Scott Atchison of the Boston Red Sox is a 36 year old right handed relief pitcher who kind of looks like he’s 46. Atchison doesn’t throw very hard and doesn’t have great breaking stuff but he gets big league hitters out. Scott was drafted in the 49th round of the 1998 draft and made his debut with the Mariners in 2004. He spent all of 2006 and all of 2008 and 2009 in the minors before finally surfacing with the Red Sox in 2010, 12 years after he was drafted. In his first season in Boston he was a serviceable long reliever compiling a 4.50 ERA over 60 innings in 43 games. Last season he was used sparingly, appearing in only 17 games, again in a long reliever role. The Bobby Valentine regime seems to have been kind to him though. This year, Atchison has been used in a more middle relief type role and he has been stellar, one of the only bright spots in an otherwise abysmal 2012 Sox bullpen. Atchison has pitched in 18 games and thrown 27.0 innings. He has surrendered 3 earned runs, good for a 1.00 ERA. More than that, the last time Scott gave up a run was April 25th against the Twins. He is currently on a 15.1 inning scoreless streak and, in fact, has only walked 3 guys since the end of April. The righty has a 3.33 to 1 K to BB ratio with 20 strikeouts and only 6 walks on the season. His WHIP is a very impressive 0.92, something the Red Sox love for his reasonable salary; he’s making only $510, 000 this season.
Every season we see pitchers come out of nowhere to help contending teams win or to bring a haul of prospects for non-contenders. Relievers, with some notable exceptions, are more often hot than good. Danys Baez comes to mind here. A few years ago, he was the most coveted trade deadline reliever, not because he is particularly good, he has a 4.25 career ERA as a short reliever, but because he was pitching well at the moment. Relievers are streaky like that. It could be that Scott Atchison has stumbled into one of these hot streaks. For his sake and the sake of the Red Sox this season, I hope so.
-Max Frankel
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