The Red Sox have one of MLB's best pitching staffs, made up of 'a bunch of survivors' (2024)

Against the hottest team in baseball on Sunday, the Boston Red Sox began with Cooper Criswell, a 13th-round pick making his sixth career start in the big leagues. The bullpen door opened in the fifth inning for Brennan Bernardino, a 26th-rounder who had to trick teams into giving him a shot. The next two arms out of the pen were undrafted relievers Zack Kelly and Cam Booser, then 15th-rounder Josh Winckowski and finally Kenley Jansen, a converted catcher who didn’t begin pitching until he was 21 years old.

Six pitchers in total, none of them drafted higher than 391st overall, combined to allow just two runs and snap the Minnesota Twins’ 12-game winning streak.

That’s how the Red Sox have done it all year. They are among the most surprisingly competitive teams in the sport, and the driving force is a pitching staff that leads the majors with a 2.61 ERA, more than a half-run better than all but two other teams in the league.

And most pitchers on the Red Sox staff were longshots even to step foot in a big-league clubhouse, much less dominate their peers.

“This is a game of survival,” Bernardino said. “And all these guys you see in here, this is a bunch of survivors.”

The Red Sox have used 19 pitchers this season. Two were Rule 5 picks, three did stints in independent ball, and one was released at the end of spring training. Seven were drafted in the 15th round or later, and two others were draft-eligible but went unselected. Only one was taken in the first round. The Red Sox’s only second-rounder got hurt after 6 1/3 innings, their only fourth-rounder got hurt after two starts and their only third-rounder arrived via the Rule 5 Draft.

No other pitching staff in baseball was built this way.

“Once you get your foot in the door,” Kelly said, “a lot of it is just what you do with it.”

Heading into the season, low expectations for the team were due mostly to a Red Sox pitching staff that seemingly lacked either the depth or the pedigree to compete. The team’s biggest acquisition was veteran starter Lucas Giolito, but he had season-ending surgery in spring training, and the only other pitcher the Red Sox signed to a major-league deal in the offseason was Criswell, who had just 12 games of big-league experience. To make matters worse, three members of their season-opening rotation wound up on the IL by the end of April. Reinforcements were needed right away.

But the Red Sox have not only stayed afloat, they have thrived. Here’s the pitching makeup — the number of pitchers used from various areas of the draft — for the top 10 teams in ERA this season.

Includes any player who has pitched for a team this season. First-round picks include supplemental first-rounders. Fifteenth-round and later includes draft-eligible players who went undrafted. All stats are through Monday afternoon.

International amateurs rarely receive large signing bonuses — their futures are just too unpredictable — so the most reliable way to find pitching talent is at the top of the draft, and the other teams that rank top-10 in ERA this season reflect that. Most of their staffs were built around high-round picks. Both the Seattle Mariners and New York Yankees have used three first-round picks in their rotations alone and the Mariners have yet to use a starter who wasn’t drafted in the top five rounds. The Detroit Tigers have used 14 pitchers total, and more than half were first-round picks. The Philadelphia Phillies have used only one pitcher drafted later than the 10th round, and while the Cleveland Guardians have used four late-round or undrafted pitchers, two rank 17th and 18th on the staff in innings pitched (out of 18 pitchers total). Most of their go-to pitchers come with higher pedigrees.

Of the other staff that rank in the top 10 in ERA, the draft-day makeup of the Orioles is most similar to the Red Sox, though they don’t have nearly as many late-round selections.

“Sure, you see the bonus babies at the (rookie ball) camp, and they think they’re hot stuff and everything,” 18th-round pick Garrett Whitlock said. “But at the end of the day, you’ve got to perform.”

Emergence from obscurity is not unheard of. Royals starter Seth Lugo (34th round), Yankees starter Nestor Cortes (33rd round), Dodgers closer Evan Phillips (17th round) and Tigers closer Jason Foley (undrafted) have exceeded modest prospect expectations, and most staffs have a pitcher or two who has beaten the odds. Even high-round picks rarely get there without some adversity.

“Everyone’s got a story,” Red Sox setup man Chris Martin said.

Some stories, though, are less likely than others.

The top two pitchers in the Red Sox’s pen both had unlikely journeys: Martin gave up on baseball and was working in a warehouse before he got his first chance to pitch in the minors. Jansen spent his first five seasons of pro ball as a catcher and is now one of the best relief pitchers of his generation.

New Red Sox reliever Greg Weissert was drafted 548th overall (18th round) in 2016 and has a 1.20 ERA this season. Only three players taken after Weissert in that draft have generated a positive WAR in the majors. Kutter Crawford, a 16th-round pick in 2017, has the second-best ERA in MLB. The only pitcher who has approached Crawford’s career production from the 12th round or later in 2017 is his teammate Whitlock, who came to the Red Sox via the Rule 5 draft.

Some of the Red Sox’s lower-round pitchers said they felt their draft status — or lack thereof — carried weight in the low minors. Higher picks tend to get more opportunities in the beginning, but by Double A, the pitchers said, the results are what really matter. A total of 11 undrafted (but draft-eligible) players have thrown a pitch in the majors this season, and the Red Sox have two of them: Kelly and Booser, who made his big-league debut earlier this season, two weeks before his 32nd birthday and nearly seven years after he retired from baseball to work as a carpenter. Afterward, Booser teared up in the dugout, but he’s since pitched seven more times with a respectable 3.72 ERA and more than a strikeout per inning.

“It was equally emotional and meaningful for us in the clubhouse to embrace him (after his debut),” Red Sox Rule 5 pick Justin Slaten said, “because everybody in this clubhouse has only wanted one thing in their life, and that’s to be a Major League Baseball player.”

In descending order of staff ERA, here’s the draft makeup of every other pitching staff in baseball.

All stats are through Monday afternoon.

The Padres are outliers because the majority of their staff signed as international free agents — the only major-league team for which that’s true. The Twins are the only team that hasn’t used any first-round picks, but they’ve also gotten just 8 1/3 innings from pitchers drafted later than the 15th round. The A’s have yet to use anyone drafted later than the 11th round.

The Rays, notorious for their ability to find and develop pitching from almost any background, have a staff makeup fairly similar to the Red Sox, except the Rays aren’t getting nearly the same results. The Rays have a 4.59 ERA, which would be their highest season ERA in over a decade if they finish the season at the same mark. The Red Sox have been more than a run-and-a-half-per-game better.

Few expected this Red Sox staff to be this good — not when their season started, and not when most of their careers started — but at some point, the numbers that matter aren’t from a draft or a signing bonus. They’re from the results on the field.

“I would say that’s the culture of baseball,” Whitlock said. “You perform, you earn respect.”

(Photo of Brennan Bernardino from April 30: Jaiden Tripi / Getty Images)

Chad Jennings is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Boston Red Sox and Major League Baseball. He was on the Red Sox beat previously for the Boston Herald, and before moving to Boston, he covered the New York Yankees for The Journal News and contributed regularly to USA Today. Follow Chad on Twitter @chadjennings22