After Alex Cora and Craig Breslow hinted at the idea last month, Garrett Whitlock officially confirmed to reporters at Fenway Fest that he was going back to the bullpen in 2025. For a majority of the last 3 seasons, the Red Sox have attempted to make Whitlock a starter at the big league level. That experiment took a harsh turn last spring after he suffered another significant injury to his UCL, which cost him almost all of 2024. Now, he’s turning the clock back to 2021, when he was one of the best multi-inning relief arms in all of baseball.
“Let’s go back to the bullpen, baby,” Whitlock told the media. When asked for the reasoning, he explained that “it was just kind of a little bit of everything. It’s one of those things where, obviously, I still have the repertoire and everything to start, and if they need me to do that, I’ll do that, but just talking to [manager Alex Cora] and everything, it’s comfortable down there, and, it’s where I’ve had success and everything. So it’s what we think is going to help give the team the best chance to win. So we’re going to do that.”
To be fair, the Red Sox and Whitlock are in much different spots than they were 3 years ago. While the pitching pipeline still needs work, the organization has produced 3 homegrown starting rotation options, dealt for a young ace, and collected a trio of young arms in Richard Fitts, Quinn Priester, and Hunter Dobbins at Triple-A. That’s before factoring in Luis Perales, who was on Baseball America’s Top 100 prospect list until his UCL blew out during the summer. After 2021, the Red Sox were desperate for any arm that could possibly profile as a cheap rotation option moving forward, but now that need isn’t so bad that it’s worth risking Whitlock’s health again and again.
Don’t get it wrong, it’s not that Whitlock didn’t have the stuff to stick in the rotation. Just looking at his first 4 starts of 2024, he registered a 1.96 ERA/3.33 FIP, which included a revamped arsenal after working with Andrew Bailey. Availability is the most important skill for any arm player though and after not reaching the 80 inning benchmark once as a starter, it became clear that a return to the bullpen was the best way to get him back on track.