It’s becoming a bullpen game, but a team can win with a 4-deep lights out bullpen.
The Sox don’t have that, and moving Houck to the rotation brings them further away.
Diekman isa good (nowhere near great, but we’ll-entrenched in good) pitcher no one will ever classify as “lights out.” Strahm looks like a leap of faith to me. And I have never been a big believer of Brasier.
I do still have faith in Barnes and Whitlock. I am hoping for another arm, and if Austin Davis needs to be DFAd and released to fit him, so be it.
My personal choice is Jose Urena could be a lights out reliever. And since no one will ever sign him for that role to prove me wrong, I get to keep saying it and pretending I’m on to something. But in the mean time, I’m still on the Oliver Drake train, although he is really a right-handed Diekman…