The Sad Tale of Bard

In 2011, Daniel Bard was well on his way to becoming one of the elite relievers in MLB. The previous season was a breakout campaign where he posted a 1.93 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, and averaged a K per inning. His average fastball velocity was a sizzling 97.9 mph. 2011 was quite similar, and he even set a new Red Sox record for consecutive appearances without giving up a run (25). At just 26 years of age, he had an incredibly bright future ahead of him.

Better days...

That same year, however, things began to unravel. In September, he posted a 10.64 ERA, and he walked more people that month (9) than in the previous three months combined (8). On September 4th, the Red Sox were 9 games ahead of the Rays for the AL Wild Card, but then squandered that lead and missed the playoffs. Based on the metric WPA (win probability added), Bard was most responsible for the Red Sox's collapse at the end of that year. Somehow, things were going to get even worse...




After the brutal collapse in 2011, the Red Sox decided to stretch out Bard as a starter. He had elite velocity and, statistically, two very strong years, so the team presumably wanted to leverage his abilities over more innings. Things did not go as planned.

Up until 2012, Bard was able to decrease his walk rate every year he was in the bigs, but as a starter that metric began to balloon. In 59.1 innings, he walked 43 batters. Worse still, he also hit 8 batters. I know what you're thinking: getting hit by 98 mph fastballs is terrifying. Well, his velocity also decreased to about 93 mph. Something was clearly wrong, so the Red Sox demoted him to iron things out.

They never did. For the next year or so, he bounced around the Red Sox minor league system, but he could not for the life of him get the ball over the plate consistently. Eventually, he left the Red Sox altogether.

Best part: "and an ump."

In 2014, the Rangers decided to take a chance and signed him to a minor league deal. This was a team that knew how to get production out of post-hype players. It worked for Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz, and even Rich Harden, so maybe it could work for Daniel Bard. Their optimism was misplaced, however, as Bard's short tenure in the Rangers farm system was a horror show.

• 18 batters faced
• 9 walks
• 7 hit batters
• 1 comebacker to the mound
• 1 strikeout
• 13 earned runs

For you stat geeks at home, that's a BB/9 of 121.5, and an ERA of 175.5. Can you imagine being a batter and knowing that there's a pretty good chance you're just going to get beaned by this guy? Also, who strikes out in this scenario? Shameful.

This sad tale of Daniel Bard makes one wonder what went wrong. He began his career with such promise before it plummeted into one of the most legendarily bad stints I've ever heard of.

The first thing to consider is injury. From what I've read, Bard suffered from a condition called Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, which has symptoms such as numbness and weakness in the fingers. However, it appears to be treatable, in particular through surgery, which makes me think this has even more to do with a mental issue, like the yips. It's a real thing that happens to players where they develop a mental block that causes them to stop performing even the easiest of plays, like throwing the ball over the plate. It's also a taboo subject that's not discussed among players, but needs to be addressed for Bard to return to stardom.

What caused this mental block? Was it his role in squandering a 9 game lead for the Wild Card in 2011? Was it his conversion to starting in 2012? Was it the relentless Boston media? It's an unfortunate byproduct of being a professional athlete - when you're playing in front of an audience, the fans and media are going to tap their fingers on the glass and see how you react. Regardless of what the issue is, I would love to get a glimpse of how he thinks and understand what happened.

The image above is from a Boston blog reporting on Bard throwing a scoreless inning in Rookie League ball.

So where is Bard now? After spiraling out of baseball with the Rangers, Bard did not take the field even once in 2015 (though he was briefly signed by the Cubs), but he appears to be on the comeback trail after signing a minor league deal with the Pirates. Hopefully he can regain his composure and bring his talent to bear once again before time runs out.