The Pen is Set; Upgrade Complete

photo © 2008 Eric Savage | more info (via: Wylio) What a difference a year makes. The 2010 season was…

Could the Red Sox season be derailed?

Over at ESPN on Wednesday, I wrote an article titled “Could the Phillies Season be derailed?”  For those of you…

The Red Sox from a Roto Perspective

When I started writing about baseball, it was through fantasy baseball. My site is indeed aptly named Fantasy Baseball 365.…

How much will Papelbon make in 2011?

With pitchers and catchers just about a month away, the Red Sox have, for the most part, finished their offseason…

No LOOGY? No Problem

Baseball has become a game of specialized players, especially when it comes to the bullpen. The bullpen is so specialized…

2011 Projections: Jonathan Papelbon

Throughout the offseason, I’ll be dishing out my 2011 Red Sox projections. I do a full set of projections for…

Trade Papelbon? Not so fast

A few days ago, MLBTradeRumors.com posted a poll on whether or not the Red Sox should trade Jonathan Papelbon. Out of 1,877 votes, 66.5 percent thought that the Sox should trade their current closer.

Emotions, especially in Red Sox Nation, can run high. Sometimes too high. The frustrations with injuries and a third place standing have Sox fans pointing the finger at several players, but perhaps none more so than Jonathan Papelbon. Think it's a good idea to trade your closer? You might want to take another look before making up your mind.

First of all, I'm not going to sit here and preach that Papelbon is as good of a reliever as he has been in the past. In fact, he has regressed for a few years now in several key categories. However, there is still plenty of reason to think things might be better a year from now.

Showing Aces

The promise of this season, coming in, was pitching and defense. Instead, to this point we've seen a team riddled with injuries and dependent more on their offense -- despite a recent lull, the team is still second only to the Yankees in all of baseball with 521 runs scored -- than their bottom-third defense (tenth in the AL at 444 runs scored). Much of that blame has to be placed on the injuries to Beckett, Buchholz, Wakefield, and Matsuzaka; the mediocre performance from Lackey; and the the at-times awful bullpen contribution.

However, things appear to be looking up for the pitching staff: Beckett and Buchholz have both recently returned to action with strong outings, while Matsuzaka and Lackey seem to be hitting their strides. Shoring up the starting rotation would be a tremendous improvement for this team, but would it be enough?

State of the ‘Pen

With the Sox bullpen letting another late lead slip away Sunday, there is little question that the collapse of the relief corps has been one team’s bigger issues this season.

Compounding issues is the news that the Sox may not be making any significant adds at the deadline. While not a white flag by any means, the team is firmly stuck in limbo -- not close enough to Tampa to make a deadline splash, but not far enough away to plan for 2011.

A quality seventh inning reliever would do wonders for the bullpen, giving the team a much stronger bridge through the late innings. In particular, a quality non-LOOGY left-hander would be optimal, but that move doesn’t seem to be in the works.

Nevertheless, it’s time we took stock of what we have. The following is a rundown of the top five hurlers in the pen, what they can do, and how they fit in with the pen’s structure...

Papelbon struggles as Bard dominates

Papelbon has gone from an elite closer to what appears to be a replacement level reliever in just a matter of a few seasons. This year his numbers have fallen off a cliff as his K/9 was always his best skill and even though his walks were going up he could still maintain strong numbers. This year though his K/9 has dropped all the way to 7.67. That's not going to get it done when your walking more than 3 batters every nine innings. Looking at his xFIP of 4.74 you can see he has actually been lucky so far this year. There aren't many signs for what is wrong though. His arm speed is as good as it has ever been and while his slider is a bit slower it has been his best pitch according to run values.