Brayan Bello did not hide what hit him when the Boston Red Sox shipped him to Triple-A Worcester last Friday. He cried.
The right-hander opened up to reporters on Sunday and admitted he could not hold it together when the news came down.
“When I got the unfortunate news, I shed some tears, got a little emotional. Like I said before, I have so much love and passion for this game,” Bello said through an interpreter, per Tommy Cassell of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
That is a real human moment from a pitcher who clearly thought he was on the verge of fixing his season. The Red Sox saw it differently.
His final big-league outing was ugly. Bello gave up eight earned runs on seven hits with three walks in five innings against the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday at Fenway. Boston lost 8-2 and the front office decided enough was enough.
The frustrating part for him? He had actually looked like he was turning a corner. In the two starts before the Baltimore disaster, Bello threw 12 scoreless innings against the Minnesota Twins and Cleveland Guardians. Then he completely fell apart in front of his home crowd.
Zoom out and the numbers tell a brutal story. Bello is 2-6 with a 6.34 ERA and a 1.672 WHIP through 12 appearances and 8 starts this year. For a guy who looked like a future ace just two seasons ago, that is a tough fall.
The 27-year-old will pitch in Worcester until the Red Sox say otherwise. There is no public timeline for a recall, and there should not be one. Bello has to earn his way back.
What Boston needs from him is simple. Stop pitching scared. Trust the changeup. Locate the fastball. The stuff is still there. The execution has not been.
Bello’s emotional response shows he cares, and that matters. Plenty of pitchers in his situation would have phoned it in or pouted. He is taking it personally instead.
The Red Sox are not exactly running away with the AL East, but their rotation has stabilized enough that they did not have time to wait around for Bello to figure it out at the major league level. If he wants back in, the path is clear: dominate Triple-A hitters for two or three turns and force Boston’s hand.
The tears were the easy part. The work to get back is what matters now.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
