Jovani Morán's Second-Half Slide Is A Consequence of Red Sox's Aggressive Bullpen Management

Has the magic of the changeup disappeared? Is the workload and pressure too much? Has the league made adjustments and is the improvement in velocity not enough? Those are some of the questions surrounding Boston Red Sox left-hander Jovani Morán, who is in the midst of a serious second-half slide.

Morán posted a 3.83 xFIP in 25 outings during that initial stretch, but since the All-Star break, that average has risen to 4.78 and his opponents’ OPS has increased from .550 to .788. To analyze the reasons for his inefficiency, we have to begin by remembering one key point: Morán pitched only four innings in 2025 due to Tommy John surgery that kept him out for the remainder of the season. The last season in which he had seen action was 2023, when he appeared in 43 games and posted an 83 ERA+ with the Minnesota Twins.

This year he has been back with Boston, and has already matched his career-high of 43 appearances, although with a heavier workload, with 58 ⅓ innings, surpassing the 42 ⅓ innings he pitched in 2023.

So, for 29-year-old Morán, this season has been a story of overcoming adversity. His changeup is back and has been lethal, generating a 48.8 whiff rate, and his fastball, although it has lost some velocity, has held opposing hitters to a .152 batting average. Even with this decline in the second half of the season, Morán still remains in the 95th percentile in HardHit%, the 91st in whiff rate, and the 89th in xBA, which demonstrates his ability to limit hard contact and balls put in play.

But this profile was not built easily. Morán had to earn his opportunities and make his way into one of the most dominant and stable bullpens in the majors this year. The Red Sox gave him some secondary roles until he earned their trust. Of his 43 relief appearances, Morán has appeared in 22 of them to protect leads or keep the score tied. His other 21 appearances have come in situations when the team was trailing, with 16 of them from the sixth inning onward, and 12 when the opponent had a lead of three or more runs.

In other words, throughout the year, Boston has used him in both roles, and the statistics show that Morán has been able to handle the pressure. Of course, he has had to deal with several difficult situations, and in three of his worst failures, the Red Sox were unable to recover.

The first two losses came in the first half of the season, when Morán was tested as an opener. It was not the team’s best moment, and in the end the offense could not erase the early deficit.

Then came a failure against the Los Angeles Dodgers, when Morán left a changeup in the middle of the zone and Shohei Ohtani hit a home run that gave the Dodgers a 4-3 lead in the bottom of the fifth. The Red Sox came back with a five-run rally in the seventh, and Morán’s misstep did not hurt the team. The most recent story was on August 19, when Morán entered to pitch in the 10th inning and allowed a couple of runs after issuing three walks to six batters.

That summarizes his most difficult moments so far this season, but the statistics show that, in general, he has been able to overcome the pressure.

After Erik Miller and Garret Whitlock, Morán has allowed the lowest sOPS+ in the entire bullpen in leverage situations, with a 0.73 ERA and the lowest batting average allowed. This is an interesting aspect that explains how Morán has responded in his role, but it still does not answer our question about what has caused his inconsistencies. The answer is in workload management, and it is more revealing than I expected.

Here are the two turning points that connect with our concerns about his workload: when Morán throws between one and 20 pitches, his opponents have posted a .411 OPS with a 6.39 K/BB. That story of dominance changes considerably once he surpasses the 20-pitch threshold, with seven home runs allowed and a .706 OPS against 123 batters.

The following situation reinforces the workload problem even further: In 13 outings between consecutive appearances or with one day of rest, Morán has been at his most vulnerable. In those spots, he's running a 7.62 ERA, a 1.026 OPS allowed and only a 1.38 K/BB.

In 12 appearances during the month of August, Morán posted a 5.79 ERA and a 6.38 FIP, with 13 strikeouts, 10 walks and three home runs allowed in 14 innings. Only three of those relief appearances came on consecutive days, including the worst of all, when he allowed five runs and two home runs in 1 ⅓ innings against the New York Yankees on August 30. In the end, Morán closed the month without allowing runs in nine of his 12 relief appearances, but in only two of them, against the Pirates and the Yankees, he ended up allowing eight runs.

That last image, I believe, best illustrates Morán’s battle to maintain the consistency of his pitches, and showed that the high volume of work is weighing on him at the end of the season. Even with the recent loss of Tayron Guerrero to the injured list, the Red Sox have ways to handle high-pressure situations in the bullpen; giving the southpaw a chance to rest a little more will benefit the team greatly in the playoffs.

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