They Both Ended Up Having the Same Problem

The goal of any baseball team is for their pitchers to allow fewer runs during a game than their team scores in the same game. 

Pretty simple, right?

It doesn't really matter how the pitchers are used to accomplish this, as long as they get the nine innings they need to win. You can have the starting pitcher pitch all nine innings. You can have the starter go a certain number of innings and have the bullpen finish. You can even have the bullpen pitch all nine innings. 

That can and will change game to game. But when the season starts, a team should have a general plan in place based on the quality of the different pitchers. Do you have the greatest rotation in the history of time? You might be able to go easy on the bullpen arms. Do you have trouble even finding enough starters to cover every game? Might be a good idea to bulk up on the pen. Do you happen to have a stash of dominant relievers fall into your lap? Might be able to skip on the rotation. You can win with most any of these combinations, assuming you get what you expect.

At the start of the season, the Red Sox thought they'd have an elite rotation. And, why wouldn't they? Sale-Price-Porcello was a pretty formidable 1-2-3. Add Eovaldi and what you hoped EdRo would be, and that was definitely a team strength. You could assume that those guys would eat some innings. A six inning start would be assumed. Seven would be probable. If things went awry, there was Wright and Johnson waiting in the wings as stopgaps. So, it was a perfectly reasonable to assume that two or three stud relievers would be more than enough. But, things didn't go according to plan. The starters were terrible out of the gate...maybe by mistake, maybe by plan. Even worse, your back-up plans were suspended and injured. So, the starters weren't going seven innings. Or six. Maybe not even five. Suddenly those top relievers were pitching every game. They were exhausted. They never recovered.

The Yankees went the other direction. They knew their starting staff was nothing to brag about. So, they bulked up on the bullpen. They made sure they had enough bullpen arms to effectively pitch four plus innings every game. And, it worked. The bullpen let them win games...right up until the postseason. Suddenly without as many rest opportunities, the bullpen finally wore down. Chapman was forced to pitch more than he wanted, and eventually failed when he was needed the most. The Yankees could have been helped by the "rover" idea the Sox used last postseason, where starters took some innings from their top relievers. But, they didn't have the horses to get that done.

In the end, for both teams, the failure of the starters led to the collapse of the bullpen. It just took the Yankees a little longer.

It also suggests that the Sox were on the better track. The Astros and Nationals have supreme rotations, but their bullpens as a whole are nothing to shudder in fear over. It seems like that route is a bit more dependable...assuming all your pitchers don't get hurt at once of course. After all, we heard all year that the Sox bullpen was trash compared to the vaunted Yankees pen...and that still wasn't enough for them. If that pen isn't enough, can you really justify paying attention to improving the pen?

Which is why the Sox need to figure out their health going into 2020. Are the arms going to be there in the rotation? Do they need to stock up in the bullpen to compensate? Should they just do both for the heck of it? It will be interesting to see.

And I can't wait.