Tony Massarotti: The worst decision of the Red Sox season
What was the worst decision of the Boston Red Sox’ season? Moving Garrett Whitlock from the bullpen to the starting rotation. Tony Massarotti went on a rant to detail why it was the worst decision made by the 2022 Red Sox.
Full Transcript
Felger: What pisses you off, really, on Friday night?
Mazz: Okay, so Friday, the thing that pissed me off more than anything all weekend was the Friday night game. You know what one of the key performances was? Garrett Whitlock out of the bullpen. Two scoreless. Three strikeouts. No baserunners. He was perfect. Then he pitched yesterday in a blowout. One inning. Two strikeouts. No baserunners. Huh! What do you know? Garrett Whitlock out of the bullpen’s an absolute blowtorch that just obliterates anything in his path. Nice of them to finally put him back out there after they’ve blown 20 effing saves all year.
That was my feeling on Friday night. It’s about effing time. Now? Horse has left the barn. How many games did you blow in between? And they put the kid in the rotation and got him hurt on top of it. Talk about effing up a free lunch. Holy crap. Is the contest to win games and do what’s best for your team? Or are you trying to be the smartest man in the room? What was the whole logic of putting Whitlock in the rotation? What was the logic there?
Felger: What do you think it was?
Mazz: I think, maximize value after signing him to a contract. ‘We’ll make him a starter, we’ll get 200 innings out of him, and we’ll pay him 4 million bucks a year on average. So great, you won the contract. Meanwhile, the kid got injured and your team’s going down the toilet, because your bullpen blows.
I look this up this morning, Whitlock – and I’m doing this for the analysts – Garrett Whitlock, among relievers last year in all of baseball, ranked 16th in WAR. 16th. He was the 16th-best reliever in the game in a league with 30 teams in it. Sixteenth-best. And you took him out of the role. You put him in the rotation and the next two guys you had in the top-100 were Matt Barnes – who sucked in the second half and has disappeared from the face of the earth – and Adam Ottavino, who’s gone.
So you had three relievers in the top 100 in the majors in WAR – WAR! – war last year. And you know what you did? You got rid of all of them. And you expected your bullpen to be good? Oh, it’s just – look, I can tolerate a lot of things. What I can’t tolerate is stupidity. Taking Garrett Whitlock out of the bullpen was stupid. It was stupid at the beginning. It was stupid in the middle. And it’s stupid now. You had a good thing. Why did you get in the way? I’m sorry. It just pissed me off to no end on Friday night.
