Remind me again why we ever thought 35-year-old Kenley Jansen, 36-year-old Chris Martin, and 35-year-old Richard Bleier would come in and revamp our relief corps?

Looks like he isn’t the solid, top of the rotation starter we all hoped he’d be.īut at least Whitlock pitched well in the bullpen, and boy did we need it. Garrett Whitlock did make it back, but struggled to miss bats for two months before finally being moved to the bullpen. James Paxton never even made it back to Boston, injuring himself first during a rehab stint in April, and then in another rehab stint from that injury in July. The Red Sox failed to score a single run that day, as Shohei Ohtani threw a complete game gem, striking out Masataka Yoshida four times in doing so.īello went down next, that dreaded forearm tightness returning and leading to the Tommy John procedure we’d all feared. The season wasn’t technically over by the time the grounds crew shoveled the blood off the mound and the game resumed, but it sure seemed like it. We didn’t know that a reporter covering the marathon in a helicopter would drop a pen from 1,500 feet up in the air, sending a tiny, ink-filled missile directly into the crook of Chris Sale’s elbow. We knew Chris Sale was going to get hurt again eventually. He looked damn near dominant against the Tigers and Rays the next week! But then, that now infamous Patriots Day game against the Angels. Still, we had some, hope, didn’t we? Remember those first few Chris Sale starts? He was all smiles and strikeouts to open the season against the Orioles at Fenway.

If you go into a season only being able to count on Nick Pivetta, that probably means you don’t have much going for you. That man was Nick Pivetta, the mediocre innings-eating Canadian. Of the top seven starting pitchers on the Boston Red Sox coming into the 2023 season, there was only one - ONE! - who wasn’t a complete question mark due to either age, injury, or lack of experience. In retrospect, we should have seen this coming.

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