It's one thing to be the Red Sox' closer. It's another to be A Red Sox closer.
Keith Foulke. Jonathan Papelbon. Koji Uehara. Craig Kimbrel. You get the idea.
For the majority of their careers in Boston, when those guys came into a game there was a civic pride that emanated from the opposition being just completely demoralized.
Finally, that vibe is back. For that, the Red Sox can thank Matt Barnes.
"He’s under control," said Red Sox manager Alex Cora after watching Barnes close out the Red Sox' 2-1 win over the Mets Tuesday night at Citi Field. "What he’s doing so far is impressive. You can see him developing into this guy."
"This guy" is flat-out dominant, as the Mets found out. It's the kind of dominance that can be few-and-far-between for many teams grasping at late-game help. The Red Sox have one of those.
In between the aforementioned stoppers, you had the likes of Alfredo Aceves, (an ill-equipped) Mark Melancon, Joel Hanrahan, Andrew Bailey, Junichi Tazawa, and, yes, even the previous iteration of Barnes.
But now, judging by what we're witnessing, the Red Sox have got their next in line.
If there was any doubt, Barnes went a long way to defining his dominance in this latest win. The righty stared down the meat of the Mets' batting order -- Pete Alonso, Michael Conforto and J.D. Davis -- and simply overmatched all three.
Five of his 10 pitches resulted in swings and misses, mixing and matching with a 97 mph fastball and hammer of a curve.
As has been the case in this season that has included 22 strikeouts and just three walks over 13 innings, he worked confidently, effectively, and even with some tempo.
Before the game, Barnes explained his transformation.
"So there's one key number that I think I said it at the end of spring training or the first week of the season, that I had said, one of the analytic numbers that we had was that if you throw 100 fastballs down the middle of the plate in an 0-0 count, 92 percent of the time you get a positive result," he said. "To me, if you tell me that 92 percent of the time I can be successful doing something, I'm going to take those odds all day every day. So for me, I would kind of nibble around the zone a little bit, try to force guys to expand before they were ever engaged. Getting guys to expand drastically before they've ever engaged is kind of a tough thing to do. So you're trying to get guys engaged, get them moving, get them active in the zone, and then that allows you to expand and have better success with that.
"And you know, walks have killed me in the past. Let's just be frank. The number of times that teams have kind of strung together multiple hits in an inning are a lot fewer than when I walk a guy or I walk two guys and then a hit kills me. I might give up a solo homer, I gave a homer the other night, and of course I walked the leadoff guy. My goal is to go out there and I might give up a solo homer here and there, but based off of those numbers and what I've seen from the first three weeks of the season, I'll be successful a lot more than I won't be on this game plan of quick tempo and attacking the zone."
Fair enough.
However he got to this point, it has become a different conversation. One which we left behind three years ago.