Article: Breaking Down the Boston Bullpen: Part 2

[Amrit Brown]

Our deep dive into the bullpen continues. On Monday, we looked at the Red Sox' best relievers. Today, we look at the bulkiest.

This is the second article in a five-part series examining the 2024 Red Sox bullpen. What did the Sox get from their relievers and what can they expect going forward? On Monday we looked at 2024’s three best performers. The three we’ll be examining today made up the meat of the pen this year. They weren’t great by any stretch but they provided significant innings

Chase Anderson
Chase Anderson threw 52 innings for the Red Sox before he was released on August 2. He ran a 4.85 ERA and 5.59 FIP, recording three saves across 27 appearances. After his release, he signed a minor league deal with the Rangers, throwing 6 1/3 innings for the Rangers with a 9.95 ERA.

Anderson signed four days before opening day in 2024 and had almost exclusively served as a starter throughout his 10-year big-league career before moving into the pen for the Sox. The transition wasn’t easy, as he posted the second-worst strikeout rate of his career and his chase rate put him in just the fourth percentile.

The 37-year-old righty is a free agent with little buzz about a future contract. He can eat innings, and if he signs anywhere, it’s likely to once again happen close to the start of the season. The Red Sox, who entered the season with a bullpen revamp in mind and have added significant starting pitching depth, will likely not be an option.

Brennan Bernardino
Brennan Bernardino was the featured lefty for a bullpen devoid of southpaw talent in 2024. He threw 52 innings in his third season. His ERA jumped from 3.20 in 2023 to 4.06 in 2024. Bernardino is currently in pre-arbitration, which allows the team to bring him back in 2025. Bernardino added a cutter and a gyro slider in 2024. Stuff+ loved the cutter, giving it a score of 132, which ranked all pitchers who threw at least 30 innings. However, he threw it just 11% of the time, and it didn’t perform particularly well in that small sample. Like Anderson, Bernardino struggled to induce swings out of the zone. He ran an abysmal 23.5% chase rate, which put him in the fourth percentile of all pitchers and contributed to a troubling 9.7% walk rate.

Bernardino is likely to return and once again play an important role again in 2024,  especially if the Sox can’t ink big-name left-handed free agent Tanner Scott. Although he performed worse in 2024, it seems as if the soon-to-be 33-year-old is still tinkering, as his fastball velocity ticked up a bit and he hadn’t yet fully committed to the new cutter and slider. His role in 2024 will likely be dictated by what relievers the team signs before opening day.

Zack Kelly
Zack Kelly threw 56.2 innings with a 3.97 ERA in 2024. It was his third year with the team and the first time he was entrusted with significant innings. Pitch models adored Kelly’s changeup, and it wasn’t hard to see why. On TV, it looked like an invisible string yanked the bottom out of the ball at the last second. However, the pitch didn’t perform particularly well. Kelly’s sweeper was his bread and butter. The pitch had a miniscule 15.8% hard-hit rate and an excellent 34.4% sweeper rate. The sweeper was new for 2024, as was a cutter.

Kelly was fantastic at avoiding hard contact and keeping the ball on the ground, but he struggled to induce chases, which led to a worrisome 11.2% walk rate, the highest on the team. Furthermore, on the rare occasions when Kelly did allow hard contact, batters tended to really do damage. Despite running one of the lowest hard-hit rates in baseball, he also ran one of the highest barrel rates, which led to tons of home runs.

There’s a lot to like about Kelly’s profile, but he still some things to figure out. Like Bernardino, he’ll need to keep working on incorporating his new pitches. Kelly could pitch for the Sox in 2025; he has the stuff, but will need control to make the whole package work. He was optioned to Triple A in mid-September, and with two options left, and could end up shuttling between the minors and majors.

While none of these three had particularly impressive seasons, they ate more than 150 combined innings and played a vital role for the team. While Bernardino and Kelly have yet to hit arbitration, meaning that they’re cheap options for the team, there’s virtually no chance Anderson returns. Bernardino has a better chance of seeing significant innings than Kelly, simply because he is a lefty, but could easily be pushed out of contention for a role with a couple of free-agent signings. Kelly has real potential, but he’s also a couple free agent signings from taking up a more permanent role in Worcester.

In the first two installments of this series, we’ve looked at the best of the bullpen and the bulkiest of the bullpen. Tomorrow’s installment will focus on the underperformers.

 

 

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