The 5 most disappointing Boston Red Sox in the first half of the season

Most disappointing Red Sox in the first half -- No. 4: Garrett Whitlock

I should probably give Garrett Whitlock a little bit of slack in this part of the article. I know he's been dealing with injuries coming into this season, and it still feels like there's some discomfort in his starting role. He's also shown that his talent that he first started to show in the 2021 bullpen is still there, and can put up solid starts that the Red Sox offense need to take advantage of more often. While I feel that Whitlock should've been kept in the bullpen as a lockdown guy at the back end of the bullpen, he has shown that he can be an effective starter.

He's been getting hit more this year than any other year in his career, and this has led to his ERA exploding. His home run rate has increased, his strikeout rate has decreased, and opponents are hitting .299 off of Whitlock this year, placing him squarely in the nowhere zone of too good to be replaced, but not quite good enough to be considered anything special right now.

We know what Whitlock is capable of, we know that he can be a dominant pitcher when his stuff is working, we just haven't seen it from him consistently enough this year, which has made him such a frustrating case in the Red Sox rotation. The core of Whitlock, Tanner Houck, and Brayan Bello is something that sounds great moving forward, but in the now, it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.