It's not news to anyone that for much of the season the Red Sox middle relief took a lot of flak in this town with claims of inconsistency, mediocrity, and uncertainty in their abilities to get the job done. I have felt that most of these claims were short sighted and not a true indicator of just how good this bullpen was an is.
As I have said before, Manny Delcarmen is a friend of the family and we are huge fans of everything he does. But even through his tough stretches this year he has shown that he can be consistently effective even if occasionally he has really bad outings that skewed his ERA skyward and made his overall performance not look as good.
But lately that has all changed not only for Manny but for the main players in what will be Terry Francona's playoff bullpen. Lately Delcarmen has been lights out and Francona's best reliever, better even than Papelbon. His most recent numbers.
G IP BB SO ER H ERA WHIP BAA
Delcarmen 13 18 6 19 1 6 0.50 0.67 0.095
Those my friends are some unreal numbers. But he isn't the only one. Over the last month and a half the middle relief as a whole have been outstanding. Here's the numbers over the last one and a half months for the 4 guys that will be the men Tito turns to this postseason to get the games to Papelbon:
Delcarmen 25 30.1 9 29 6 15 1.78 0.79 0.145
Masterson 18 21.2 11 19 4 16 1.66 1.24 0.210
Okajima 26 24 12 21 6 14 2.25 0.83 0.161
Lopez 23 20.1 8 15 4 12 1.77 0.98 0.169
Now if the starters can continue to shine and the bats can be timely I think this is a harbinger of good news for this team's chances to repeat given that most of the year the biggest complaint against this club was that they might not have the middle relief to get the job done.
If the above numbers don't disprove the myth of a bad Red Sox bullpen, I don't know what will.