One of the biggest criticisms of the Red Sox system for many years has been their inability to develop their own starting pitching. This has been a problem for a very long time. Boston does have a few promising pitching prospects in their minor league system right now, but they have had prospects before that did not work out.
That brings me to Brayan Bello, who made his Major League debut last season at the age of 23. His final numbers were not great (2-8, 4.71 ERA, 55 strikeouts to 27 walks in 57.1 innings pitched), but he improved dramatically over the course of the year. He maybe was not ready when he was called up when Boston needed pitching, but he settled in and his curveball is the real deal. He may not start the 2023 season in the rotation, but it should not be long before he is a mainstay of the rotation. Just a quick note, there is also Tanner Houck and he could very well end up a starter, but for right now his role is in flux. There is no doubt he is a Major League pitcher though.
Bello made eleven starts in 2022. He could quickly become the first homegrown pitcher to make more than 25 starts in several years. Let's look at the homegrown pitchers and how many starts they have had over the last, oh, ten years. I am defining "homegrown" as drafted by or signed as an amateur free agent by the team. Players acquired in trade (i.e. Eduardo Rodriguez and Josh Winckowski), or brought over from another professional league (Hector Velazquez) do not count. Also, players who were once homegrown, then traded but returned do not count (Justin Masterson).
The allure of the homegrown pitcher is strong and gets brought up when injuries inevitably tests the limits of a pitching staff's depth every year, but at this point my personal viewpoint is that as long as the team can acquire good pitching it doesn't really matter. For comparisons sake the Yankees don't really have anybody in-house but nobody really bats an eye because they have Cole and Rodon (of course the minute one gets hurt is the moment everyone starts suddenly clamoring for pitching depth). But I guess that leads to the less hopeful issue of if Boston would have the prospects necessary to pull off another Sale-trade if they wanted to, or if the team would actually buy starting pitching.
ReplyDeleteGood luck to these kids tho I guess, fun to see prospects do well in general all the same.
The Yankees do have Severino and German, and they had Montgomery last year, so they're doing better than Boston. I agree that teams can always fill in pieces, but that does tend to get expensive in both money and prospect capital. The best approach is probably a combination, but Boston has not had that in a long time, which was my point. They just simply have a hard time developing pitching.
DeleteThat's true, although I guess technically Nestor Cortes is also homegrown even if he had brief stints elsewhere thanks to Rule 5 shenanigans.
DeleteAnd I agree, a hybrid approach is ideal for a staff. Although I think Boston's recent (or at least pre-2020) roster where they paid for pitching since so much of their offense was grown in-house helped the team overall stay balanced. Only issue was that it quickly became unbalanced once the homegrown offense was traded away or left in free agency and Sale got hurt.