Red Sox Brayan Bello’s Next Start To Come On Friday originally appeared on NESN.
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The Boston Red Sox sent Brayan Bello down to Triple-A after he continued to struggle as a starter in the big leagues.
Bello has thrown 35 2/3 innings as a starter this season for the Red Sox and has a 10.35 ERA. However, he has pitched behind an opener four times and has logged 25 1/3 innings. In those four outings, his ERA is 0.71. There is a clear discrepancy, but the Red Sox want him to start games. They have him working on stuff in the minor leagues.
He has already made one start since his demotion, and his next start is expected to come on Friday against the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, according to Boston Sports Journal’s Chris Henrique.
Bello went four innings, striking out five and issuing no walks in his first Triple-A start of the season. He allowed two earned runs, but the Red Sox have a plan to make sure he gets back to his old self.
According to interim manager Chad Tracy, the Red Sox want Bello touching the mound more in between starts and plan to have him do more work there in between starts. Friday will be a tell on whether that had any effect.
“Touching the mound even if it’s just for drill work and continuing to work on that offspeed arsenal and keeping that in the zone and in play at all times,” Tracy said, per MassLive’s Christopher Smith on Monday. “And we’ll get ready for the next one.”
“Even if you touch the mound for like five or 10 pitches or whatever,” Tracy added. “There’s things you can do to touch the mound more without overdoing it. Bello’s a worker, so he’s open-minded to that stuff. And we have two really good pitching coaches down there that are very aware of what was happening here. And now they’ve seen it and they’ll just keep pushing him.”
Bello had the best year of his career last year, and the Red Sox had high hopes for him this year. Hopefully, his stint in Triple-A gets him back to pitching like the player the Red Sox saw last year.
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