The Boston Red Sox have secured Walker Buehler's services with a one-year deal following their trade for a potential ace in lefty Garrett Crochet.
This latest addition has energized the pitching staff, and talk is circulating regarding the potential of a six-man rotation. Chief baseball officer Craig Breslow has prioritized pitching additions, but it is never enough. Greed is good when it comes to pitching.
Let's drift back to the beginning of the 2009 season. The Red Sox were fresh off a loss to the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2008 ALCS, which went a full seven games. Boston had four starters of note that season: Jon Lester, Tim Wakefield, Josh Beckett, and Daisuke Matsuzaka. There was excitement in the air for 2009 — it felt like much of Red Sox Nation planned a return to the World Series. Why?
Clay Buchholz was an injury wreck in 2008 (2-9, 6.75 ERA), and at 24 years old, big things were expected. Beckett, the pitching hero of the 2007 championship team, went into a mini funk (12-10, 4.03 ERA). Dice-K was a possible Cy Young Award winner. Lester was a pitching horse, and Wakefield could start and relieve. One "bright" spot was the Buchholz injury, which allowed Justin Masterson (6-5, 3.16 ERA) to be a potential rotation force. The stars were aligning. Boston then added more depth before 2009.
Righty Brad Penny was a two-time All-Star (2006, 2007), winning 16 games in both those seasons. Penny was coming off a down season (6-9, 6.27), but Theo Epstein took a $5 million chance, but he wasn't done signing rotation insurance.
Epstein went again to the free agent market and scooped up a future Hall Of FamerJohn Smoltz, who represented a security blanket for the bullpen and rotation. Unfortunately, that blanket had a world of holes. Still, the talk was about possibly a six or even seven-man rotation. Red Sox Nation was giddy with the anticipation of another World Series flag on the pressbox at Fenway Park. That flag ended up at half-mast.
Rotation numbers do not necessarily equate to success — the Red Sox proved it in 2009
Lester was his usual solid self, Beckett recovered, and Wakefield, despite some downtime, made 21 starts. Then came the train wreck with Buchholz making just 16 starts ( 7-4, 4.21 ERA), Dice-K in total meltdown ( 4-6, 5.76 ERA), and Smoltz getting dumped and ending up with the Cardinals. Masterson became trading fodder to Cleveland. Penny was released and went to San Francisco in August — Penny (4-1, 2.59 ERA) and Smoltz ( 1-3, 4.26 ERA) performed for their new teams at levels Boston hoped for.
By September, Boston relied on Paul Byrd (1-3, 5.82 ERA), a rushed Junichi Tazawa (2-3, 7.46 ERA), and Michael Bowden, who got destroyed in his only start. The six or seven-man rotation had morphed into three solid starters, and good luck after that. Then it gets really, really bad.
Boston finished second in the American League East, a distant eight games behind the Yankees. The Angels promptly dispatched Boston and faced the Yankees. Now we go from the first bad to the second — the Yankees won the World Series.
Clubs can never have enough pitching, and that means spending and trading for it. Just think of Corbin Burnes in the projected 2025 rotation, but that is now a dream after he signed with the Diamondbacks.
It is incredible how this ownership has pivoted from what made the Red Sox successful. So, hopefully, the 2025 rotation will not collapse as it did in 2009.