Red Sox pitcher Matt Barnes was charged with four runs in the ninth inning Tuesday night as Tampa Bay completed a comeback in an 8-4 win at Fenway Park. Barnes also allowed game-winning home runs on Saturday and Sunday against Toronto. Charles Krupa/Associated Press
The MLB trade deadline was almost two weeks ago, but with each passing loss, the Boston Red Sox have revealed yet another need that went unaddressed.
Tuesday night was Matt Barnes’ third loss in four games.
If a team loses three out of four, it’s scuffling. When a closer loses three out of four, there’s a serious problem.
Barnes threw what might’ve been the worst curveball of his career, an 86-mph hanger to Rays’ backup catcher Francisco Mejia that was smoked into right field for a three-run single. It was the decisive hit in an 8-4 loss, their sixth straight loss to a Rays team that now has a commanding five-game lead in the American League East.
Forget about first place for a minute. Actually, forget about it altogether.
Queue the old clip of former Indianapolis Colts coach Jim Mora saying, “playoffs? Talk about the playoffs? You kidding me? Playoffs? I just hope we can win a game.”
The Red Sox need to win a game. String together a few wins, and they can hang their hopes on Chris Sale in a single-elimination wild-card game.
But even that seems like a stretch because the Red Sox have an offense that’s spinning its tires, a defense that looks sloppy, no first baseman, three struggling starters and a lack of bullpen depth.
And now they have a closer problem.
Barnes looked lost out there Tuesday night. He looked like he had no idea what pitch to throw and no confidence when he threw it. He admitted Sunday that he had a problem locating his fastball.
“The only thing really frustrating me is I haven’t been able to get glove-side with the fastball as well as I have earlier in the year,” he said. “It feels like it’s leaking back in the middle a little bit.”
Without fastball command, he can become too reliant on his curve. And when his curve isn’t spinning, he’s in trouble.
The curve to Mejia looked flat. It registered at 2,123 revolutions per minute, which was actually high for him on the night. He threw a curve as low as 1,979 RPM.
Go back to early June, when Barnes pitched three nights in a row in a key series with the Yankees, and you’ll find his curve averaged about 2,250 RPM. He’s been down about 10% since then, and obviously there will be questions about whether or not he’s been able to grip the ball properly since MLB’s crackdown on sticky stuff.
Barnes’ real struggles have come over the past two months. His strikeout rate is down drastically, from 15.9 strikeouts per nine innings through June 14 to 11.2 strikeouts per nine from June 15 through Tuesday.
He has just seven strikeouts in his last eight games.
Strikeouts aren’t everything, but to Barnes, they are. He’s given up one of the highest average exit velocities in baseball when he actually gets hit. He gets barrelled up quite often, compared to most pitchers. If he isn’t missing bats, he’s getting hurt.
Manager Alex Cora said the problem with Barnes is that he’s been overused. He pitched in both games of a doubleheader on Saturday. And even though he threw only one pitch in the first game, a 1-0 loss when Barnes gave up a walk-off homer to Marcus Semien, he still had to throw a handful of pitches in the bullpen to warm up, then do it all over again later in the evening.
He pitched again Sunday, had Monday off, and was as bad as we’ve seen him in a long time on Tuesday night.
Cora said he needs to protect Barnes by using him less. But where is Cora supposed to go with the game on the line?
He used Garrett Whitlock for 1 2/3 innings on Tuesday and Whitlock allowed multiple earned runs for the first time since May 13.
Beyond Whitlock, Josh Taylor and Hirokazu Sawamura might be the most consistent relievers, and they’re great at bridging the gap in the middle innings.
But Adam Ottavino has been wildly inconsistent. He’s allowed eight runs in his last seven games while getting hit at a .370 clip.
With Ottavino and Barnes looking lost all of a sudden, Cora is searching for options he simply doesn’t have.
It all goes back to July 30, the day of the MLB trade deadline, when the Sox waited until 4 p.m. to make their only two pitching acquisitions of the day: Hansel Robles and Austin Davis, a pair of underwhelming relievers who didn’t cost much to get and haven’t done much since they’ve arrived (seven earned runs in 7 2/3 innings).
Chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom has talked often about trying to find pitching depth, but the Red Sox don’t have any.
They knew about Barnes’ struggling spin rate and tendency to break down in the second half, when he’s posted an ERA of 4.66 compared to a career 3.44 ERA in the first half. They saw Ottavino having an inconsistent season. They knew they lacked reliable options in the minors.
And they acquired only Robles and Davis.
It was either total ineptitude, overconfidence in the guys they had or something else altogether. Maybe the Red Sox front office knew this team wasn’t that good, and wasn’t worth investing in.
Now it’s Cora’s mess to clean up.
His closer is falling apart and the manager is blaming himself for using him too much.
If only he had someone else to use.
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