It was almost exactly three years ago – Aug. 28, 2023 – that the Red Sox infamously left Kyle Barraclough on the mound for one Astros run after another. By the time his 4 ⅓ miserable innings of relief were over, he had been tagged for 10 runs in a 13-5 loss, all because the Red Sox just needed someone to eat some innings and save an otherwise taxed pitching staff.
Jedixson Paez's Red Sox debut was not supposed to conjure memories of that Barraclough outing. Unfortunately, it did.
Taking the turn of ace Sonny Gray, whose start was pushed from Tuesday to Saturday in an effort to manage his workload, Paez got knocked around to the tune of eight earned runs on 10 hits over 3 ⅔ innings in his first big-league start (fourth appearance total) as the Red Sox fell to the Mariners, 9-6, at Fenway Park.
The first sign of trouble was a Dominic Canzone home run on the sixth pitch of the game. The complete collapse came in the second inning, when Seattle put five on the board with one hard-hit ball after another. Randy Arozarena continued his vendetta against Boston pitching with a three-run homer over the Green Monster.
The Mariners tacked on two more runs over the next two innings to push their lead to 8-1 before Red Sox interim manager Chad Tracy finally, mercifully lifted Paez from the game. Tracy had said pregame that he hoped to get 80-85 pitches from Paez. He got 87, but he probably should have wished for them to cover more innings.
The Red Sox offense mounted a little bit of a push later in the game, scoring twice in the seventh and twice more in the ninth to cut Seattle's lead to 9-6, but that was as close as they would get.
Leaving Paez in as long as Tracy did almost seems cruel, but the reality is that the Red Sox really did need as much as they could get from him. No one else was going to be bumped up to start on short rest, and Brayan Bello wasn't really available to eat innings in an opener/long relief situation after throwing 94 pitches on Saturday. The Boston bullpen had thrown 16 ⅔ innings over the previous three days, from Saturday's doubleheader to Monday's 10-inning affair.
The 22-year-old Paez had shown some promise with Triple-A Worcester, allowing four earned runs over 12 ⅓ innings (2.92 ERA) in his three starts there. Tracy had praised his ability to pepper the strike zone with four different pitches.
Unfortunately, those pitches just caught way too much of the strike zone Tuesday, and the Mariners made Paez pay for it. This looked a lot more like the pitcher who struggled mightily in three relief outings earlier this season with the White Sox, who had selected Paez in the Rule 5 draft. After he gave up six earned runs in three innings, Chicago returned Paez to the Red Sox.
After Tuesday night, the Red Sox will almost certainly be returning Paez to Worcester. If they're going to build in any more rest for their starting pitchers over this final month of the regular season, they might want to come up with a better plan to fill in the gaps.
