Why will the Red Sox move Nathan Eovaldi to the bullpen when he returns from the injured list? Better question: What took them so long to reach that conclusion?

The Sox need to hit the reset button on their bullpen as desperately as baseball needs to pick up the pace.

For one thing, the Red Sox need to ditch the idea that pitcher-batter matchups are more important than defined reliever roles. That approach has been an unmitigated disaster this season.

They need Eovaldi closing games when he returns, which could come as soon as the first game after the All-Star break. He’s the hardest thrower and has the best pure stuff of anyone in the bullpen, but that only hints at why he makes the most sense.

Eovaldi’s the best option because he hasn’t failed at closing games and everyone else out there has. He brings no negative baggage to the mound. His most recent relief work of any kind made him a World Series hero. If he can thrive under that pressure, pitching the ninth inning on a regular basis shouldn’t get to him.

Given his elbow history — two Tommy John surgeries, plus two procedures to clean up elbow chips — it’s understandable the Red Sox want to proceed with caution. So don’t pitch him on back-to-back days. When in need of a closer a day after he worked the ninth, use either Brandon Workman or Matt Barnes. Since Barnes has pitched pretty well when rested and horribly on the back end of back-to-back days, don’t ever use him on consecutive days.

Working around those stipulations for Eovaldi and Barnes isn’t ideal, but it’s doable, especially since the plan calls for expanding the pitching staff to 13 arms once Eovaldi joins the bullpen.

As recently as a couple of weeks ago, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said the club was not thinking about using Eovaldi as a reliever upon his return. It seemed like such a strange stance, so I wondered if maybe relieving would put him at greater risk of re-injury than starting. A couple of days before the Red Sox announced Eovaldi would move to the bullpen upon his return, I made an appointment for a telephone interview with Glenn Fleisig, director of research for the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Ala., for an answer to the reliever-vs.-starter question as it relates to elbow stress.

As it turned out, Dombrowski said the reason for changing his opinion had to do with Eovaldi getting on board with the idea. That makes sense. A pitcher has a better chance of succeeding if he’s on board with how he’s being used.

Even though injury risk didn’t appear to enter into the decision on the best way to use Eovaldi, Fleisig’s research still is worth sharing. Fleisig would not speculate on Eovaldi or any other individual pitcher, but shared his general findings on the topic.

“The forces are the same and the chances of re-injury are the same, so I feel comfortable saying that moving a major league pitcher from starter to reliever would not increase or decrease his chance of blowing out again,” Fleisig said.

Interestingly, Fleisig also has run studies in the biomechanics laboratory in Brimingham on the relative injury risks of various pitches.

“Our studies have shown that whether you’re a Little Leaguer or a major leaguer, fastballs, sliders and curveballs put similar stress on the elbow,” he said. “The changeup is less stress at any level.”

That exposes as myth the notion that breaking balls are the root of all arm ails.

Again speaking in general terms and not about any one pitcher, Fleisig said research shows that “max-effort pitchers,” the ones who throw every fastball and breaking ball at top speed, tend not to fare as well injury-wise as pitchers who vary speeds.

“A lot of organizations, if they have a guy they feel is a max-effort guy, they put him in the bullpen, thinking, ‘Well, you can’t pitch seven innings like that, but you can pitch one inning like that.’ … We found that the difference in the torque or the stress on the elbow from pitch to pitch, it really made a big difference whether you’re a max-effort guy,” Fleisig said.

It seems to me, Eovaldi falls into the category of max-effort pitcher.

On his road to recovery from having loose bodies removed from his elbow, Eovaldi developed biceps tendinitis.

“Biceps tendinitis is pretty common, really, a minor injury that with rest and rehab pitchers should be able to come back from fine,” Fleisig said, again not speaking specifically about Eovaldi. “If you pitch through it before you recover that probably increases your chances of serious injury. So it’s not a major long-term concern, but it’s important in the short term that it needs to be resolved before returning to play.”

Robbing Eovaldi from the rotation to electrify the bullpen means the Red Sox have to continue to live with bad results from the fifth starter. But the fifth starter can’t save a rotation anyway. That will have to come from the other end of the rotation, where Chris Sale (3-8, 4.04 ERA) has pitched much better than his record shows, but needs to pitch a great deal better in the second half than the first for the Red Sox to make the playoffs. Also, Rick Porcello (5-7, 5.07) has as many losses as he had all last season and 12 fewer victories.

Eovaldi shapes up as the team’s fifth-best starter and potentially the best closer candidate, which makes the move to the ‘pen an easy call as well as the last chance to revive the bullpen from within the organization.