What a painful week it has been. The Boston Red Sox lost two out of three to the Twins. In reality, they should’ve won two games this series and really should’ve won more than two games this week. Here is what we learned from this series that translated from one series to the next.

Brayan Bello Continues to Impress

After seeing the news about Walker Buehler heading to the injury list, getting Brayan Bello back is a major blessing. The best part about Bello is that with each passing start, he continues to just get better and better and each outing is better. He did manage to go toe to toe with Joe Ryan in this game, which is huge and given Ryan has had success against the Red Sox in his career. But Bello did his job and finally got the run support he deserved.

Bello threw a whopping 102 pitches and 61 went for strikes, good for a 59% strike rate. Furthermore, he went 6.2 innings and struck out five, while walking just one batter. That’s enormous. He’s consistently walked three batters in his first two starts, so this is huge.

With Buehler out, Bello will be a huge factor for this rotation. Giolito had a great debut and even Houck had an enormous start. But Bello is delivering and that’s all that matters. What isn’t delivering is the reliable arms in the bullpen.

The Bullpen Blows It…Again

Deja Vu? The Red Sox lost both games in Toronto due to the bullpen. The team had leads and the reliable arms in the bullpen blew it. Worst part is that it happened again in this series and in the finale.

Outside of Aroldis Chapman, the two most reliable arms in the bullpen are Garrett Whitlock and Justin Slaten. Look, relievers are going to make mistakes. It happens and it’s part of the game. But for consecutive trips to the mound, it’s tough to see and for guys that are extremely reliable.

In the entire month of April, Whitlock had six earned runs. Three of them came at the very beginning of the month. The other three? Game 2 against Toronto. The finale against the Twins, Whitlock surrendered the two earned runs that saw the game get tied. Same thing as Toronto.

In comes Slaten. He had zero earned runs in the month of April. He now has five in the last two trips to the mound this week. Not great and unfortunately the Red Sox lost winnable games because of it.

Consistent at Being Inconsistent

The Red Sox are .500, which is painful to say. But do I believe they are a .500 team? No. But they are playing like one. They have yet to be consistent, but they are good at being inconsistent. So that says something right?

In the first game and even in the first game of the Blue Jays series, the offense showed flashes of what it can be when they are clicking and firing on all cylinders. However, there was the rest of the series where it did enough or not nearly enough.

The Red Sox had no answer for the first two starters. Ryan allowed five hits while striking out eight and Bailey Ober had six strikeouts and did allow seven hits. The offense struggled to capitalize on moments they did have.

Game one, Devers gets a double, Story beats out a hard line drive hit to first and Devers advances to third. Nothing to show for it. Hamilton swiped two bags and the team couldn’t bring him home. In Game 2, the Red Sox had a double steal late in the game, and Connor Wong swung and then ultimately got out. No runners in. Just frustrating.

They’ve been good at being inconsistent and at some point it’s gotta click together in full. The next big thing is how do they overcome life without Triston Casas, so that’ll be something to monitor.

Onto Texas.