"Deconstructing Daniel Bard’s rise, fall with Red Sox" by Kevin Paul Dupont | Globe Staff, October 01, 2013
PITTSBURGH — Whatever happened to Daniel Bard, not long ago one of Major League Baseball’s most dominating late-inning forces, he is getting the chance to fix it now. Picked up by the Chicago Cubs when the Red Sox finally cut him free last month, he is feeling good once again. Strong. Not unlike, he says, how he felt in March with Boston — back to being “pretty close” to the pitcher he wanted to be, a far cry from the disaster of 2011.
But his gains were not quite enough. “I found out with two days left in spring training that [the Red Sox] were going to send me back to the minors to keep working on some stuff, and that was kind of tough to hear.”
So continued the de-evolution of Daniel Bard, 28, once a prized first-round draft pick with a 100-mile-an-hour fastball and devilish slider, a mesmerizing combination that American League hitters could barely touch for much of 2009, 2010, and 2011.
The genesis of Bard’s most recent struggles began with a mutual decision, on behalf of Bard and Sox management before the 2012 season, to turn one of the game’s premier setup men into a starting pitcher....
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The experiment in the starter’s role was brought to an end after 10 outings, his record a mediocre 4-6 and his ERA a hefty 5.30.
It also didn’t help Bard’s overall job trajectory that his previous September — with the infamous beer-and-chicken escapades as Boston’s playoff hopes were scuttled — was an outright disaster. In 11 appearances, a total of 11 innings, he yielded a whopping 13 earned runs. Earlier in the season, he posted 26⅓ consecutive scoreless innings — only to be lit up time and again when the Sox needed him most amid their crash-and-burn....
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