You can’t make it up.

With all due respect, that he has made 185 Starts in 186 appearances means absolutely nothing. The dude is a career .500 pitcher with a 4.53 ERA. He’s 33 years old and had spent his entire career in the NL West (not exactly the AL East), albeit in Colorado.

This is Cook’s performance as a Starting Pitcher over the past two seasons:

9-18, 40 Starts, 5.39 ERA, 88K’s/88BBs, 1/1 K/BB ratio, 270 Hits in 223 1/3IP

Over that same period of time, he threw his Slider 62.4% out of all his pitches for at an average of 88.8 MPH. This is a guy who has zero confidence in his fastball and even less confidence in his secondary pitches. He induces a hefty number of swings but does not generate many misses.

And this is the guy that everyone thinks should take Bard’s spot in the rotation . . . so Bard can be the *substitute* Closer? MADNESS!

On second thought I don’t even want him as a reliever. Again this Cook talk is born out of Boston media.

“Oh look, there’s a former major league at AAA who had some success in Colorado (a llllloooooonnnggggg time ago). He’s got big league experience (getting SHELLED). Let’s just bring him up and make Bard the Closer. Problem solved (until Cook’s done being roasted by AL bats, which wouldn’t be very long).”

Forgive me if I take a pass.

Short of convincing Roy Oswalt to come out of his temporary retirement a few months early, Bard has shown plenty of potential as a SP and should remain in the rotation for the foreseeable future.

Bard wants to Start. Luckily for the Sox, Bard isn’t a Free Agent until 2016, or there wouldn’t be a choice to be made . . . they would be forced to keep him in the rotation. However, finding youthful power arms like Bard’s, and developing them as an effective SP is the preferred course of action every single time.

If Bailey were out for the season, then part of the problem with taking Bard out of the rotation and sticking him in as Closer would be solved. That is, it is far easier for a starter to move to the bullpen than to move a reliever to the rotation.

In other words, by taking Bard out of the rotation (especially without a clear viable replacement) and having him Close until Bailey returns is actually more likely to make an already bad situation worse than it is to solve any problems.

Think of it this way . . . if Bard had never been a reliever and was in his Rookie season as a Starting Pitcher, would any of this discussion about moving him to be Closer even exist? Probably not.

I’d much rather see Aaron Cook come to Boston as a reliever. The Sox also have some alternatives to the dregs in that bullpen down at AAA right now. Alex Wilson, Justin Germano, Will Inman, Garret Mock, Brandon Duckworth could do no worse than what we’ve seen thus far.

They’ve become a sad joke.