As troubling as the Red Sox' offensive struggles have been all season, and especially in the last week, that was never going to be a long-lasting issue.
Even frustrating as it was that the Sox scored a run here and got nearly no-hit there, there was little doubt that it was a temporary problem. All of a sudden, a lineup with Trevor Story, Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers and J.D. Martinez was going to struggle all season long to score runs?
Not bloody likely.
What kept the Red Sox in most of the games while the offense sputtered was, oddly, the pitching. On most occasions, the starters were keeping the opposition within arm's reach, and the bullpen, while sometimes making things harder than necessary, was plenty good enough.
Still, there was that unsettling feeling. Eventually, the offense would come around, and Tuesday night at Rogers Centre, it did, in fact, re-appear. But how long could the pitching prop up the rest of the team? The staff was thin throughout, and while there was little to complain about in the first two and a half weeks, the nagging thought prevailed: How long will this last?
Late in Tuesday's game came the answer, and it wasn't pretty, even if it may have been predictable. The Sox' crushing 6-5 loss in 10 innings was a reminder that while the offense may have finally come to life, the fears about the bullpen are very much warranted.
To begin with, a closer has yet to emerge, making every night a guessing game. Put it this way -- the Red Sox have won seven games this season, and four different relievers have contributed saves. Manager Alex Cora has said his hope is that Matt Barnes will pitch himself back into the job, but almost an eighth of the way through the season, that hasn't happened.
And it's not as if anyone else has emerged to claim it.
For now, the titles are purely ceremonial. Here are the real cold facts about the hot mess of a bullpen: Currently, the roster features three trustworthy options: Hansel Robles, Matt Strahm and Garrett Whitlock. More on the latter in a bit.
Yes Robles allowed the walkoff homer to Kevin Kiermaier Saturday night at Tropicana Field. But that's going to happen over the course of a season. Even the game's top closers are going to blow a save five or six times. It goes with the territory. Otherwise, Robles has been highly reliable. On Tuesday he pitched the eighth, and though the Jays made hard contact in every one of their four plate appearances, he managed to record three outs.
Strahm has been something of a surprise, demonstrating the ability to get both lefties and righties out. He was on the mound when Raimel Tapia flicked a fly ball to left, deep enough to produce the winning run in the bottom of the 10th, but he was hardly to blame. He inherited a bases-loaded, one-out mess from Barnes.
Finally, there's Whitlock, whom the Red Sox would desperately like to clone in order to have him available to start, then provide multi-inning relief, then close. Every day. To date, their lab work has not yielded the desired result.
Whitlock is far and away the most trustworthy arm in the bullpen. The problem is, for the last few days, Whitlock has not been in the bullpen. Instead, he's been temporarily shifted to the rotation to take the place vacated by Tanner Houck. Houck is currently on the ineligible list, after refusing to get vaccinated.
Houck spent the last week or so proclaiming: "Anything I can do for this team to help them win, I'll do it.''
But that's not true, of course. If it were, Houck would have done what 26 of his 27 teammates -- Kutter Crawford is also a holdout -- and made himself eligible for the games in Toronto this season. Instead, his absence has created a crater-sized hole in the bullpen.
With Houck unavailable, Whitlock had to step in and start Saturday against the Rays, the result of Houck not being available to take his normal turn in Toronto. And because the Sox also need a starter Thursday, in the series finale at Rogers Centre, Whitlock will start then, too. That's made him ineligible to help in relief for the last week.
Whitlock gave them four scoreless innings in his first major league start Saturday night, but the Sox had to patch together the next seven innings. The following day, with Houck available in the bullpen, acting manager Will Venable had to patch together innings five through seven. By the time he got to Houck in the eighth, the game was out of hand.
Had Whitlock not started Saturday, or been in line to start Thursday, he could have given the Sox multiple innings -- either to close the game out once they took the lead, or, taking over for Pivetta in the fifth. Instead, the soft parade of relievers began trickling out of the Boston bullpen, none of them nearly as reliable at Whitlock.
All of that said, not all of this can be placed at the feet of Houck. Chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom didn't stock the bullpen well enough in the offseason. He never acquired anyone to essentially replace Adam Ottavino -- a veteran righty with high-leverage experience.
So now, the Sox walk the tightrope every night, and when they enter a stretch in which they play a number of close -- and, thus, winnable -- games in a succession, they run dry. Robles and Strahm can't pitch every night, and even when he returns, neither can Whitlock.
If the eighth inning was an indication that the offense may be on the verge of busting out, the team can hope some ruins earlier in games will provide more late-inning breathing room.
But until then, they're fighting shorthanded -- this week, and in subsequent series in Toronto, because of Houck, but in the big picture, they didn't start the season well-armed. Now, offense or no offense, they're paying the price.