Bard brings it

On June 25, Daniel Bard allowed two runs on two hits and two walks to the Washington Nationals. Afterwards, in the visiting clubhouse at Nationals Park, he diagnosed why. “I overthrew my stuff a little, trying to make my stuff a little better than it is,” Bard said. “Which, there’s no need to do that.”

In the time since, a span of six outings, Bard has allowed one hit and no earned runs in 8 2/3 innings. The league is batting .037 against him. He has faced 28 batters and struck out 16 of them. He is becoming for the Red Sox bullpen -- if he’s not already -- a force, a weapon, an x-factor, or whatever name you want to come up with. Twenty-one games into Bard's career, including that four-out demolition last night against the Toronto Blue Jays, the jury is in. He’s awesome. That’s really the best word.

“Daniel Bard is maturing right in front of our eyes,” manager Terry Francona said. “The game is slowing down for him. He mixed in a slide-step fastball with nobody on base to get in the way of a hitter’s timing. He’s leveraging the ball downhill. We’re seeing a young pitcher get better.”

Overall, Bard has a 2.42 ERA and the league is batting .185 against him. He has struck out 11.1 batters per nine innings, an absurd rate that makes sense only for someone who has a 100-mph fastball and a wicked, still-improving slider. Someone like Bard.

“When they called Bardo up, I was like, he definitely didn’t need to be here anymore,” said Clay Buchholz, Bard’s teammate early this season in Pawtucket. “The guy was unbelievable, his stuff and how he was going after hitters and the swings hitters were taking off of him. Everybody’s said that since the day he was drafted -- the guy’s got a whole lot of talent, he just needs to put it together. He’s in the midst of putting everything together right now, and it’s fun to watch.”

Last night, Buchholz pitched until there were two outs in the sixth inning and men stood on first and second base. Francona has shown an increased comfort sending Bard into spots like these, with the game in the balance in the middle innings.

“It seems that way,” Bard said. “I hope I developed some confidence. I’m not too worried about it. I feel like if I feel good about the way I’m throwing, probably other people feel good about it as well.

“It kind of forces you to focus strictly on getting the hitter out. When you’re down by four or five, you can start to be thinking about mechanics too much, thinking about what I’m doing rather the task at hand, which is getting the hitter out.”

Bard immediately struck out Jose Bautista. In the seventh, he struck out two more batters, including Marco Scutaro on a blistering fastball to end the inning. The Red Sox maintained their three run lead for Jonathan Papelbon in the ninth after Hideki Okajima pitched the eighth. As a middle innings bridge, Bard could be invaluable in the fall.

“I’m trusting my stuff early in the count, which is allowing me to get ahead of guys,” Bard said. “It’s amazing what happens when you get ahead of guys. Things seem to fall into place. You get away with some pitches ahead in the count that you normally wouldn’t.”

For the final out last night, Bard blew away Scutaro. He swung way late. It was the kind of pitch that makes you look quickly at what the stadium radar gun says. Surprisingly, it read 94, which seemed way low. I asked Bard afterward if it was a slow gun. He shrugged.

“As long as he swung and missed, I’m happy,” Bard said.