Red Sox Should Have Fixed Pen Before Signing 3-Time PED Offender Jenrry Mejia

Joe Kelly is gone. Craig Kimbrel is all but gone. The Boston Red Sox get the benefit of the doubt that comes with winning a World Series, but their offseason approach to building a bullpen looks like a big gamble.

And that was before they signed Jenrry Mejia.

On Tuesday, Alex Speier of the Boston Globe reported Mejia will earn $625,000 while he's in the majors, but the Sox gave him a minor league contract that doesn't even include an official invitation to spring training. It's a small gamble financially, although Mejia is the first player to receive a lifetime suspension from Major League Baseball for three positive drug tests. (Lifetime in his case meant a little more than two years, because MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred cleared him to return this past July.)

Mejia hasn't thrown a major league pitch since July 2015, but he doesn't turn 30 until October.

He's worth a chance, and there's nothing wrong with the Red Sox giving him that chance. It's far less risky than turning a championship bullpen over to a bunch of guys who have yet to prove they can handle it.

It's less risky than not spending money on relievers while your biggest rival seems to be spending on nothing but relievers.

The New York Yankees have signed Zack Britton and Adam Ottavino this winter, and they still have Aroldis Chapman and Dellin Betances, too. Meanwhile, the Red Sox have signed no relievers to major league contracts. Kelly left to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and they've suggested Kimbrel will be far out of their price range.

Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images

And while Kimbrel and various other relievers (but not proven closers) remain available on the free-agent market, Red Sox general manager Dave Dombrowski told Bob Nightengale of USA Today in early January, "We have not anticipated having a large expenditure for a closer."

That doesn't make the Red Sox cheap. They had the highest payroll in the game last year and likely will this year, too. It doesn't make them stupid. It just means they've chosen different ways to allocate their money.   

That's a big risk.

While Kimbrel was far from brilliant in October, no one else in the Red Sox bullpen had a save opportunity during the postseason. Others faced big late-inning pressure, but much of that went to Kelly, while some of it went to starters moonlighting as relievers.

Kelly is gone, and starters typically don't appear out of the pen from April through September. Someone else will need to, and the 21 pitchers currently on the Red Sox's 40-man roster have a combined 29 career major league saves. That includes 12 from Chris Sale, who is not a candidate to close.

Meanwhile, Mejia had 28 saves for the Mets in 2014. Perhaps he won't prove to be the same pitcher after all of the enforced time off, but maybe he will be.

Kevin Liles/Getty Images

Maybe it won't matter. The rest of the Red Sox roster is strong enough that barring significant injuries or underperformance, they should be right in the middle of the American League East race. If the bullpen proves to be a problem, there are plenty of examples of teams fixing their pens at midseason.

There's also the example of the 2018 Red Sox. When the postseason began, the late innings looked like a potential problem. The bullpens looked like a mismatch when the Sox met the Yankees in the American League Division Series, except the Red Sox starters outpitched the Yankees rotation so drastically that late-inning runs didn't change the outcome.

The Red Sox won that gamble, but Dombrowski knows all too well from his Octobers with the Detroit Tigers that gambling with the bullpen doesn't always work. And yet here he is, gambling again.

Here the Red Sox are, taking a chance on a guy who already failed three drug tests and would be a major embarrassment if he fails another one on their watch. Here they are, taking a chance on a guy who has hardly pitched in the last four seasons.

It isn't a lot of money. If it doesn't work out, the Sox can let Mejia go.

But after neglecting their bullpen this offseason, the Red Sox put themselves in the position where they may need Mejia to have success.

That's the big gamble.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

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