Craig Breslow has to be thankful he's just on the heels of inking Roman Anthony to a nearly unanimously approved eight-year extension coming into the Boston Red Sox' weekend series in San Diego against the Padres. On Friday in the opener of that set, the pitching matchup is set to be a painful reminder of a disastrous mistake that Breslow made in constructing the Red Sox roster, despite the team's success. That, of course, is the showdown between Walker Buehler and Nick Pivetta.
In essence, Breslow made the decision to swap Pivetta out of the Red Sox rotation for Buehler. The details add a bit more context as Boston gave their 4.5-season veteran, Pivetta, a qualifying offer, which the right-hander turned down. The Sox then signed the free agent Buehler for the exact value of the QO, a one-year, $21.05 million deal as Pivetta eventually landed with the Padres on a four-year deal.
But coming into Friday's showdown at Petco Park, the Red Sox have gotten the worse end of that swap by a wide, wide margin.
Coming into the matchup, Pivetta is basically lapping Buehler in terms of performance. The Padres starter has been one of the most pleasant surprises in baseball, posting a 2.73 ERA with a 0.94 WHIP across 22 starts and 128.2 innings to this point. Buehler, meanwhile, has largely been a headache, sitting with a 5.74 ERA and a 1.596 WHIP over 19 starts this season. Now, the two are facing off and it's hard not to think about what could've been had Boston just retained Pivetta.
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In Breslow's defense, most Red Sox fans were on-board with the decision
While hindsight is undeniably 20-20 in this situation, it's important to remember that you'd be hard-pressed to find a Red Sox fan who didn't support the swap, or at least moving on from Pivetta and how Breslow handled it. The qualifying offer aspect ultimately allowed Boston to not lose a draft pick for signing Alex Bregman, while the veteran righty was also, quite frankly, never this good for the Sox.
Across four full seasons and two starts in the 2020 campaign, Pivetta's time with the Red Sox was most defined by his inconsistency, something you can't fully see with the 4.29 ERA and 1.243 WHIP he posted over that span. It was a frustratingly familiar occurrence for Pivetta to have a few weeks of pure dominance only to then be fully unreliable for equally as long. It was never the sustained level of excellence we're currently seeing with the Padres.
As for replacing him with Buehler, while risky, it was justifiable as the former Dodgers was coming off a brilliant World Series showing against the Yankees to renew hope that he could recapture his former self. That hasn't happened, but again, it felt like a gamble that fans were in support of.
But it hasn't worked out. And as the Red Sox and Padres are both in the thralls their respective wild card races, that mistake from Breslow could be magnified in Friday's matchup.
Red Sox still may not be out of luck in Buehler-Pivetta matchup
While Pivetta hasn't exactly shown any cracks in his armor with San Diego this season, including allowing a sub-.500 OPS at Petco Park on the year, his ERA has been about 0.4 points higher in the second half of the season in his career than in the first half. Furthermore, Buehler has shown some marginally positive signs while the Red Sox have also simply stepped up to support him of late.
In his five starts since the beginning of July, Buehler has posted a 4.00 ERA, lowering his season-long mark from 6.45 to the current 5.74 mark. And even while not making it through five innings in either of his last two starts, Boston has come away with a win in four of the five starts in this time frame.
So maybe, just maybe, Red Sox fans won't be up late for a West Coast start time only to get frustrated at Breslow and the team for having Buehler instead of Pivetta. Stranger things have happened before. At the same time, though, it's still hard to look at where things stand coming into the game and not be reminded of what could've been if not for this mistake in hindsight.