Brayan Bello Has Arrived, And Not a Moment Too Soon

There comes a time in many a Red Sox pitching prospect’s life when he is likened to Pedro Martinez, which must be every bit as intimidating as it is flattering. His name was invoked when the Red Sox acquired six-foot-flat Dominican fireballer Rubby de la Rosa — whose grandmother nannied the Martinez boys back in Santo Domingo — in the blockbuster 2012 deal that sent Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett, and Nick Punto to the Dodgers. Martinez was again floated as a lofty comp for small-framed Venezuelan right-hander Anderson Espinoza when he emerged as the team’s most promising pitching prospect in 2015 and ’16. Across the league, countless others have drawn the hopeful comparison, sometimes of the Hall of Famer’s own accord.

For 24-year-old Red Sox starter Brayan Bello, the comparisons started at least a couple of years ago. The diminutive Dominican right-hander was also overlooked for his smaller frame in his youth, and while he favors a two-seam fastball over his four-seamer — both register in the mid-90s velocity-wise — it’s the changeup that is perhaps most reminiscent of the pitcher he calls an idol. In May 2021, Peter Gammons quoted a team official noting that Bello was “up to 97 with the best changeup I ever seen, at least since Pedro.” For Bello, the comparison hasn’t exactly been unwelcome; in May of last year, upon his promotion to Triple-A, he said through a translator that he ”would eventually like to be better than him,” reflecting a kind of unabashed confidence that itself is not unlike the former Sox ace.

Through 25 starts and two relief appearances so far in his career, that changeup, which Bello says he learned from Fernando Rodney, has been devastating to opposing hitters: a .167 average, .182 slugging, .208 wOBA, and -13.3 runs over 532 uses, or -2.5 runs per 100 pitches. Hitters have a whiff rate of 44.0% on the pitch, and when they’ve made contact, the ball has left the bat at an average of just 81.7 mph. Among the 940 pitches that have been thrown as many as 400 times since the start of last season, that opponent slugging ranks ninth, the wOBA 53rd, and the exit velocity 24th. Among the 661 pitches that have elicited as many as 250 swings in that time, the whiff rate is 27th.

Bello has done a nice job of keeping the pitch where it’s hardest to hit — where it appears to be running right into the zone before floating off the zone to his arm side:

The changeup has been the hallmark of an arsenal – alongside an effective combination of fastballs – that has Bello establishing himself as a part of the future of the Red Sox rotation in his sophomore season. After giving up eight earned runs over 7.1 innings in his first two starts, he has posted a 2.35 ERA (fourth in the majors in that time), 3.52 FIP, and 3.92 xFIP over his last 12 outings, allowing two or fewer earned runs in all but one of those starts. As the stretch has gone on, he has continued to improve. He’s completed the sixth inning in each of his last six starts and finished seven in four of his last five, introducing a brand-new cutter in the middle of it all. In June, he may have been teammate James Paxton’s tightest competition for AL Pitcher of the Month; his 2.14 ERA ranked third, his 2.55 FIP ranked second (a 4.07 xFIP was less friendly), his 0.86 WHIP ranked second, and his .210 wOBA against led the AL. In his final start of the month on the 29th, he had it all, holding a Marlins lineup with Luis Arraez in it hitless into the eighth inning. (Side note: that game is Arraez’ only hitless game of the last three weeks.) On Wednesday night, he allowed a home run for the first time in his last six starts.

Wednesday’s start may have been an even better show of his maturity. Bello got into trouble in the first and second innings against a Rangers lineup featuring four All-Stars, and it was clear early that he didn’t have the same stuff he had against Miami the week before. But he remained composed and worked his way through jams to finish seven innings once again, with the only damage coming on a two-run homer off a great swing from Adolis García. As has been the case throughout this run, Bello got some friendly bounces his way, but in a season during which Boston has been looking for someone to step up in that rotation, he (along with Paxton) has been that guy for the last two months or so.

Bello and Paxton getting hot around the same time almost seems to carry some symbolic meaning in terms of where the Red Sox are as a franchise right now. On the one hand, one of the main questions for the team this year was, if they were able to find their way into a playoff spot, who would make up their playoff rotation? Chris Sale has once again been lost to injury; Garrett Whitlock and Tanner Houck haven’t quite shown the consistency the Red Sox were hopeful for while dealing with injuries of their own; Corey Kluber and Nick Pivetta have ceded their spots in the rotation. There’s a lot of season left to play, but Bello and Paxton could be establishing themselves as viable options.

On the other hand, with less than four weeks to go until the August 1 trade deadline, Boston is two games over .500, in last place in the AL East, and three games out of a playoff spot, with a 20.9% chance of making the postseason according to our own playoff odds. If those numbers don’t improve in the next couple of weeks, they could well be in position to sell. That could make Paxton a prime trade candidate in a market where the price for starting pitching could be even higher than it usually is, and leave Bello as one of the first building blocks of Boston’s next contending squad.

Having that caliber of homegrown pitcher isn’t common for the Red Sox. In the 40 years since they drafted Roger Clemens in 1983, the only other pitchers to accumulate even as much as 5.0 WAR in a Boston uniform are Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz, Jonathan Papelbon, and Aaron Sele. The only one to have done so after signing with the Red Sox as an international free agent is Daisuke Matsuzaka, who was 26 and an eight-year NPB veteran when he landed in Boston. It’s not just that the Red Sox have had trouble producing front-line pitching talent; they have hardly been able to produce the types of pitchers who fill rotation slots with average performance for a few years.

There’s hope that the current group can add a few to this list. Bello is at 2.6 WAR in 137.1 innings over his 27 career outings, including 1.5 in his last 12 starts; 2017 first-round draft pick Houck is at 4.3 in 213.2 innings; and Whitlock – who was taken from the Yankees in the 2020 Rule 5 Draft – has 3.5 in 203.1 IP.

For Bello, the challenge will be to ignore all of this — his Hall-of-Fame likeness, the precariousness of his team’s playoff position, the franchise’s frustration with respect to young pitching talent — and just pitch. As of now, he’s done enough to earn the trust of his manager, Alex Cora, who’s been looking for that kind of consistency all year. Expectations have been lofty for Bello, and he has yet to shy away. Is it so much to ask for him to be the pitching future of the Red Sox?