Wednesday, July 25, 2018

At Deadline, The Sox Need To Shore-Up The Role Of 'Bridge' To Craig Kimbrel

After last night's "meltdown du jour" by Joe Kelly, coupled with the unavoidable over-use of Matt Barnes (43 IP) and Hector Velazquez (54 IP), it behooves Dave Dombrowski to get a set-up guy at the trade deadline. As pointed out by MassLive's Christopher Smith, since June 1st, Kelly has a 9.98 ERA—17 ERs in just 15.1 innings of work. And, opposing hitters have a .920 OPS against Kelly over that span. Add to this equation the utter uselessness of Tyler Thornburg, and the trade deadline recipe is clear. Even though the sub-par outing by Drew Pomeranz highlighted the need for a starter as well, the bullpen void is greater. Alex Cora needs to have a slam-dunk option to precede Craig Kimbrel. Clearly, the Yankees just got even better than they already were in that role with the acquisition of Zach Britton. So the situation becomes all the more desperate. Do it, Dave!