Red Sox Catcher Believes Brayan Bello Has Flipped His ‘Mentality’ originally appeared on NESN. Add NESN as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The Boston Red Sox decided to put Brayan Bello in the bullpen, and he has had plenty of success in his new role.
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Bello struggled as a starter, so Boston has been using an opener in front of him. The right-hander has now been a bulk inning reliever and Red Sox catcher Carlos Narvaez believes Bello has flipped his mentality coming out of the bullpen.
“Yeah, maybe,” Narvaez said postgame on Tuesday. “Sometimes you gotta flip something. Flip that mentality, and coming out of the bullpen he probably thinks, ‘OK I gotta be convicted right now. It’s not like, okay, I got five innings, 90 pitches’. Something in his mind has changed. We’ll take that. We need him.”
Since becoming a bulk reliever, Bello has a 1.29 ERA over 13.1 innings, with just two walks and 12 strikeouts. As a starter, he went 1-4 with a 9.12 ERA with 15 walks, and 17 strikeouts in 25.2 innings.
So, since coming out of the bullpen and being a bulk reliever, Bello has had plenty of success and Narvaez credits the pitcher’s mentality on handling the role.
Bello went 6.1 innings, allowing just one run in the Red Sox’s 2-1 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies on Tuesday.
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