The Red Sox have some holes to fill before Opening Day, especially when it comes to pitching.
Boston has three healthy starters in Eduardo Rodriguez, Nathan Eovaldi and MartÃn Pérez. Chris Sale will begin the 2020 season on the injured list after his bout with pneumonia set him back two weeks. (His progress, though, is “right on track.“)
But the fifth starter always was a question after Rick Porcello signed with the New York Mets this offseason and David Price was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers in February.
It appears the Red Sox will use an opener every fifth day, and chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom shed some light on how using an opener evolved while he was with the Tampa Bay Rays, and how that hopefully can get translate to Boston and get it to “a pretty good place.”
“It evolved more organically from a lot of conversations we had over the course of years about what is the best way for pitchers to be put in a position to help us win,” Bloom told WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford. “Kevin (Cash), Kyle Snyder, Charlie Montoyo, Stan Boroski deserve so much credit for driving it. It came from that place of just looking at the talented pitchers we had and saying how can we set these guys up for success and how can we set ourselves up to win. Everybody always kept their eye on that ball. When you have good people doing that and working together and working through things you can get to a pretty good place.
“It fell out of having a number of young pitchers who we liked who we thought were all well suited to get hitters out in the big leagues but probably not in the traditional way,” Bloom added. “Instead of focusing on a structure we didn’t feel fit our players, we focused on tailoring the structure to the strength of our players.”
The Rays, where Bloom spent 15 seasons before coming to Boston, have used an opener before, so he certainly has experience in trying to find the best pitcher for the given matchup on that fifth day.
The Red Sox open their season March 26 against the Toronto Blue Jays.
