Papelbon is losing it

Red Sox Nation is an unforgiving bunch. I used to give some of my Philadelphia Phillies fan friends grief for the fact that Mike Schmidt was booed when he played for the there. But now I've heard the Fenway 'Faithful' boo David Ortiz, one of the heroes of two championship teams, an easy winner for best Red Sox DH of all-time. I may have suggested earlier this season benching Ortiz, but I would never boo the man. Actually, I'm against booing your own team unless someone does something like attack an ump or go into the crowd and start throwing haymakers.

Now the Nation is turning on Jonathan Papelbon, the all-time Red Sox saves leader and the man who dominated in 2007 on the way to Boston's second title of the past decade.

But 2009 and 2010 have been a different story. Last season Paps had a stellar 1.85 ERA, but it was a mirage. His walk rate was a high 3.18/9 while his K rate remained around 10. And his fastball went from a massively effective pitch to only a very good one. And if you watched most of his appearances (which I did in 2009) he was missing his old dominance.

(All the stats for today's discussion comes from Papelbon's player page at Fangraphs.)

This season has been worse, encapsulated by his two appearances this week against the Yanks. On Monday he gave up two homers, the first time he's done that since he was converted full-time to a reliever, including one to Marcus Thames for heaven's sake. And then Tuesday he walked a tight-rope again. He looks even shakier than he did last year, bring back bad flashes of Bob Stanley.

The numbers bear this out. Besides currently being a below-replacement reliever this season(yikes!), his fastball is not just not dominant anymore. His slider and splitter have been very effective, but seeing as though he's a dominant fastball pitcher (over his career he's thrown it 78% of the time), getting his splitter to be effective is great, but an average fastball will end his days as an effective closer.

Many Sox fans thought Papelbon was Boston's answer to Mariano Rivera, but unless he figures it out and makes the right adjustments, he's more likely to be Boston's version of Francisco Rodriguez: a few dominant seasons, but best to let him go before he gets too expensive.