The Red Sox have decided the time is right to break out Daniel Bard.

After giving up just two runs and six hits in 16 innings — during which he struck out 29 and walked five — Bard has been brought up to the Red Sox, where he will join the team’s bullpen starting Sunday night in the Sox’ series finale against the Tampa Bay Rays.

“It might be a little quicker. I don’t think any of us had a hard time slowing him down, or wanting to slow him down because he is such a bright piece of our future … It wasn’t like I was sitting here banging on Theo, ‘You’ve got to get this guy here.’ The last time I did that it killed us,” said Red Sox manager Terry Francona, referencing when the Sox summoned reliever Cla Meredith in 2005 only to see the sidewinder issue two walks and a Richie Sexson grand slam in his first three big league batters.

“I think when we all sat down and talked it just made some sense. And I guess some of it had to do was that we didn’t have to have him here right now. I think that’s important right now, too. By that we don’t have to give him the ball in the eighth inning and, ‘OK kid, our hopes are pinned on you.’ We didn’t want to do that either. Hopefully the timing is good.”

The Red Sox’ corresponding move was to designate Javy Lopez for assignment, who had allowed 13 runs on 20 hits in 11 2/3 innings.

“We talked to Javy last night after the game and told him what we were going to do, which is designate him for assignment, which is hard to do,” Francona said. “He’s a nice kid. He’s a gentleman. He works hard. He’s just having a hard time getting people out … The way we were using him, we weren’t getting the most out of our bullpen.”

While the plan is to ease Bard into his first major league action, Francona couldn’t guarantee anything, once again using Meredith’s debut as an example.

“What would be ideal is to get him in a game where we have a little bit of leeway. That may not happen. I think I said the same thing with Clay Meredith. We’ll see. We really don’t know,” Francona said. “I don’t think that is the most urgent thing on everybody’s mind right now. We told him the experience will be fantastic and we think he can help us win at the same time. We’ve tried to balance that in the past and we’ll continue to try and do it.”

Continuing to look back at that Meredith promotion, Francona added, “I remember we desperately needed a bridge in the sixth inning. We just couldn’t get it done. I thought with his funkiness and teams not seeing him, it would be the perfect bridge. It went against probably everything I believe in, Theo relented and it was a bad mistake on my part.”

For Bard, who gave up no runs and five hits in 10 1/3 innings in spring training, the promotion wasn’t a matter of if, but when.

“He was probably the talk of the camp, not only our camp but everywhere you went everybody was talking about him,” Francona said. “We tried to monitor that a little bit because especially in our market there’s a lot of media, there’s a lot of people who want to get to him. But he handled himself very well, he continued to throw the ball very well, went to Triple A and picked up right where he left off. If he attacks the strike zone he’s going to have success, it’s hard to get around it. He’ll give up a hit or a home run every once in a while, but his stuff is too good. He handles the running game. There’s not a lot of moving parts for young pitcher that throws that hard. There’s not a lot of effort to get the ball up there, which is great.”