Offseason acquisition Jake Diekman struck out the heart of the New York Yankees order in the ninth inning Sunday to secure the first victory of the season for the Boston Red Sox. Frank Franklin II/Associated Press
The opening weekend of baseball is a perfect time to overreact. So is a weekend series with the Yankees in the Bronx.
That’s why many Red Sox fans were fighting the urge to panic after Boston fell to 0-2 to start the season. It wasn’t just two losses, it was a pair of games dropped to their archrivals from New York.
It’s also why Sunday night was a much-needed salve for the psyches of Red Sox Nation. Not just because the Sox beat the Yankees – that’s always welcome in these parts – but because the Boston bullpen shut down New York after Tanner Houck was pulled in the fourth inning.
In fact, you might not realize it but the Red Sox bullpen has been good to start the season. Very good.
Sox relievers threw 142/3 innings over the weekend, and gave up just one earned run. That one run was a D.J. LeMahieu homer off Garrett Whitlock, Boston’s biggest relief weapon, in the eighth inning of Friday’s opener at Yankee Stadium.
Whitlock has gone from being a pickup off the Rule 5 scrap heap to an indispensable arm in Manager Alex Cora’s arsenal. The team rewarded the 25-year old with a four-year contract extension Sunday. It’s a deal that will pay him anywhere from $18.75 million to $44.5 million.
There’s a good chance Whitlock will be a starter by the end of that deal, which will make it a massive bargain for Boston. In the meantime, the pitcher gets the security and peace of mind that comes with an organization’s commitment.
“Two years ago I was working two jobs, you know, and trying to survive the COVID season and everything like that,” Whitlock said on Sunday. “So now to just be sitting here doing this, it’s all very surreal.”
The Whitlock signing wasn’t the biggest surprise of the weekend. The success of a bullpen missing All-Star closer Matt Barnes (back tightness) against the vaunted Yankees’ lineup was worth noticing.
Kutter Crawford looks like a find, a 26-year old flamethrower who took the loss in the 11th inning on Friday but seemed to find his legs over two innings on Sunday. Crawford could become a key late-inning option for Cora as Whitlock is stretched out into longer relief appearances.
Hansel Robles is another hard-throwing righty who is back for his first full season with Boston. He walked a tight wire on Sunday night, walking the leadoff batter and surviving a couple of hard-hit balls, but got out of the eighth scoreless.
That led to the biggest drama of the weekend. Jake Diekman, signed to a two-year, $8 million contract this offseason, came in to face the heart of the Yankees’ order. Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Joey Gallo have combined to hit 665 major league home runs.
Diekman struck out all three and firmly put his name in the mix for 2022 closer.
Now more than ever, major league teams rely on bullpens to survive.
The average length of appearance by starting pitchers last year was at an all-time low. That certainly played out this weekend, when Boston and New York combined to throw a shocking 331/3 relief innings over three games.
It’s hard to sustain that over a full season, but coming out of a lockout-shortened spring training you can expect shorter starts to be the norm over the first few weeks of the season.
That was a concern for the Red Sox coming into the season, but after this first weekend of baseball a heavy workload for the Boston bullpen might actually give them an advantage this year.
Only time will tell if that’s an overreaction.
Tom Caron is a studio host for Red Sox broadcasts on NESN. His column runs on Tuesdays in the Portland Press Herald.
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