Some really troubling numbers for Jonathan Papelbon in the wake of Tuesday night’s deflating defeat at the hands of the Oakland A’s. The closer started paying the piper with his third blown save in the ninth inning – along with a great deal of help from shortstop Nick Green and perhaps a little too much confidence in his own admittedly special throwing arm -- after playing with fire for much of the season in a series of defeat-defying saves.

“Walking the leadoff hitter – regardless of who it is – is not what we’re looking for there pretty much. That walk really set the tone for the rest of the inning,” said Papelbon after Tuesday night's heart-ripping loss. “I had good stuff and they were able to put together some pretty good at bats. I have two outs there. I’ve got to finish that game.”

It all started with a walk to the leadoff hitter Jack Cust by Papelbon and led to three runs and three hits in 21 excruciating Pap pitches in the ninth inning. Papelbon’s ERA, a fairly inconsequential stat in the world of relievers, has jumped over 2.00 for the first time since June 11, but there are other statistics under the surface that are of much bigger concern for Boston's last Man Standing in the bullpen.

The 28-year-old Papelbon has still saved 25 out of 28 games and hasn’t had the bottom line affected on too many occasions by his high-wire act, but he’s walking more hitters and giving up more hits than at any time before in his Major League bullpen career.
It has been well-document that Papelbon has never averaged more than 15.6 pitchers per inning during his career closing games for the Red Sox, but he’s all the way up to 17.7 pitches per game in 43 appearances this season.

The higher workload each inning has Papelbon on target to easily surpass last season’s career-high in pitches thrown for the season (1051 pitches), and the closer is allowing opposing hitters to bat .236 against him this season – a desirable number for the mere mortal pitchers of the world, but a steady sign of trouble for a hard-throwing dominator that holds a career batting average against of .201 versus Major League hitters.

After averaging double-digit strikeout per nine innings numbers over the last two seasons, the 28-year-old righty is sitting at the lowest number (9.42) since his 2005 big league debut with the Sox and his K/BB ratio of 2.25 is by far the worst of his big league career. Papelbon had an astounding 9.63 K/BB ratio last season – a number that would be difficult for anybody to repeat and simply goes into the books as one of the superhuman statistics Papelbon has put up over the course of an amazing start to a Major League career – but was between 5-6 K/BB ratio in his All-Star campaigns in both 2006 and 2007.

While none of the numbers besides K/BB ratio really jump off the page at you, Papelbon is allowing more hits than ever before, has already coughed up as many home runs (4) as he did all of last season and has already walked the most batters (20) of his Major League career before the baseball calendar has even hit August in 2009.

Papelbon has indicated that a lot of the statistical jumps this year are due to altered mechanics that take some of the strain off his arm, and instead put more of the torque from his delivery in his engine piston-like legs. The adjustment was made by Papelbon to keep him from running on fumes during the playoffs – a problem that clearly cropped up by Game 7 of the ALCS series against the Tampa Bay Rays last season -- with the assumption that the Sox closer will be pitching deep into October.

But all of the conserving and efficiency in the world isn’t going to matter if the Sox keep riding the Papelbon high-wire act through the ninth inning of games, and don’t make the playoffs because of more defeats grasped from the talons of victory just like Tuesday night’s heartbreaker against the weak-hitting A’s.