Boston Red Sox Closer 2012: Is It Daniel Bard's Time?

Jonathan Papelbon is gone. Conventional wisdom seems to suggest that the Red Sox will now dip into the free agent market to sign one of the available closers. 

What if they don't though? 

What if new General Manager Ben Cherington has decided that it's Daniel Bard's time? It's a legitimate question for two reasons. One is that it's possible Ben Cherington and others in the Red Sox front office do in fact feel this way and the other is that they may in fact be right.

I know- September. Yes let's get that out of the way. Bard stunk in September. Then again so did nearly everyone else. Actually, by the end of the month he had actually put together a few decent outings and he still had some bad ones too. The real damage that month was a brutal set of five consecutive appearances from Sept. 1 through Sept. 14.

Five appearances, five losses, three-and-two-thirds innings pitched, six hits, nine earned runs, and five walks. From that point on he was not the same pitcher we saw pre-September but he was not nearly as bad as those first two weeks of the month.

When Red Sox front office personnel are making their decisions about Bard they'll probably look at those five outings pretty closely to determine what exactly was going on.

They may also take a glance at his 24 appearances in the months of June and July. That's because in those 24 consecutive appearances he gave up exactly zero earned runs. June and July numbers? 25.1 innings pitched, 11 hits, six walks, 24 strikeouts and zero earned runs. That's a fairly out of the ordinary stretch of dominance for a reliever. Then again the first five outings of September were a fairly out of the ordinary stretch of terrible performance as well. 

The reality is that Daniel Bard is not quite as good as his July and June might suggest and not nearly as bad as his early September would either. The good news is that if one looks back on his career numbers he's closer to the June and July Bard than the early September one.

That may in fact mean that the best available closer for the 2012 Boston Red Sox is already on the Boston Red Sox. How big a deal is that? It's pretty major if it proves true. Signing another closer will cost money. Not Carl Crawford or John Lackey money, but it's going to take some cash.

While it won't cost as much as Lackey or Crawford those two players are worth mentioning because they're a reminder that just because you can produce at a high level in other markets and in the heat of pennant races doesn't mean it will always translate on the field in Boston.

Carl Crawford had battled in the trenches of the hyper competitive American League East before he got to Beantown. He had won the division in 2008 and moved on the World Series. He had made the playoffs in 2010 as well.

John Lackey had won a World Series ring in 2002, he had made numerous trips back to the postseason in the years since. Both of them have been nothing but disappointments since arriving in Boston.

That means that even if the Red Sox sign a top-tier available free agent closer such as Ryan Madson or Heath Bell there are no guarantees. Should the Sox decide to sign one of the cheaper closer options on the market then there will be an even greater set of question marks.

Joe Nathan is trying to bounce back from Tommy John surgery, to this point he's had mixed results. Jonathan Broxton is also trying to recover from injury. Francisco Rodriguez has shown signs of decline even when healthy. Red Sox fans are I'm sure well aware that there is already one of those types of players on the current roster. His name is Bobby Jenks and he serves as a stark reminder that sometimes those types of signings don't always work out.

Daniel Bard won't be a free agent until 2016. He currently makes $505,000 a year. He will of course make more once he goes through the arbitration process but he won't cost nearly as much as almost every player listed above until 2016.

If Bard becomes what many think he can become, a closer in the mode of a Neftali Feliz who more often than not can fire a 100 mile per hour fastball by hitters and close out the majority of games he enters, then the Red Sox would all of a sudden find themselves with a lot more money to play with this offseason.

That could mean an extension for Jacoby Ellsbury. It could mean a trade for a pitcher who will or could demand big money following the 2012 season. The Red Sox could then sign him to an extension before he hits the market next winter. It could mean any number of things.

It also is a fairly high risk move by a new General Manager. Imagine this: You're Ben Cherington, the new General Manager of the Boston Red Sox. You have a new manager at the helm, you have a team taking the field on opening day 2012 that is still in some ways reeling from the manner in which they ended the 2011 season.

Your team has leads of one or two runs in four or five games in the first two weeks of the season and the 26-year-old pitcher you've anointed the team's new closer to take the place of a guy you let go in after six consecutive 30-plus save seasons blows four saves in the first two weeks putting the team in another early season hole.

That's an unsettling scenario. It's also not out of the realm of possibility if Daniel Bard is the closer at the opening of the 2012 season. Young closers go through those types of growing pains sometimes. That's not always an issue but in Boston in the 2012 season it would most definitely be an issue. A big issue. 

Tough choices for Ben Cherington right out of the gate, but he's already put himself in this quandary by allowing Papelbon to leave. It would have cost the Red Sox an absurd amount of money to keep Papelbon but it also would have been overpaying for the privilege of the security of the known commodity in Papelbon.

Now it's up to Cherington and eventually it may be up to Bard as well. Is his time to shine April of 2012? We may find out soon.