The Red Sox announced Thursday that they’ve selected the contracts of left-handed reliever Bobby Poyner and right-handed reliever Marcus Walden. In order to clear a necessary 40-man roster slot, Boston placed infielder Marco Hernandez on the 60-day DL as he recovers from a surgical revision of last year’s shoulder operation. Boston also placed Austin Maddox, Dustin Pedroia and Tyler Thornburg on the 10-day disabled list.
Poyner, 25, pitched to a superb 1.49 ERA with 12.5 K/9 against 2.5 BB/9 in 60 1/3 innings split between High-A and Double-A in 2017, and he impressed Red Sox brass perhaps even more this spring. In 10 1/3 Grapefruit League frames, Poyner allowed just one run on four hits and a walk with eight strikeouts. He’ll break camp with the team as its top left-handed relief option despite the fact that he’s never appeared in a Triple-A game — let alone a Major League contest.
Walden, 29, will also be making his big league debut the first time he steps onto a Major League mound. He’s been on the 40-man roster with the Blue Jays (his original organization) and the Athletics, but he’s topped out at Triple-A to this point. In parts of three seasons at that level, Walden has a 4.30 ERA with 6.4 K/9 against 3.3 BB/9, but like Poyner, he turned in a dominant spring effort. In 14 frames, Walden yielded just one earned run on six hits and four walks with 16 strikeouts.
I really hope Poyner doesn’t get spooked after a bad outing.
Lotta pros around him. They’ll walk him through it.
Nice unpredicted pun of them “walking” him through it
He had a awesome spring, let’s hope he can be part of a strong bullpen. He doesn’t have to be a superstar, just a consistent lefty. The others will help him.
If he could have thrown a strike in the 8th today, he’d have been an improvement on JK and CS. Two veterans looked like AAers that skipped a level. Tough to watch.
Tough loss after the Nunez excitement.
Too bad…
There’s always next year.
Don’t get the Walden thing. He was coming in at the end of Spring Training games when the other team had minor league filler batting, so the stats don’t mean much. He’s got a long minor league track record that says he’s not good. Hopefully he’s doing something different and he succeeds. Would be great for a guy who’s been in the minors for about a decade with 5 days in the majors but never made it into a game.
Maybe Kelly should have let Jim Buchanan pitch. He was awful.
mlb.com/cut4/joe-kelly-dressed-up-as-an-old-man-re…
Rewarding guys with good springs…..what a concept who would of thunk it