Red Sox Can Succeed With Set-Up-by-Committee Approach

Hideki Okajima came into Tuesday's season opener against the Rays with the bases empty—not a situation to which he was accustomed in 2009.

But after usually allowing inherited runners to score in 2008, Okajima instead allowed his own runners, before giving way to Justin Masterson to clean up his mess.

Yesterday's eighth inning showed one of Boston's biggest advantages this season that they hold over just about every other team in the American League: They don't need a definite set-up man for Jonathan Papelbon.

The Sox bullpen is very deep, and features pitchers with different builds, arsenals and deliveries. A set-up-by-committee approach to closing out games could work wonders for Terry Francona in 2009.

Okajima came into Tuesday's game to face the Rays ninth hitter, light-hitting Jason Bartlett, followed by two lefties in Akinori Iwamura and Carl Crawford. Once the soft-throwing, deceptive Okajima failed to do his job and righty Evan Longoria stepped to the plate, in came the hard-throwing side-armer Masterson.

Because of the incredible versatility and depth in the Red Sox bullpen—it also features Takashi Saito, Manny Delcarmen, Ramon Ramirez and Javier Lopez—Francona can bring in whomever he feels is the best matchup for the hitters coming up.

Nobody needs to be locked into their role, except Papelbon. Everyone else's role is simply to help get the Red Sox to the ninth inning.

The Red Sox have won 191 games the past two seasons, and did it without nearly the pitching depth they have this season. If this year's group performs to expectations- or even exceeds them—2009 could be an amazing year for Red Sox Nation.