DHL Dan LXXXV - Shank Wants A Closer

Nothing says lazy like a second Picked Up Pieces column in three weeks:

■ Crushing Dave Dombrowski for the Red Sox bullpen failure is not a second-guess by anybody around here. Like everybody else, I challenged Dombro on the state of the Sox bullpen in spring training, and on March 17 he told me, “I think we’ll be ready . . . I understand there’s no proven closer and until somebody gets out there and does that, there’s always an uncertainty, but we think we have enough ability there to get the job done . . . We’ll be fine out there, I believe. Give guys a chance and we’ll see what takes place.’’ As we all know, this philosophy was built on “hope’’ rather than established talent. Bad bullpen-building cost Dombrowski a World Series when he had a Tiger wagon in 2013, and it may keep his team out of the playoffs this year. What a waste. The Sox are built to win now and have the top payroll in baseball. But Dombrowski put cheap gas in a Rolls-Royce and paid the price. The announcement that Nathan Eovaldi will take over as closer was equally weird. Dombrowski refused to say it was “desperation,’’ insisting it was a move of “urgency.’’ No, thanks. It’s risky to hand the job to a guy who’s had two Tommy John surgeries. Plus, Eovaldi doesn’t want to close and is still at least a week away. Meanwhile, the Sox went into the weekend with an American League-leading 18 blown saves. It’s time to trade for a closer. Who do they think they are kidding?

Here's another question - does Shank want to keep his job at the Boston Globe?

■ Regarding bringing on more payroll, John Henry last weekend told WEEI’s Rob Bradford, “It’s not a luxury-tax issue, it’s a question of how much money do we want to lose. We’re already over budget and we were substantially over our budget last year and this year. We’re not going to be looking to add a lot of payroll.’’ Stunned that the world champion Boston Red Sox might be losing money, I e-mailed the owner to ask if I was reading this correctly and if NESN revenues are counted when calculating losses. Henry, who also owns the Globe, did not respond.

He'll respond to Shank the next time the Globe announces their next 'restructuring'.

Okay - this one's pretty funny:

■ If Mayor Pete Buttigieg gets sick and can’t make it to the next debate, he can send Brad Stevens in his place and no one will know the difference.

■ Mookie Betts’s odd decline actually started last year in the playoffs. After his over-the-top MVP season (.346, 32 homers), Betts batted .210 in three postseason series with one homer and 12 strikeouts over 14 games. Betts went into Saturday bstting .268, down 78 points from 2018. Meanwhile, exactly what is going on with Andrew Benintendi?

So maybe it's not just the closer that's the problem this year, Shank?

We don't have to wait another month for Shank to rag on the Patriots:

■ Patriots fans go wild with excitement any time there’s any cherry-picked stat to indicate that the AFC East is not a joke. Meanwhile, New England will go into this season with a quarterback who has 237 career wins (including postseason). The other three projected starting quarterbacks (Sam Darnold, Josh Rosen, Josh Allen) in the Warhol Division have fewer combined wins than Brady did during the 2007 regular season.

Whenever Shank is confronted by a single statistic (total wins by division) that should forevermore render this argument moot, he calls us 'cherry pickers'. The burden's on him to explain why this stat should be considered just that.