FORT MYERS, Fla. -- With less than a week to go before Opening Day, the Red Sox' bullpen looks -- to be charitable -- unsettled.
Alex Cora has dodged questions about the identity of his closer, saying, as he did in 2019, that all will be revealed on April 7, when the Red Sox open their season in New York. For now, the presumption is that the role will again go to Matt Barnes, who was brilliant in the first half of last year before his performance took a serious nose-dive in the second half.
But the uncertainty regarding the bullpen goes far deeper than roles or titles.
There's a feeling that the Sox may lack enough back-end weapons. The team would seem to lack an accomplished high-leverage righthander for the eighth inning, a job handled by Adam Ottavino last season. Ryan Brasier is one option there, though he has not looked impressive thus far in Grapefruit League play, being hit around while his fastball remains mired in the low-90s. Brasier ensured a brutal year last year, from losing his father to COVID to being struck in the face by a comebacker in extended spring training, and a certain amount of slack is due him, but his lack of consistency is troubling.
Newcomer Jake Diekman could be one solution. Signed to a two-year deal earlier this month, Diekman has late-inning experience. But he, too, has looked shaky in games. And Matt Stahl, healthy after battling knee problems, is someone the Red Sox believe could bring value.
But the question marks pile up. Hirokazu Sawamura's split is a major weapon, but his penchant for allowing homers -- nine in just 53 innings -- is troubling and he hasn't demonstrated that he can be trusted in true high-leverage spots. Additional questions come attached to lefty Austin Davis, as well as others.
Attempting to forecast how a major league bullpen is going to play out is a notoriously inexact science. Relievers can be lights out one season and a failure the next. Injuries, usage and other factors all go into the equation.
"You have to expect at least a little volatility every year,'' acknowledged one major league executive recently, when the talk turned to bullpens.
If there's one area where the Red Sox may be well equipped, it's the multi-inning spot that has become increasingly popular in major league bullpens as starters deliver fewer innings and teams search for ways to "bridge'' the distance between the starter and the team's best late-inning pitchers. That skill set will be even more welcome early this season while teams closely monitor the workloads of starting pitchers who had half the time to prepare for this season than any other.
It appears as though either Rich Hill or Garrett Whitlock will have a bulk reliever role once the season starts. Kutter Crawford, who appeared in Friday's game against Tampa Bay, has had a terrific spring, with eight strikeouts over four innings and just one run allowed.
Still, the team could use some more traditional set-up choices for the seventh and eighth innings, since it's in that area where they're most lacking. Brasier has been hit hard this spring, with seven hits allowed in just 2.2 innings. His fastball velocity has also been off, though that's hardly atypical for him early in the season.
Veteran Hansel Robles, who arrived in camp Thursday, will soon pitch in a game for the first time, having battled some visa issues in his native Dominican Republic, delaying his arrival. Robles was a nice secondary acquisition at the deadline last July, pitching to a 3,.60 ERA in 27 appearances over the final two months.
But the very fact that the Sox haven't ruled out having Robles on the Opening Day roster despite not yet pitching in a competitive situation since last October is an indication of how thin the current bullpen is, and hints at some desperation on the club's part. Ordinarily, Robles would be given time to build arm strength in extended spring and/or a minor league assignment.
Instead he could find himself on the base lines at Yankee Stadium on Thursday afternoon.
It goes without saying that, by definition, the bullpen will undergo plenty of adjustments throughout the season. No area of a roster sees more churn than the bullpen, and the fact that the Sox have some intriguing possibilities at Triple-A Worcester -- Connor Seabold, Eduard Bazardo, and perhaps later in the season, both Jay Groome and Josh Winckowski -- virtually guarantees lots of up-and-down movement.
But the Red Sox may see even more activity than most, assembling different combinations of relief options until they find one that works best.
Given that there were established free agents on the market, even post-lockout -- Ryan Tepera, Archie Bradley among others -- it's worth wondering if they would have been better off investing in more certainty before the season began.
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This season will, for the first time, feature three wild card teams in each league qualifying for the postseason. Is it possible that all three A.L. entrants could come from the American League East?
From 2021 through last year, when the playoff format featured two wild card teams, only twice did both come from the A.L. East.
In 2016, when the Red Sox claimed the division, Baltimore and Toronto took the wild card spots.
In 2021, Tampa Bay won the East and the Red Sox and Yankees got in via the wild card.
It should be noted, however, that the Blue Jays finished just one game behind both the Sox and Yanks, and had the three wild card format been in place last October, the Blue Jays would have joined the Sox and Yankees as American League wild cards.
Could that happen this time?
"On paper, it looks that way,'' said Alex Cora. "But at the end of the day, nobody thought the (San Francisco) Giants were going to be the team they were last year and dominate the division that the Dodgers were in. So every season is different. We just have to be ready for April 7, understanding that every game counts. We lived it last year and we're not going to forget it.''
Indeed, after getting swept by the Yankees at home in the final series of the season at Fenway, then dropping two-of-three to the lowly Orioles, the Sox needed to sweep the Nationals in Washington to guarantee a spot in the postseason.
From the other two American League divisions, the wild card possibilities would seem limited.
If you consider the Chicago White Sox to repeat as defending champs, it's difficult to identify another team with a strong chance to finish as a wild card contender. If everything goes right for Minnesota, maybe. Detroit is heading in the right direction, but might need another year for its young pitching to emerge.
In the A.L. West, with Houston the presumptive division favorite, Seattle won 90 games, remaining in the wild card race until the final few days. The Mariners have gotten better, adding Robbie Ray and Jessie Winker. The Angels, meanwhile, have a fully healthy Mike Trout to team with Shohei Ohtani, but do they have enough starting pitching? That's debatable.
Meanwhile, the four teams which won 91 or more games in the AL East last season appear fully capable of doing so again.
"It should be another challenging American League East,'' noted Rays manager Kevin Cash recently.
"I mean, this division is always good,'' Yankee manager Aaron Boone told the New York Times recently. "But it feels really good.''
Added Gerrit Cole, the Yankees' No 1 starter: "It's no mess-around, this division.''
The one thing working against having four teams from the same division qualifying for the postseason is this: math.
Under the current schedule, each of the four contenders in the East will play 57 games against the three others. That's slightly more than one-third of their schedule. With four quality teams knocking heads so often, it's tough to have them all win 90 or more games, though, yes, it happened last year under the same schedule.
Meanwhile, contrast that to the schedule for, say, the Twins or Tigers. They get 38 games each against the bottom-feeding Indians and Royals. It's much the same scenario in the West, where the Angels and Mariners get 38 games against the rebuilding A's and Rangers.
In the East, the only easy ones as the 19 against the Orioles.
Starting in 2023, a more balanced schedule will result in fewer intra-division games (56 vs. the current 76) with more games interleague games taking up the slack.
Under that format, three wild cards from the same division may be more feasible.
But don't bet against it happening this year, too.
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It's a mystery as to why MLB took so long to do so, but starting next week, umpires will announce the result of replay calls on the field, with fans in the ballpark and viewers (and listeners) at home able to hear them.
The NFL and NHL have done so from the beginning. It's inexcusable that baseball didn't follow suit, and took 14 years -- replay challenges were introduced for the 2008 season -- to correct.
For too long, fans -- especially those in the ballpark -- were left in the dark over calls. They could see a safe or out call gestured by the crew chief after the umpires ended their communication with the crew in the MLB office, but weren't informed about whether the call was inconclusive, or overruled.
This bit of clarity should help, but it was bad business to not keep paying customers informed.