The Boston Red Sox are having a nightmare of a season. There’s no softer way to say it. They’re dead last in the AL East, they own the worst record in the American League, and they just dropped two of three at home to the Colorado Rockies — a team widely considered the worst in baseball. Thursday night’s 6-3 win over the Yankees at Fenway Park doesn’t change the big picture. It’s a band-aid on a broken leg.
One of the biggest reasons for this mess has been Brayan Bello. After three promising seasons in Boston, the 27-year-old right-hander completely fell apart this year. He went 2-6 with a 6.34 ERA and gave up 10 home runs in just 61 innings. The Red Sox sent him down to Triple-A Worcester earlier this month, hoping he could find whatever he lost.
Thursday night, in his third start for the WooSox, Bello finally looked like the guy the Red Sox thought they had. He went five innings, gave up five hits and one earned run, walked two and struck out six. He threw 85 pitches, 54 for strikes. It wasn’t dominant, but it was solid. And for a team that’s been desperate for any kind of stability on the mound, that line probably looked pretty good.
Injuries haven’t helped
It’s not all on Bello. The Red Sox have been without ace Garrett Crochet since late April, and rookie phenom Roman Anthony hasn’t played since early May. Those are two huge holes in any rotation and lineup. But even with those absences, the starting pitching has been brutal across the board, and the numbers at Fenway are genuinely hard to look at. Boston is 13-25 at home this season. That’s not just bad. That’s historically bad.
Bello’s demotion was supposed to be a wake-up call, and so far his numbers in Worcester are trending in the right direction. The Red Sox aren’t going anywhere this year, but if Bello can lock in again before September, at least they’d have something to build on for 2027. Right now, that’s about as much as you can ask for.
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