Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Reason to Hope

A few numbers involving the Sox pitching staff that will hopefully bring people in off the ledge:

Curt Schilling's ERA in his last 10.1 Innings is 3.48;

The entire rotation's ERA since August 19th is 3.87;

The bullpen's ERA isn't nearly as ugly when we only consider the guys who have a chance of being there in October. An underwhelming group of 10 guys - Cla Meredith, Scott Cassidy, Mike Remlinger, Blaine Neal, Alan Embree, Matt Mantei, John Halama, Abe Alvarez, Matt Perisho and Chad Harville, heretofore known as "The Dregs" - have combined for 124 bullpen innings for the Red Sox so far, and posted a cumulative ERA of 8.35 in the process. That's bad. It also masks the decent work of everyone else because it represents more than a third of all the bullpen innings thrown for the entire team. Curt Schilling represents another chunk of bad bullpen innings. By excluding those ten guys as well as Schilling's bullpen work, the remaining pitchers - Timlin, Myers, Bradford, Papelbon, Delcarmen, Gonzalez, DiNardo, and, yes, even Keith Foulke - have a combined bullpen ERA of 3.83. That wouldn't be stellar if it was the club's mark for the year, but it would be firmly in the middle of the pack in the AL instead of dead last. Is that enough to win the World Series? Sure, when you consider the Sox did it just last year with a bullpen ERA of 3.87.

If this is the pitching the team gets down the stretch, they're going to win the World Series again.

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