The question, almost theoretical in nature when evaluators asked it in the spring, is now taking somewhat more defined form for the 2016 Red Sox. The Red Sox have played 38 games, nearly the quarter-pole of the season that president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski identified last month as a “logical measuring stick” for evaluations.

One after the other, the same question kept coming in recent days from the talent evaluators who scout the Red Sox.

The Sox are amidst their eighth turn of the rotation – matching the roughly six to eight starts that manager John Farrell has often cited as the typical duration needed for a pitcher to build arm strength to the point where his stuff can be judged properly. And if one considers it a reasonable time to form evaluations, it’s hard to look beyond the ominous facts hovering over the performance of the Red Sox’ starters.

As a group, Sox starters have a 4.81 ERA, 22d in the majors and 10th in the American League. No team this decade has made the playoffs with a rotation ERA over 4.50 (the worst ERA for a starting staff of a playoff team since 2010 was the 2012 Orioles’ 4.42 mark).


Though the Sox are fourth in the AL in quality starts (19), rotation members have allowed five or more earned runs in 12 starts this year, most in the AL and one more through 38 games than they produced a year ago through a sky-is-falling start to the season that resulted in the firing of pitching coach Juan Nieves.

Even the addition of David Price, the step forward by Rick Porcello and the leap by Steven Wright and the arrival of Christian Vazquez, have been insufficient to yield significant progress in the early performance of the rotation.


There are still some early-season/small-sample limitations to the poor numbers. Sox starters rank second in the AL with 8.7 strikeouts per nine innings, for instance, a suggestion that the group has stuff; fielding-independent numbers such as FIP (4.16, 7th in the AL) are also considerably more flattering to the Sox rotation. Still, Farrell has acknowledged on a number of occasions that the Red Sox can ask for more from their starting pitchers.

That said, the Sox still have the benefit of time. Last year represented a crisis because the team’s bats couldn’t carry the load; the rotation represented a black hole that swallowed the team’s hopes in the first months of the year.

In contrast, the Sox’ offensive explosion to start 2016, coupled with their first-place standing, suggest they can afford to wait and see whether Clay Buchholz can find his way into a groove, whether Joe Kelly (who struck out 10 in his Monday rehab start for Pawtucket) or Eduardo Rodriguez can help restore balance.

Still, until stability arrives, the evaluators will keep asking: “Are they going to trade for a pitcher?” To date, at the least, there has yet to be evidence to suggest that the Sox won’t have to consider a plunge into the shark-infested midsummer waters for starting help.

Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexspeier.