The MLB Draft: The Henry Ownership Years

With the 2013 amateur draft in the books, Chip looks through the Red Sox's last 12 drafts.

A Look Back at Baseball America’s Top Red Sox Prospects in 2006

HE'S BAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK! The magnificent Chip Buck makes his spectacular return to Fire Brand.

Balcom-Miller adjusting to high minors

File this under the low-risk but potentially high-reward category.

Manny Delcarmen, Rockie

Yesterday, Manny Delcarmen — the Boston native who has been with the club since 2005 and in the system since…

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...

The DL All-Stars

Kevin Youkilis left last night's game in the 4th inning with an ankle injury. At the moment, it appears he'll be fine -- the word out of Fenway is that he'll be in the lineup tonight. Still, the sight of Youk leaving the game yesterday must have caused remotes across New England to be flung in exasperated disgust as the injury bug appeared to claim another key player on this 2010 Red Sox team. In recounting the injuries that have plagued the club this year, it occurs to me that we could field a fairly talented club solely from our DL. In order to find out exactly how good, I decided to draw up a lineup (nine offensive positions, two starters, a setup man, and a closer) and see how well it would stack up given their projected 2010 WAR (I'm using CHONE projections for batters because they're the easiest to find, but the estimates shouldn't be too far afield; for pitchers it's a bit tricky, but I'll resort to using fangraphs.com's fan projections -- imperfect, but close enough). This is obviously a thought experiment more than anything else, but it's interesting to see exactly how much talent the Sox have lost so far this season.

Varitek and Delcarmen Down, Possible Trade Candidates

The injury carousel keeps turning – and, unfortunately, keeps landing on the Red Sox’ spot. While Jason Varitek was placed on the disabled list Thursday with a broken foot, Manny Delcarmen was also added on Friday with a strained right forearm. Reliever Robert Manuel was recalled to replace Delcarmen while catcher Kevin Cash was acquired from the Astros in return for infielder Angel Sanchez. Second baseman Niuman Romero was called up from Pawtucket to assume Sanchez’ vacated roster spot. With all the injuries and new names flying around, this seems like the perfect opportunity to stress the importance of offseason minor league acquisitions. While these replacement level signings are often glossed over in the newspapers and on the transactions lists, these players are signed for precisely this reason: to provide insurance against the unlikely event of a nightmare scenario playing out -- much like the one the Sox are currently in.

Bullpen positives and negatives

Look on the bright side. When it comes to the Sox best relief pitchers, all are home grown.

Yet, outside of Jonathan Papelbon, Daniel Bard and Manny Delcarmen there has not been a lot to like about the Sox bullpen this year. You probably had the feeling, as I did, heading into the season that the relief corps would be somewhat of a problem when the big decision heading out of Fort Myers was whether to carry Scott Schoeneweis or Scott Atchison.

Into the second week of June, the Sox bullpen has an ERA of 4.24. Compare that to the strong relief that a team like the Padres are getting (2.70 ERA) or or the Rays (3.23) and you see just how far off the pace Boston has fallen in an area that presumably was a strength coming into the season and was a relative strength last year (3.80 ERA).

Choose Your Own Adventure

With the Red Sox treading water just above .500 after a month and a half of the season, its too early to fully embrace the "wait 'till next year" mentality. At the same time however, you had better believe Theo Epstein and his advisors have played their own game of "choose your own adventure" that has them following the "to become sellers and restock for 2011 turn to page 41" path.

Looking For Runs In All The Wrong Places

It's been a rough couple of weeks, folks. We've all heard it, we've all said it, we've all felt it. There's been enough negative energy in this town lately to give Vigo from Ghostbusters II a sugar high. However, if you sat there tonight watching grown millionaires crowd around Darnell McDonald like they were ten years old again and your cynicism, pessimism and negativity didn't melt away, you have no soul.

Tonight, it was the song of the backups -- the team was lifted up and carried by players no one has on a fantasy team, and eventually it was those players who gave the Red Sox their most inspiring win of the young season (with, admittedly, stunningly little competition). McDonald, Jeremy Hermida and Josh Reddick drove in six of the team's seven runs, and two of them weren't even on the roster this morning.