Craig Kimbrel. (Jim Rogash/Getty Images)
BOSTON (WBZ-AM) -- "You can always have more bullpen pieces, but we think realistically that our bullpen's pretty good."
When Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski uttered those words on July 31st--MLB's non-waiver trade deadline--they were true.
On the whole, still are. Boston has baseball's sixth-best bullpen ERA at 3.44. But, numbers rarely tell the whole story. Sox relievers let up six runs the last two innings of last night's survival of the Marlins. Craig Kimbrel, Matt Barnes, and Heath Hembree have been horrific. Overall, the group ranks 20th of 30 MLB teams in walk rate.
Alex Cora, concerned?
"I'm not concerned," he said. "I think that we need to get better. Walks are getting up there now. A lot of 3-1 counts, a lot of 2-strike hits. That's not good, and they know it. We trust the stuff, but at the end, we have to execute, and for whatever we are in the standings or whatever, we have a lot of margin to improve."
So, Craig Kimbrel, what's the deal?
"All we can do is learn from it, take it, and go for it from there," he said. "If this is the team that we have, then this is the team that we're gonna make a run with, so we gotta figure it out or we're not gonna win, and I got a pretty good feeling we're gonna figure it out."
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Adam Kaufman (@AdamMKaufman) reports