In Red Sox spring training in 2009, no pitcher made a more formidable impression than Daniel Bard.

At that time, the flame-throwing right-hander had never pitched above Double-A. But early in big league camp, he showed the ability to dominate with a triple-digits fastball and a wipeout breaking ball, and he demonstrated the stuff to be an impact arm in the bullpen.

Still, at that point, he was a relatively unproven commodity. While he'd been outstanding in Single-A Greenville and Double-A Portland in 2008, he still wasn't so far removed from his alarming command struggles of 2007 that the Sox could be certain of what he would be able to do in the big leagues.

And so, Bard was brought along in slightly deliberate fashion. He was reassigned to minor league camp in mid-March. He started the year in Triple-A Pawtucket before a call-up in mid-May. Once in the majors, he primarily worked in the middle innings either when the Sox were trailing or ahead by more than three runs.

Over time, however, the Sox (for whom current manager John Farrell was a pitching coach) nudged Bard into situation's of growing significance, putting him into games when the Sox were holding onto late-innings leads. By the end of July, he appeared to be cementing a role as a seventh- and eighth-inning setup man, performing well enough in the role that the Sox felt comfortable trading away Justin Masterson to the Indians as the centerpiece of the deal that brought Victor Martinez to Boston that July 31.

The Sox, Farrell suggested on Thursday night on WEEI's Red Sox Hot Stove Show, would be thrilled to follow a similar model with the right-hander in 2013.

"We’ve talked internally throughout the offseason. You start to get individual plans in place, and speaking with Daniel, I always viewed this, at least at the outset, bringing him along like we did in his first year in the big leagues," said Farrell. (To listen to the complete interview with the Red Sox manager, click here.) "We kind of brought him in to some low-leverage situations, gained some confidence. And I can, at least initially, see a similar path and as we get him on track and he’s able to realize similar results to what he has in the past, certainly the important, high-leverage innings may come in time, but I think given what he’s gone through the past year, 1) to get him back in the bullpen and 2) to build back that confidence. This is a guy who’s still healthy, still talented. There’s no reason he doesn’t get back to the performance of before."

He's coming off a year that was little short of disastrous, having gone 5-6 with a 6.22 ERA while having walked more batters (43) than he struck out (38) in 59 1/3 innings of big league work. An early-season trial as a starter flopped, resulting in Bard's demotion to the minors and return to the bullpen role in which he'd spent the prior four years. As both a starter and reliever, his stuff was diminished, the high-90s fastball that he once seemed to dial up effortlessly having vanished. His breaking stuff was flat. In short, he very rarely channeled the electricity that he generated in spring training for 2009. 

Given the gap between his 2012 performance and that of his 2009-11 level, it seems fair to wonder whether 2013 might follow 2009 in another respect -- chiefly, with Bard opening the season back in the minors. Even if he dominates in spring training, two factors might suggest that the right-hander opens the year in Pawtucket.

First, there's the question of whether spring training is enough of a sample size to demonstrate definitively that his stuff is back. After all, Bard's three months in Pawtucket in 2012 were characterized by considerable peaks and valleys. Secondly, Bard is one of the few pitchers on the team with minor league options (two, to be specific) remaining.

Given that the Sox already have more late-innings arms than spots (Joel Hanrahan, Andrew Bailey, Junichi Tazawa, Koji Uehara, Craig Breslow, Franklin Morales, Andrew Miller, Alfredo Aceves, Clayton Mortensen), even if Bard excels in spring training, he could become the victim of a numbers game. 

Still, if he does return to form, it is likely that -- in contrast to 2012 -- any spin to the minors would represent a short-term delay. And to this point, there are promising indications that Bard might be on the road back toward his previous status. 

Farrell and new pitching coach Juan Nieves recently made the trip to Mississippi to visit with Bard. When there, the two encountered a pitcher who looked like he had addressed the primary mechanical issues that derailed last season. 

"The things that you look for are just how the arm is working, where the arm slot is -- particularly in Daniel’s case," said Farrell. "His arm slot would vary a lot with him trying to  manipulate the baseball, whether it was him trying to sink it, when he would try to cut it you saw his arm slot drop, a little bit more of a true three-quarters or low three-quarters arm slot.

"That just made his stuff flatten out in the strike zone. He didn’t have the same leverage downhill, the ball would leak back into a right-hander and he’d start to hit some right-handers as a result, where he’d lose command of a pitch. But to see him up in that normal arm slot that he’d shown previously, to his credit, I think as he’s gotten further away from the end of last year, I don’t want to say that just by pushing the reset button he’s cured or he’s made adjustments, but he’s in a good frame of mind, and most importantly from a delivery standpoint, he’s back to staying behind the baseball and commanding it, at least in the early going here."

It's still a long way back to Boston, but for the Sox, even a glimpse of the form that could propel Bard back to a 2009-style re-emergence would represent a dramatic turn of events.