Daniel Bard has a good idea where his problems started, and when they might turn around

Time and the hour run through the roughest day ______.

The wave of well-meaning advisors has been relentless, a reality that hasn’t been lost on the subject of the advice—Daniel Bard.

“I think everybody wants to be the one who says the thing that makes it click for me, and boom, it comes back for me,” the pitcher said prior to the Red Sox’ game against the Rays Thursday. “But I don’t think there is one thing that can be said. I’ve been around some really good people this year who have had my best interest at heart, and whether or not they were able to fix something isn’t their fault or my fault, it’s just the the way it’s been.”

The voices didn’t work, so now Bard is ready to try something else … quiet.

...“At the time I wasn’t trying to overhaul everything I was as a pitcher. It was how can I make ‘Daniel Bard 2.0’,” he said. “Take all the stuff I did as a reliever and add a cutter, and front-door sinker to a lefty, throw more changeups, throw a slower breaking ball and a harder one. Just things I hadn’t done in the past and had a lot of success not doing. For some reason I thought, ‘I’m starting, I have to do all these things well.’ It just took away … My identity as a pitcher is simple: Attack guys with my best fastball, challenge them and use my slider as a finish pitch. But I lived and died with my fastball for the most part, and I got away from that identify. I got so far from it, it has just been really hard to get back to it.”

When that reset button does re-emerge, this time it won’t be about starting or relieving. (“Next year I’ll come in as a reliever, whether it’s here or somewhere else, and try and find that same identity that I had. Regardless how things have gone this year, that’s where I’ll find success in the near future. Maybe we’ll revisit down the road, but right now it’s about being comfortable on the mound and getting that edge back,” he said.) It will be solely about rediscovery.

Two vacations and then …

“Mentally, physically, I can just start over,” he said. “Just hitting the reset button will help.”