Red Sox: Worst pitchers in franchise history
By Rick McNair
A Heathcliff dog
The Heathcliff comic strip by George Gatley centers around a rather pugnacious feline – Boston had a Heathcliff, but it was a dog and not a cat.
For a season and a half, the Boston Red Sox had a closer that would make every game an adventure with quite possibly the most consistently nerve-racking pitching I have seen from the bullpen – say hello to Heathcliff Slocumb.
The numbers for Slocumb in Boston were dazzling depending upon how you wish to define dazzling. Slocumb appeared in 124 games for the Red Sox and finished with a 5-10 record and a 4.02 ERA. That scratches the surface as what will certainly jump out to any observer of the statistics is a BB/9 of 6.2.
In 1996 Slocumb was presentable with a 5-5 record and a 3.02 ERA. That first season Slocumb managed 31 saves and had eight blown saves, but the BB/9 was 5.9 and his K/9 was 9.5. In 1997 it was a disaster. A Slocumb appearance was greeted by hitters as a new load of trash would be by seagulls at a landfill. Off to Seattle, where Slocumb saved 10 games in 11 tries, but managed to continue to issue free passes in droves with a BB/9 of 4.8.
The lasting legacy of Slocumb is the trade with Seattle for Derek Lowe and Jason Varitek.