In many respects, the question of what role Daniel Bard should fulfill is secondary to the fact that there can be a question. After all, just a few years ago, such an inquiry would have been impossible.

As Bard dominated on his way up to the minors, how much consideration did the Red Sox give to moving the right-hander from the bullpen to the rotation?

“None, really,” said Sox assistant GM Mike Hazen. “None.”

Or, at least, no realistic consideration was given to the idea.

Bard’s first professional season was a disaster. He had a 3-7 record, 7.08 ERA, 78 walks and 47 strikeouts in 22 starts for High-A Lancaster and then, following a demotion, Single-A Greenville. His mechanics were a mess and the tremendous stuff that the team had seen in college disappeared.

However, after that season, the team sent him to the Hawaiian Winter League where Bard flashed some glimpses of promise out of the bullpen. That, in turn, led the Sox to make the decision to keep him in a relief role in 2008.

Bard flourished. In 46 relief appearances between Greenville and Double-A Portland in 2008, he tossed 77 2/3 innings, accumulating an extraordinary 12.4 strikeouts per nine innings, walking just 30 and producing a 1.51 ERA between his two levels. He was primarily a fastball/breaking ball pitcher (the secondary offering at the time was somewhere between a curve and slider) but also flashed a changeup that year.

And so, at the end of the year, Sox officials acknowledged that, yes, under other circumstances, they might have contemplated putting Bard back in the rotation to see if they could maximize his value. However, given the extremes of his failure as a starter and excellence out of the bullpen, the team did not feel it could jeopardize the experiment.

“We had just seen so much confidence starting to come back, but it wasn’t all the way there,” said Hazen. “He obviously wasn’t the guy he was going to become at that point.

“We had seen so much more success than we had ever seen. We had seen him gain so much more confidence. At that point, it was about not disrupting that more than anything else. Not that the conversation didn’t happen every year, but it’s a matter of getting to that point where there’s a genuine belief -- I think he always had it -- but for us to have that genuine belief that he’d be good at this.”

It took time for the Sox to gain that conviction. The same was true of Bard, even if he reached the conclusion that he could be a big league starter a bit before his organization.

Bard felt that he and the club were both in lockstep through the 2010 season in considering his biggest impact to be as a reliever. The Sox appeared loaded in the rotation entering 2009 (they entered that year, after all, with Clay Buchholz in the minors and with John Smoltz working his way back from the disabled list) and 2010 (when the Sox, after signing John Lackey, had options such as Felix Doubront, Michael Bowden (then still a starting prospect) and Casey Kelly percolating in the system, as well as Tim Wakefield as a depth option).

However, it was during that 2010 season that Bard started to ask himself whether he might not be better suited for the rotation. In 73 appearances spanning 74 2/3 innings, he was dominant -- a 1.93 ERA with 76 strikeouts and 30 walks, with opponents hitting just .176 against him.

His stuff was dominant, and he understood how to use it. Right-handers hit just .215 with a .627 OPS against him; lefties, amazingly, managed just a .141 average and .462 OPS against the righty.

The ability to handle hitters from both sides of the plate underscored to Bard the notion that he could be a big league starter. Though the topic wasn’t broached with the club at that time, Bard had come to believe in his talents.

“I had really proven to myself and everyone else that I can consistently get big league hitters out. If I can do it for one inning, why can’t I do it for more?” said Bard. “Stamina was never an issue for me. So, it crossed my mind [after the 2010 season], but in 2011, with six proven big league starters coming into camp, I would have been the odd man out, for sure. It wasn’t until there were spots open that it seemed worthwhile to bring it up to the team.”

That moment came at the start of this offseason. Bard saw that -- with Tim Wakefield’s future uncertain and both Daisuke Matsuzaka and John Lackey lost to Tommy John surgery -- the Sox had very apparent needs in the rotation. Thus, he felt emboldened to tell the club that he could start or close, thus putting the ball in the team’s court to decide his future.

“I’d thought of it before,” said Bard, “but the opportunity just wasn’t there.”

When the Sox stretched him out in spring training, it was never a foregone conclusion that Bard would land in the rotation. At the same time, the team wasn’t looking for a finished product coming out of camp -- only a starter who showed significant potential and progress in his new undertaking.

On both count, he succeeded, thus leading to the decision to have him open the year as a starter. Whether or not that move is permanent remains to be seen -- Bard’s performance, innings limits/concerns for his long-term health and, yes, team need will dictate whether or not he ends up moving back to the bullpen at some point this season.

But, for now, Bard is in the rotation, a reflection of how far his career has come.

“He’s evolved so much as a pitcher over the last three or four years. … He’s a completely different guy,” said Hazen. “In 2008, coming off of 2007, building that confidence and success, having it for the first time really in 2008, we were looking to build on that. He built on that.

“He’s grown so much as a pitcher. He’s become so much more of a pitcher even in the bullpen. There’s so much more outward confidence that you see today. He’s a completely different guy. I think that’s what gives people the confidence that he’s become a pitcher: he knows his mechanics, he knows his arm slot, he knows what he needs to repeat to get it done. He knows things that you look for in a starting pitcher. He seems to have found those things within himself, how to self-correct, to stay within himself and be a pitcher. Those are the things that give people the confidence to say he can do this.”