It’s rare that a pitcher in a long-term contract gets sent to the minors. What will Brayan Bello make of it?

Brayan Bello faces a fork in the road. He has the demonstrated capacity to succeed in the big leagues, but the Red Sox determined his struggles had reached a point where a detour to the minors was necessary for his development.

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It’s a startling turn of events. Bello is in the third season of a six-year, $55 million deal that runs through 2029. Before Bello and Diamondbacks pitcher Brandon Pfaadt (second season of a five-year, $45 million deal) were sent down last week, instances of pitchers who got optioned in the middle of long-term deals were few. But there are a couple of notable examples.

One is a cautionary tale. In 2010, the Blue Jays signed emerging front-of-the-rotation lefthander Ricky Romero to a five-year extension. He was an All-Star in 2011, but in the spring of 2013 his control unraveled. He was optioned, never regained form, and after two unsuccessful call-ups in 2013, never appeared in the big leagues again.

The other is far more promising. In 2007, Cleveland lefthander Cliff Lee — in the first season of a three-year extension — lost his effectiveness over a four-start stretch in July, giving up 28 runs (26 earned) in 20 innings while walking 10 and striking out 11.

Lee spent five weeks in the minors, got called up in September as a seldom-used reliever, and wasn’t guaranteed a rotation spot entering 2008. But Lee not only won a job in 2008, he went 22-3 with a 2.54 ERA on the way to a Cy Young.

Late in his career, Lee identified 2007 as a turning point. How did he use it as a platform to success?

“He knew he was better than what he was doing, but he didn’t show that outwardly, he didn’t have an attitude or a chip on his shoulder … He just needed to pitch and feel good about himself,” recalled Scott Radinsky, Lee’s pitching coach with Triple-A Buffalo in 2007. “There’s just so many variables that factor in at [the big league level], and combine that with the pressure and everything else, and a lot of times guys just overwhelm themselves trying to do too much.

“Everybody’s trying to help you, everybody’s coming at you — the psychology guy in your organization, the pitching coach, some minor league guy, everybody’s coming at you, and there’s just no way to escape. When you get away from that, you kind of get to take a deep breath, let your shoulders shrug a little bit, and you just get back to doing what you do. If you’re good, you’re good, and you’re going to be good. For a team to invest in you, they saw something. It didn’t go away. It’s just kind of on hiatus, but it definitely comes back if the person has the right mind-set.”

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Lee was trying to land his fastball and cutter in the locations that would give him the greatest success, while further improving his changeup to widen the plate. He was able to use his time in the minors to identify the areas of needed improvement, and understand the work that would go into achieving it.

It’s a replicable scenario.

“Being young and cycling into who you’re going to be in your career is a series of graduations, just like you’re going to school,” said Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo, the manager in Buffalo in 2007. “I like the player that goes down, resurfaces, reemerges. To me, the second time they come, they’re really ready to go.”

With Bello, the Sox have areas of focus. For much of this year, the arm slot on his foundational sinker had been an average of 6 inches higher than it was last season. From that height, he was losing sink on his sinker and changeup. His locations and pitch shapes became worse.

He’d started the process of adjusting his delivery. In his most recent big league start, Bello’s release point was “just” 3 inches higher than it was for most of last year, but the Sox felt it was hard for him to make the needed adjustments while enduring poor in-game results.

The team’s confidence in Bello’s ability to come back from his struggles is bolstered by its history with him. In 2019, he got shelled for half the season in Single-A. But he made delivery and pitch-mix adjustments in Greenville — under manager Iggy Suarez, who is now Bello’s manager with Triple-A Worcester — to have an excellent second half that put him on a path that landed him in the Red Sox rotation. That history gives the Sox confidence in Bello’s ability to course correct now.

“There’s a ton of resilience there,” said farm director Brian Abraham. “I expect this to be very similar in the sense of, taking the challenge, being upset in the moment, getting over it, and then pushing to get better, and proving to be a guy that we can rely on whenever that call is later in the season.

“There’s a lot of reasons why he got the contract that he did and there’s a reason why he’s been penned into our rotation for the last handful of years. While this isn’t exactly how we drew it up or he drew it up, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s going to take the challenge and move forward with it. He’s been able to make the path to the big leagues in his own way and this will be another chance for him to write his own story and get better and make improvements in his own way.”

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