SEATTLE — For much of the season, the Red Sox bullpen has been one of the team’s success stories.
Closer Kenley Jansen has brought some stability and order to the ninth inning, converting 24-of-27 save opportunities, including the last 15 in a row. Once he recovered from a shoulder issue in the first month of the schedule, Chris Martin has emerged as a dominant high-leverage set-up man in the eighth, sporting a 1.99 ERA and a 0.99 WHIP.
As a whole, the bullpen has compiled a 3.77, good for ninth-best in the game.
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But you wouldn’t have known it by watching the Red Sox on their recent West Coast road trip. The Sox limped back home Wednesday, having gone 2-4, and it’s no stretch to suggest that the bullpen — either directly or indirectly — cost them all four losses.
* In San Francisco Saturday, the Red Sox got a two-run single from Justin Turner in the top of the ninth to erase a 2-0 deficit and tie the game at 2-2. That tie lasted exactly one pitch when J.D. Davis homered off Jansen in the bottom of the ninth.
* On Sunday, more late-game heroics from Turner — in this case, a two-run homer — put the Sox up 3-2 with six outs to go. But Josh Winckowski couldn’t preserve the lead in the bottom of the eighth, and after a few scoreless innings by both teams, the Giants broke through in the bottom of the 11th against newly-acquired Mauricio Llovera, resulting in a second-straight walkoff loss, 4-3.
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* On Monday, in the series opener against the Mariners, Nick Pivetta, making his first start since mid-May, pitched the Red Sox into the eighth, allowing just two runs. The Sox trailed 2-1 when he left the game. By the time the inning was over, the Mariners had scraped together four runs, three of them off lefty Joe Jacques. The Sox managed a run in the top of the ninth, but it wasn’t nearly enough in a 6-2 loss.
* Finally, in the final game of the trip, the Sox turned a 3-0 lead in the sixth into a 6-3 defeat. John Schreiber and Richard Bleier combined to allow six runs on six hits in 1.2 innings. It marked only the third time in 46 games in which the Sox lost a game they had led after six innings.
“It was one of those days where there certain guys who were down,” offered Alex Cora, referring to Winckowski and Martin.
But Cora rejected any suggestion that the bullpen had been the culprit on the trip, the reason the trip didn’t produce better results.
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“I mean, that’s where we’re at when you start playing close games,’’ he shrugged. “You have to stay from some guys (sometimes) and other guys have to do the job. That’s the bottom line. I don’t see that they’re struggling.”
For the season, no. But in the last week, it’s hard to argue otherwise.
The losses come at a difficult time, too. When the trip began, the Red Sox were a game and a half behind the third wild card in the American League, Toronto. When the game finished Wednesday, the Sox were two games out. It could have been worse, but the Blue Jays had themselves stumbled and dropped their last three. Of course, the other way to look at it is this: a better trip — say, 4-2 instead of 2-4 — would have had them holding down the third and final spot in the A.L.
At this point, it’s not unfair to wonder what impact the steady diet of bullpen games has had on the relievers as a whole. At the very least, it’s led to some unpredictability when it comes to usage.
The traditional starters — James Paxton, Brayan Bello and Kutter Crawford, Wednesday’s starters — pitched superbly on the trip. Together, they combined to post a 2.49 ERA in four of the six games. And in Nick Pivetta’s start the other night, and the ERA is 2.79.
No matter the opponent or circumstance, a team with a 2.79 ERA should do better 2-4 mark over a stretch of games.
Blame the offense, if you wish, which didn’t produce runs when it had the chance. In the four losses, the Red Sox were just 6-for-30 with runners in scoring position.
Offensive funks are going to happen. So, too, are defensive lapses, the latter of which take place at an alarming rate for these Red Sox. In the four-run Seattle seventh, left side infielders Rafael Devers and Yu Chang ran into one another trying to field what could have been a double play. Instead, the inning rapidly unraveled.
At some point, however, a bullpen has to overcome the lack of offensive support, or the sloppy plays in the field. Playoff-caliber teams are 14-18 in one-run games, which suggest when it comes to postseason worthiness, the Sox may be lacking.
The rest of the field is flawed enough to keep the Red Sox within shouting distance even when they play poorly enough to take themselves out of contention. But if the bullpen doesn’t perform better, and soon, even mediocrity has its limits.
