Brandon Workman epitomizes Red Sox bullpen quietly coming up big

COMMENTARY

The Red Sox arrived in Chicago just 3.5 games better than AL-worst Baltimore, with a run differential of minus-23. In four games at Guaranteed Rate Field, they had a 5-run inning, a 7-run inning, and a 9-run inning, which is why they’ll go to Baltimore with a run differential of zero and just 2.5 games out of a wild card berth.

If not for one high slider from Ryan Brasier on Thursday night, they’d also roll into the Inner Harbor winners of seven straight and better than .500.

“I made a bad pitch,” Brasier told reporters after a 6-4 walkoff loss on Nicky Delmonico’s home run, “and he did what he was supposed to do with it.”

Those big numbers above are going to be what a lot of people remember about the series against the White Sox. After the shock in the opener, it was 6-1 behind Chris Sale’s best of 2019, 15-2 on the strength of 10 straight hits, and 9-2 thanks to a Little League triple and a pile-on at the end. Specifically, the 459-foot Friday projectile from Michael Chavis, who went 6 for 16 with four walks and two other homers in the four games. (Chavis alone has 17 hits in 63 plate appearances. Boston’s other second basemen have 12 in 92. Hope he didn’t have any favorite Pawtucket restaurants or anything.)

It’s high time we really talk about that bullpen, though. They were the weak point, remember? The Sox were going to need to spend on someone with Craig Kimbrel departing, and yet Zack Britton stayed in New York and Adam Ottavino joined him (for just $9 million per year!). David Robertson lives in Rhode Island, wanted to pitch close to home, and picked … Philadelphia, never getting the third year he supposedly wanted.

And what’s that gotten them? The Red Sox are 12-1 when leading after six innings.

On Sunday, Rick Porcello went six innings. The bullpen needed 13 batters to close it out: One hit, one walk, one hit batter, ballgame.

Matt Barnes has allowed seven hits in 13 innings and has struck out 26 of the 51 hitters he’s faced — better than half. Brasier is not exactly the revelation he was a year ago, his control slightly diminished, but 11 hits and two walks in 14 innings will do just fine. Marcus Walden might be this year’s Brasier, what with four organizations passing on him before Boston nabbed him in December 2016 and his numbers to date — 4-0, 17 1/3 innings, nine hits, five walks, 20 strikeouts, and a 1.56 ERA.

Then there’s Brandon Workman. From 59 batters faced, the Texan has allowed two singles. He has walked 13 and been charged for three runs, but 22 strikeouts against two hits is something else. An .043 (2 for 46) batting average against is something else, too — the best in baseball.

“I needed to show up ready to pitch this spring training,” Workman told MassLive last week. “I thought I did that. I think that’s put me in a good position right now going forward.”

Workman’s both been here forever and can be easily forgotten. Taken in the second round of the 2010 draft, only three current Sox — Dustin Pedroia (2004 draft), Christian Vazquez (2008 draft), and Xander Bogaerts (intl. free agent, 2009) — have been in the organization longer. He threw 8 2/3 innings in the 2013 playoffs without allowing an earned run.

Yet Workman has never been “the man,” nor even a near approximation of it here. He’s been the seventh-inning guy primarily, or the eighth-inning guy in a blowout. The past two seasons, following a two-year MLB absence due to Tommy John surgery, he’s fanned just fewer than a batter per inning and posted a 3.22 ERA. Good. Fine.

What’s different this year? The curveball. Not the pitch, but how he’s deploying it.

Usage is well up, from roughly 30 percent across the prior two years to 48.8 in 2019. It’s long been his favored pitch to start lefties, but he’s throwing it more than half the time in every situation against them this year, plus leaning on it when he’s ahead against righties.

The nuts and bolts of it aren’t that much different, with hitters missing it on roughly a third of their swings per usual. But in 25 at-bats to end with a curveball, 13 hitters struck out, half of the other 12 couldn’t get it off the ground, and not a one has barreled it up.

“I’ve got good movement and really good command of it right now, too,” Workman told MassLive. “I’m able to throw it in pretty much any situation.”

He remains a member of the support team, 15 of his 17 outings coming in the sixth or seventh. That, however, might be where the Sox need the most help. Barnes has taken to the big stage, as has Brasier (who actually has six of the Sox eight saves). It’s finding other guys to throw reliable innings that’s the current challenge.

Consider, though, that the Red Sox, with their starting pitching stabilized and their offense obliterating the ball, are finally putting the bullpen in a position to succeed. Given what the relievers were doing when those other two weren’t, who knows what the next few weeks might have in store.

In the short term, next are the Orioles and their pitching staff that has given up 75 home runs and a .532 slugging percentage in 34 games. (The White Sox are second-worst with a .468 allowed, for perspective.) The offense is … strange. No team swings at a higher percentage of pitches in the zone than Baltimore, and no team barrels up a higher percentage of its contact, and yet, the O’s are still a bottom-five AL offense.

Josh Smith — who has thrown one inning since April 20 — will start the series ahead of David Price and Chris Sale, opposed by lefty John Means, David Hess (whom Andrew Benintendi has homered off three times), and journeyman Andrew Cashner.