Brayan Bello, Red Sox manager Alex Cora, pitching coach Andrew Bailey, and catcher Carlos Narvaez lend insight into Cora’s decision to pull Bello from his Game 2 start against the Yankees after only 2.1 innings.
In two of his three regular season starts against the Yankees, Brayan Bello gave the Red Sox seven shutout innings.
In Game 2 of the Wild Card series on Wednesday night, seven was a decidedly less magical number; it was how many pitchers Alex Cora used in the 4-3 loss.
Bello was one out into the third inning when he saw Cora striding determinedly to the mound. The Red Sox right-hander had faced 11 men and thrown 28 pitches, 17 for strikes. The Yankees tagged him for two earned runs, in the form of a two-run homer by Cohasset, Ma. native Ben Rice. Bello walked one and struck out none.
His manager said “nothing,” a sullen Bello relayed via team translator. “I just gave him the ball.”
Bello appeared blindsided. Postgame, he and Cora separately confirmed there had been no discussions about a potential early hook. Asked if he was surprised, Bello said, “Yeah, a little bit.”
“I don’t think that was the game plan,” pitching coach Andrew Bailey told the Herald. “It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, we want Brayan to be short today.’ I think Alex has been here a number of times and he has the temperature on all our players, and knows when to lean on other guys. Brayan’s been a horse for us all year long. This game doesn’t define him. The workload over a long period of time is very, very good. We expect him to bounce back next time and give us a long one.”
“It’s a tough lineup, a bunch of lefties,” Cora explained. “The at-bats were getting better with the lefties, and we had a bunch of (lefties) in the bullpen. At that point, we had to do this… It doesn’t feel good, you know, because we want the kid to go out there and get this experience and pitch deep into the game, but I felt like at that moment we needed to.”
Though Bello said, “I felt good with all my pitches,” catcher Carlos Narváez delved into the cutter that Rice turned into a homer.
“He was good. Of course, a mistake cutter with Rice, trying to go away on that one,” said Narváez. “He was aggressive. He saw too many cutters in the past. I mean, I knew it was a risky pitch. We wanted to like, steal a strike backdoor, ended up like, mid-down.”
Bailey saw “a little lack of command” from Bello, and also cited Rice’s homer. The cutter is a new addition to Bello’s arsenal this year (though MLB’s Statcast also lists 38 cutters among his ‘23 pitch breakdown), but it was his third most-used pitch, thrown 423 times, or 15.7% in the regular season. It is a work in progress though, as evidenced by the plus-1 run value; his sweeper (minus-2), changeup and four-seamer (both minus-1) were more effective at preventing runs.
“It’s a cutter that ends up down-middle rather than backdoor,” Bailey said of the pitch to Rice. “I think it’s just been the last two times out a little bit more in the middle of the plate. Location has kind of regressed a little bit, and that kind of ebbs and flows throughout the season. I think Alex saw the same thing and wanted to make a move… We wanted to go and win those moments. I think that was the game right there early on, and we wanted to bring (Justin) Wilson in there to shut it down and just continue to pass the baton.”
Bello’s postseason debut ended 1.2 innings earlier than his briefest regular-season starts this year, a pair of four-inning performances on May 23 and Sept. 18. He recorded at least one out in the fifth inning in every one of his other 27 outings.
“I know he’s not that happy,” said Narváez. “He was out of the game early, but it is what it is, you know what I mean? This is the time (when) everybody gotta be in the same boat, you know what I mean?”
Wednesday was certainly not Cora’s first time keeping a starter on short leash and being aggressive with pitching changes. He managed Boston’s most recent postseason series, the ‘21 ALCS, in similar fashion, pulling Chris Sale after 2.2 innings of one-run ball in Game 1. (That, too, was a one-run loss.)
This time, however, the decisions ensure the Red Sox head into an elimination game on Thursday with a depleted and tired bullpen and rookie Connelly Early making his postseason debut and only the fifth start of his big-league career overall.
“In the moment, frustrating, I bet,” said Cora of Bello’s mood. “But then I talked to him, and (he’s) just gotta be ready for the next one. This is October baseball.”
The ‘next one’ could, in theory, be Game 1 of the ALDS. Since Bello’s 28 pitches are comparable to a side session in between starts, he could conceivably start against the Blue Jays in Toronto.
If the Red Sox can get there.
Otherwise Bello will have to wait at least a year for a second chance at a first impression.
“I don’t feel disappointed about myself,” said Bello. “I feel like I tried to do my job, and he made a decision to take me out.”
