It’s time for the Red Sox to move on from Matt Andriese
Last night shouldn’t have happened. The Red Sox had the game locked up and were just three outs away from securing their ninth win in a row, then it all fell apart. Some sloppy defense, questionable positioning, and another miserable outing from Matt Andriese broke the win streak and allowed the rest of the AL East a breather. We’re past the halfway point of the season and it’s time that Chaim Bloom realizes that his experiment with the former Rays hurler has been a failure.
I’m sure Andriese is a nice guy, he comes across that way whenever he speaks to the media. I’m also positive that he’s a hard worker who’s just as frustrated with his outings as we are. But at the end of the day, this is a business and should be treated as such. If someone isn’t achieving their targets or goals in any other setting, they’re likely to be let go, this should be no different.
The reliever does have the support of Alex Cora, though, and that may be the one thing that keeps him with this club. AC made it clear to the media after the defeat that Andriese is a big component in his plans for 2021 and they won’t be giving up on him anytime soon. Possibly some foolish words from the enigmatic skipper.
"“We need him,” Cora said. “We need this guy. He’s very important to what we’re trying to accomplish. He’s a guy that can give us multiple innings in certain situations. We felt like his fastball is still actually playing, it’s just the off-speed stuff. I don’t know if it’s usage or teams are preparing for us when he comes in. We just have to figure it out. We’re not going to give up on him.”"
Normally I’d follow Cora into a damn volcano but I can’t stand with him on this one. Yeah, he can eat up some innings when a starter is pulled early or the bullpen is spent, but so could Ryan Weber. Why is Andriese being given such a long leash here when it feels like others wouldn’t have been in the past? I wasn’t always sour on the righty, hell, I championed him during his white-hot April, but things have cooled to record low temperatures since then and I can’t show that support anymore.
The reliever totaled a 1.42 ERA in the first month of the season and has seemingly fallen off a cliff since then. May saw that total balloon up to a nauseating 5.11 and it would only continue to grow from there. June saw him finish with a 5.56 and now two appearances into July he’s totaling a 5.70, not good. He’s tossed 36.1 innings this season and owns a 1.734 WHIP in that span.
Oddly enough his K/9 (9.2) and BB/9 (2.5) are pretty good, he just can’t help giving up hits, 53 in 2021, twice his total for the same amount of innings last year. He just can’t keep the ball away from the bats and it’s killing him each and every time he’s on the mound.
"“It’s tough,” Andriese said. “When you go out there and you’re not having success, it’s a daily grind, but I’m going out there every day trying to be confident and trying to get outs.”"
Boston is more than outperforming any expectations that were placed on them going into this season and that’s great. They’ve built some wiggle room in the division for nights like last night but they can’t have them too often. It won’t take much for the Rays or Jays to get hot and come for first place. When you have the game in hand, you need to finish the job. I know some of the top relievers weren’t available but Andriese is the last guy I want in that situation. He came in on Sunday with a 15-0 lead and couldn’t even get out of that game with a clean slate, come on man.
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As I said, I truly believe that he’s a good dude who’s simply on a bad stretch, but that bad stretch is costing the Red Sox and I can’t have it anymore. We’re less than a month away from the trade deadline and maybe Chaim can bundle him in with an offer he has planned. That way we’d at least get some sort of return and it wouldn’t be a total loss on the investment. We’ve seen what Bloom can do at the negotiating table, maybe he can razzle-dazzle another team into wanting the righty.
I also wouldn’t lose any sleep if before today’s game I saw the notification that he’d been DFA’d, it’s just time for a change. Knowing our luck, he’d clear waivers and just head to Worcester anyway. Maybe some time in Triple-A will be good for him to find whatever it was he had back in April. He was signed to a one-year/$1.85M deal, cutting bait and moving on wouldn’t be painful whatsoever.
I’m not sure what happened with him this season as he came out of the gates swinging hard. As Alex said, it’s hard to tell if teams just know what to expect or he’s simply not executing, but either way, it’s time to end the experiment and move on. The Matt Andriese Era in Boston seemed like it could be a success through the first month of the campaign but since then it’s gone off the rails. The Red Sox are in a serious fight for the division and have worked hard to become a favorite to make the postseason, we can’t have guys going out there and giving away winnable games.