One thing the 2019 and 2003 Boston Red Sox have in common is that they don’t have an official closing pitcher on the roster.
Both Matt Barnes and Ryan Brasier have a save through the team’s first eight games, but manager Alex Cora never officially made either one his ninth-inning guy.
The 2003 squad took a similar approach, but ultimately ended up trading for Byung-Hyun Kim to close out games after a failed “closer-by-committee” experiment. Many wonder if the approach will work for this year’s Sox, but Cora thinks he knows why it went wrong in ’03 and why it will work in ’19.
“I think stuff was different back in the day,” Cora told WEEI’s Rob Bradford. “I don’t remember who was involved but I guarantee you it wasn’t 95 (mph) with cutters and breaking balls the way guys have now. If you take a look at bullpens now, stuff is at a premium. It’s hard to hit nowadays when you have guys, supposedly they don’t pitch high leverage situations, but they still throw 96, 97, I think compared to before I played and when I played, that’s a big difference.
“You wanted to get to the bullpen,” he added. “You wanted to get to the righty he threw 87, 88 with a sinker and a slider. Those are the guys you wanted to face. Now, if you want to face a bullpen, it’s 98, 99, spin out of the zone. I think today’s bullpens are much better than back in the day.”
Cora seems content on not changing anything at the moment. However, if things go the way they did in 2003, he may change his mind.
