The Red Sox bullpen resembles a patchwork quilt, with different pieces somehow stitched together. It does not look pretty.
But on Sunday night, it did its job, smothering the Yankees to preserve a 4-3 Red Sox victory at Yankee Stadium as the Sox salvaged the final game of their opening series.
With Matt Barnes still hampered by a wrenched back and Garrett Whitlock being held back for a piggyback assignment in Detroit, Sunday was always going to be a challenge. And when Tanner Houck, with 78 pitches thrown to record just 10 outs, was lifted after just 3.1 innings, it became even more problematic.
It's hard enough to mix and match against an imposing Yankee lineup in a ballpark where every mistake gets magnified. When those matchups start happening in the fourth inning, it means there's a long way to go before you reach the finish line.
So the conga line started to form. Ryan Brasier allowed a run-scoring single -- with the run charged to Houck -- but then got an inning-ending double play ball to close out the fourth.
Next came rookie Kutter Crawford, who had to extricate himself from a first-and-third, one-out mess of his own creation, and did, getting Aaron Hicks on a foul popup in the infield and striking out Isiah Kiner-Falefa. Another scoreless inning from Crawford followed, with the righthander firing fastballs at 96-97mph, and inviting comparisons to Whitlock from a year ago.
Then it was lefty Matt Strahm, who took over for Crawford in the seventh after Giancarlo Stanton had led off with a single to center. Two flyouts and a groundout resulted. Hansel Robles handled the eighth with relative ease, working around a leadoff walk to Kiner-Falefa.
With the Sox leading by a run, a popular parlor game emerged in living rooms across New England: Who will get the ninth?
It wasn't going to be Barnes and it wasn't going to be Whitlock. That left some unappetizing options, such as Phillips Valdez, Austin Davis and Hirokazu Sawamura.
The situation seemed to call for a righty, since the Yankees had Aaron Judge and Stanton due up to hit in the bottom of the ninth, followed by lefty Joey Gallo. But Cora tabbed lefty Jake Diekman, likely in deference to his experience in the closer's role, however slight. (Diekman had 14 career saves before Sunday night, including a career-high seven with Oakland last year).
Still, it seemed a risky choice. Judge is an imposing figure at the plate, and is capable of mishitting a ball out of the Stadium. As for Stanton, he had homered in each of his previous six games against the Red Sox. He had three hard-hit singles already, and everything off his bat was clocked at well over 100 mph exit velocity.
Judge and Stanton represented a gauntlet no reliever would want to encounter. But Diekman attacked the pair, mixing a mid-90s fastball with a slider cutting across the zone. It took 11 pitches before he got Judge swinging. Stanton, oddly, wasn't as daunting. By the time he had set down the two righty power sources, Gallo, prone to strikeouts even when he's hot, was mere fodder, and Diekman toyed with him before securing the last out -- swinging, just like the first two.
He walked off the mound at Yankee Stadium calmly, as though it had been the third or fourth inning. There was no visible sign of emotion as he shook hands with batterymate Kevin Plawecki.
That coolness turned downright frosty in the clubhouse. Asked by reporters if he wanted to be the team's closer, Diekman responded: "I don't really give two shits.''
OK, then.
Minutes earlier Cora had been less profane and certainly more good-natured when addressing the same topic. Asked if Diekman was now his closer, Cora cracked: "He was tonight.''
How long that lasts remains to be seen.
Bullpens are notoriously unpredictable and that's especially true early in the season. Cora had hoped that Barnes, having addressed some issues with his delivery, would regain his mid-90s fastball velocity and claim the job as his own, but his back problems precluded that from happening on the first weekend of the season.
Barnes has been cleared for the series that begins Monday in Detroit, but it may take some time before the Sox feel comfortable with him in a high-leverage spot.
In the meantime, Crawford's outing Sunday is bound to do wonders for his confidence. The Sox were impressed with his stuff and stamina in the spring, and would welcome another multi-inning option to help bridge games between starter and back-end relievers. Strahm has shown electric stuff, and then there's Robles, who has now pitched in as many big league games after one series as Grapefruit League games.
But it was Diekman who emerged as the story from this night. The fact that he never wavered as he went after one power threat after another in a one-run game speaks to his fortitude. And having an attitude can be half the battle in the ninth.
Closers come and go. The Red Sox discovered that in 2013, when, on their fourth try in seeking to fill the role, they settled on Koji Uehara -- who knew? -- and rode him all the way to a World Series parade down Boylston Street.
There's a more-than-decent chance that several others will get a crack at the job in the coming weeks and months, Barnes included. A more interesting development might be how the Sox handle the middle innings, especially early in the year when starters aren't as stretched out and leave a lot of outs for the bullpen to record.
But in a game the Red Sox needed -- to avoid the inevitable comparisons to last year's season-opening sweep, to establish a little momentum before they return to Fenway on Friday -- an unlikely hero emerged in Diekman.
He seems, um, somewhat disinterested in inhering the job full-time. But when they needed him, through three highly precarious outs on a chilly night in April, Jake Dieman was the hero the Sox didn't know they needed.