Boston Red Sox Were Wise to Give Junichi Tazawa a Rest

By Carter Roane
Tazawa on the mound
Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Whenever the Boston Red Sox have been doing well, a huge reason for that has been the work of Junichi Tazawa. He has quite simply become one of the best setup men out there and he is an important part of that bullpen going forward. However, recently it has become very obvious that Tazawa is fatigued and needs an extended rest.

With Boston out of any chance to make it to the postseason, they are absolutely making the right call by shutting down Tazawa for the rest of the year. I am actually pretty surprised that this didn’t happen a lot sooner given where Boston has ended up in the standings. Tazawa and Koji Uehara were by far the two most consistent pitchers in that bullpen and it just makes sense that the two of them should not have to pitch for the rest of this season and get them ready for the 2016 season. As it is, Uehara is not pitching because he is injured.

Here is to hoping that Dave Dombrowski goes out and gets some quality relievers and builds around Tazawa and Uehara. That way, the workload won’t be so heavy for a pitcher like Tazawa, and whoever the manager is next year can have a lot of options to go to late in the game instead of Tazawa everyday and running him into the ground. He’s a pitcher who looked like he was heading to the All-Star game at the beginning of the season and then just seemed to reach the point where he ran out of gas.

Give Tazawa a break. The way he has pitched over the last few years, he deserved it. Don’t let the casual bandwagon fan tell you any different.

Carter Roane is a Boston Red Sox writer for RantSports. Follow him on Twitter@CarterGRoane, “Like”him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.

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