After their horrid start to the 2015 season, the Boston Red Sox starting rotation has been under a microscope and the team has been entrenched with trade rumors. However, the club's management seems like they're not ready to make a deal (or any other changes) until they know for sure they need to.
Boston fired pitching coach Juan Nieves last week and replaced him with Carl Willis, but now the burden is on general manager Ben Cherington and manager John Farrell to solve the issues with the starting rotation. Nieves was tabbed as a scapegoat and that can only last for so long.
Even with a collective 5.63 starters ERA, which is good for 29th in the MLB, the Red Sox say they aren't going to cave and make a deal to improve their rotation.
"Not at the present moment," Farrell told Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe when asked if changes were coming to the rotation. "Now, that's always up for review. We'll see how we continue to progress through the rotation for another turn."
"We knew we needed good pitching entering the year to win games and we still know that. I believe we'll pitch better," Cherington reiterated to Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe.
"We're trying to create some stability around that group. We lost two catchers in spring training and one early this season. That's a change that affects the pitching to some degree. We obviously made a change with the pitching coach so we want to see this group have a chance to perform with some stability around it."
"We're going to be wrong until we straighten out the record," Red Sox senior vice president and assistant GM Mike Hazen told Gordon Edes of ESPNBoston.com.
"I don't believe we were. We believe in the guys who go out there every day."
Rick Porcello is perhaps the only pitcher that has given this cast of starters some hope. He's 3-2 with a 4.50 ERA and 1.318 WHIP in seven starts, but the Red Sox have won the last four games he has pitched. He owns a 2-0 record with a 2.88 ERA over that span, compared to his first three starts where he was 1-2 with a 6.63 ERA.
As for the others ...
Clay Buchholz: 2-4 with a 5.73 ERA and 1.593 WHIP in seven starts
Wade Miley: 1-4 with a 6.91 ERA and 1.535 WHIP in six starts
Joe Kelly: 1-2 with a 6.35 ERA and 1.353 WHIP in six starts
Justin Masterson: 2-1 with a 5.18 ERA and 1.576 WHIP in six starts
Boston can only stick with such a struggling department for so long. The AL East, despite the New York Yankees having a comfortable lead right now, should be a wide open division for much of the year and the Red Sox can't risk failing to take advantage of that with an incapable starting rotation.
While the team's management says they aren't ready to make changes, it's hard to believe Cherington doesn't have some sort of Plan B up his sleeve for when the trade deadline approaches. The Red Sox have been linked to names such as Cole Hamels, Scott Kazmir, Jordan Zimmermann, Johnny Cueto and others for months now, and it's still possible they look to make a move when the time comes.
