that will come down to which bullpen performs the best. The eighth and ninth innings look good right now, but the rest of the unit has been very shaky. Luckily, there are some names on the farm that could come up and make a big impact.

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Flexibility in the bullpen, therefore, may be more important than anywhere else on the roster. This can often be accomplished through the use of option years, as young relievers who struggle may get the chance to get on track with a minor league team. But teams can also choose to shuffle the major league deck. With three left-handed relievers in the seven-man bullpen, from afar it could look like the Red Sox are as poised to handle this season’s bullpen potholes as capably as your grandparents’ old Buick.

That may not be the case. The 19-inning marathon on Friday night has helped to obscure just how John Farrell will use his lefty trio this season, but last season, he deployed a bullpen lefty for fewer than three batters 47 times (26 for two batters, 21 for one). Of Robbie Ross, Craig Breslow and Tommy Layne, only Layne is likely to be used in a traditional LOOGY match-ups role. Nonetheless, should Layne run into some struggles, either of the two other lefties could be leaned on in a big spot for a big out against the likes of lefty masher like Chris Davis or Brian McCann.

PECOTA is bearish about how Ross (0.2 WARP), Breslow (0.0 WARP) and Layne (-0.2) are likely to perform this year. Ross is probably the least likely to be used for lefty match-ups. A starter until May and then for three more games later in the 2014 season, Ross pitched as a reliever in just 15 games last year, throwing to fewer than three batters just once. Overall, he pitched with the platoon advantage for just 32% of batters, and while he has been more effective against lefties in his career (holding them to a .277 True Average), “more” isn’t the same thing as “much.” His main usefulness to the club is probably as a multi-inning reliever, where his relative success against right-handed hitters (.286 TAv) is also helpful.

Breslow is also a less than ideal fit for a lefty match-ups role, with a similar career platoon split (.274 TAv vs. lefties, .287 vs. righties). Farrell has used him that way occasionally (nine appearances facing one or two batters in 2014), and he did enjoy a slightly more frequent platoon advantage (45% of PA) than you might expect. That certainly didn’t seem to help him last season; en route to his 5.96 ERA, opponents slashed .247/.309/.379, numbers almost identical to league average.

In fact, Layne’s career success against lefties is almost as impressive as Andrew Miller’s from last season (.176 TAv).

It’s Layne who sticks out as a very effective lefty match-ups man, especially as he was deployed with the platoon advantage for 63% of plate appearances last year. In what is a much smaller sample of plate appearances, Layne has held lefties to a .179 True Average, much stronger than Ross or Breslow and much stronger than Layne has been against righties (.313 TAv). In fact, Layne’s career success against lefties is almost as impressive as Andrew Miller’s from last season (.176 TAv), which raises the question: how good is “good” when it comes to matchup men?

Not as good as Layne. Sixty-three lefty relievers pitched in at least 30 games last year, and their stats against lefties for the most part don’t compare to Layne’s:

Among that crew, Layne had the sixth-lowest batting average against, ranked 10th in on base percentage, and had the fifth-best slugging against. Factor everything that matters into the mix, and Layne’s success against lefties last year merited him a .136 True Average — among those 63 relievers, that ranked him second, behind only Sean Doolittle. Ranking better than 2014 standouts Zach Britton and Aroldis Chapman doesn’t mean that Layne will do the same in 2015, but it does at least highlight the gulf between Layne and Breslow, who ranked 57th in this group.

Layne, like every other lefty reliever, will be called on to get multiple outs most of the time, and so his remarkable success against lefties doesn’t guarantee that he’ll thrive. But his LOOGY prowess is an important ingredient in a recipe that may make Layne an important asset in Farrell’s bullpen all season long.

Photo by Kelly O’Connor, sittingstill.smugmug.com