http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/red-sox/post/_/id/16638/bard-discusses-his-transition-to-starter
At the 1:50 mark. He says "In our (him and BobbyV) first conversation, he said 'What do you want to do?' and I said 'I want to start or close, and I think I can do either one really well.'"
He did bring it up in the offseason, but when it came down to it and BobbyV asked him what he wanted to do, he said "I want to start or close".
And get your panties out of a wad on the whole quote thing. I posted 2 posts before your response. If you wanted to indicate that you were responding to the Mazz article, why didn't you quote it? Since you always quote what you're responding to, ya know? That would have probably been a good idea rather than just responding in general when there were multiple posts with the same subject.