The Red Sox made several moves concerning their pitching yesterday: moving Vicente Padilla to the DL, recalling Clayton Mortensen to MLB, and moving Franklin Morales to the rotation with an unknown pitcher leaving. First Padilla, who has been one of the team’s better relievers all season. His standard stats of a 4-1 record and a 4.62 ERA– however, that ERA has been ruined by just a few bad outings. His FIP of 3.54, xFIP of 3.42, and K/BB ratio of 3.91 are all very impressive.
This makes it a major disappointment for the bullpen, but being called up will be Clayton Mortensen. Mortensen hasn’t really fit into the team’s plans in 2012, which is unfortunate, considering how well he’s done. In 11 games and 26 innings out of the bullpen, he’s recorded a 1.73 ERA. His BABIP of .188 is out of this world, but it’s at least partially aided by how many ground balls he gets– with his 48.6% mark coming not too far short of Aaron Cook‘s 61.4%. Mortensen could definitely be part of the 2013 bullpen, and we’ll see how he fares in another short stint in the majors.
Finally, we have Franklin Morales being moved back to the rotation and prompting the question: why was he ever taken out? Overall on the season, Morales is 3-2 with a 3.14 ERA in 34 games (6 starts). However, even with that small sample size, he’s been the best starting pitcher on the team this year as in his 6 starts, he went 3-1 with a 3.06 ERA. The curious thing about this move is that we don’t know who is coming out of the rotation. The obvious suspect would be Aaron Cook, but we don’t know for sure. However, Morales certainly should be in the rotation and it’s great that he now is.