Red Sox: It’s time to believe in Heath Hembree, Matt Barnes
With a few bullpen arms going on the DL, it’s time for Boston Red Sox manager John Farrell to have some faith in the younger guys.
With relievers Craig Kimbrel, Junichi Tazawa and Koji Uehara currently all sidelined by injury, manager John Farrell should begin to put some of the inexperienced relievers in pressure situations.
But shouldn’t he have been doing that much earlier this season?
In Farrell’s defense, the Kimbrel injury wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t have controlled the fact that Kimbrel was shagging fly balls during batting practice (even though he could make it a rule for pitchers not to do that from now on).
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But with Tazawa and Uehara, I’m surprised it took this long for them to finally hit the DL. Farrell simply uses them too much, especially Junichi. Day in and day out, it seems like Tazawa has always gotten the nod from Farrell to trot out to the mound, simply not worrying about if he is tired or not. Shouldn’t Farrell know by now that pitchers need rest every once in awhile? Though Tazawa has been a reliable reliever out of the ‘pen the past few years and that he will be back from the DL later this week, Farrell’s decision may came back to bite him in the butt.
With Koji, Farrell should have had more common sense in giving your 41 year old pitcher a few days off in between each appearance, right? After Uehara strained his pectoral muscle earlier this week, he will be missing about of month of this season. In the end, I believe that these injuries could have been prevented if Farrell had better judgement in using his bullpen.
So now with Tazawa coming back soon, the Sox still have Uehara and Kimbrel unavailable for the next few weeks. With that being said, it’s time to give pitchers like Heath Hembree and Matt Barnes more innings and in closer games than they have been before.
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But I don’t think this is something to really worry about. In the beginning of the season, no one was expecting these two relievers to do anything special for this team. Now with just a few games into the second half of the season, Hembree and Barnes have two of the lowest ERA’s in the Red Sox bullpen (Hembree with a 2.19 ERA in 37 innings pitched and Barnes with 2.87 ERA in 47 innings pitched).
If you were to ask Red Sox fans in the beginning of season if they would trust Hembree and Barnes coming into a close game, what do you think they would say? My guess is that they probably wouldn’t even think of putting the pair into that situation since they had Tazawa, Uehara, Carson Smith, and Kimbrel at the time.
Next: Who claims the closer seat?
To simply put it, Heath Hembree and Matt Barnes jumped on their opportunities of being reliable relievers for the Sox and never looked back. It’s good to give them this experience of pitching in close games now, so they can hopefully do it in October.