In which Brad Penny recognizes the pot calling the kettle black

Next up: Brad Penny telling Joe Girardi that the jerk store called and they're all out of him! Photo from this site.

Today is June 15 (hi, I’m Captain Obvious, Derek Jeter’s cousin thrice-removed), which means that the Red Sox can now create a rotation spot for John Smoltz by trading Brad Penny. Of course, the best solution is probably giving Daisuke Matsuzaka the Fausto Carmona treatment, and maybe that’s what the Sox will do, $100 million investment be damned.

But if Penny has thrown his last pitch for the Sox, he’s leaving on a high note that even George Costanza would admire.

Penny had his most impressive start of the season Thursday when he was regularly clocked in the high 90s throughout a 117-pitch effort. One of those fastballs hit Alex Rodriguez in the back in the second inning and angered Yankees manager Joe Girardi, who on Friday complained about the plunking and griped about Penny’s intent.

Of course, Girardi complaining about the Yankees getting hit is the type of hypocrisy so blatant, it’s almost not worth dignifying with words. Fortunately, Penny thought otherwise and unloaded on Girardi Saturday, telling reporters that he doesn’t “…give two [hoots] what Joe Girardi says” and suggesting Girardi spend more time managing and less time playing commissioner.

Penny didn’t bother mentioning how regularly Yankees pitchers have used Sox hitters for target practice this year, nor how it’s ticked off the mild-mannered John Farrell. The Yankees have hit nine Sox batters this year, as opposed to just three plunkings of the Yankees by Sox pitchers. When Jason Bay was hit by Jose Veras Wednesday it marked the sixth straight game in which a Yankees pitcher hit a Sox batter. Nor did Penny mention that the Yankees, for all of Girardi’s caterwauling, lead the league in hit batsman (38 through Saturday, one more than the Sox).

Nor did he mention one of Girardi’s pitchers is Joba Chamberlain, who apparently thinks pitching is a carnival game and the baseball in his hand is a softball and Kevin Youkilis’ head is a bunch of milk jugs. Chamberlain also hit Bay May 5 after Bay homered in consecutive games.

Of course, the Yankees instigating beanball battles and then painting themselves as the victims is nothing new. In 2000, Joe Torre managed to blame ESPN for Roger Clemens trying to kill Mike Piazza during a July interleague game. When Clemens—hopped up on Ben Gay around the groin and nothing else, wink wink—chucked a broken bat at Piazza in the Subway Series, Torre wailed about how unfair it was to think Clemens was intentionally trying to hurt Piazza.

But when Clemens was on the Blue Jays and regularly hitting the Yankees, Torre was singing a different tune.

Girardi himself is no stranger to wondering why everybody’s picking on him. As the Yankees’ catcher in 1999, he was mystified when he was ejected from a Yankees-Mariners game that devolved into a brawl when the Yankees’ Jason Grimsley plunked Edgar Martinez following a home run by—there he is again!!!—Alex Rodriguez. It was so long ago that Rodriguez and Jeter actually were BFFs who spent the brawl laughing with one another.

But unlike Girardi’s complaining, there was something almost begrudgingly admirable in Torre’s hypocrisy. It was the passive-aggressive arrogance of it all, the equivalent of the star quarterback holding his hands in the air and proclaiming his innocence in a hallway brawl, all while he deftly sticks his foot behind him and trips another kid.

Torre’s a pretty good manager, but he would have been a great politician. Torre is so slick, he could walk into an igloo, declare it wasn’t that cold and have teeth-chattering Eskimos hand over their layers of clothing and believe it was the right thing to do.

He works a room like few managers or coaches in any sport, mastering the concept that a smooth delivery is the best form of spin control. He speaks earnestly, looks his questioner in the eye, drops a few “no doubts” to make said questioner feel as if he was revealing some great and deep truth and references new-age pap like “one heartbeat” that nonetheless sounds more organic and sincere than anything generated by Pat Riley or Phil Jackson. And maybe, for good measure, he’ll tell a story about how he caught Bob Gibson back when men were men and nobody got suspended for good country hardball.

And of course whenever there are multiple beanings in a game, Torre always mentions that he hopes there’s no lingering effect, thereby subtly painting the other team as the bad guys if they retaliate the next day.

Nobody ever wonders about his role when his pitchers start throwing at the head, not even in June 2007, when, after the overworked Scott Proctor entered in the ninth inning of a 9-3 game that had already featured four beanings and was the first Yankees pitcher to try to take off Youkilis’ head, Torre declared he was happy the Yankees “…showed some fight.” Nor did anyone seem to doubt Torre nearly three months later, when he told Youkilis that Chamberlain wasn’t picking up where Proctor left off.

Girardi is plenty slick in his own right: He spent all of one year as a bench coach with the Yankees before he was hired by the Marlins in 2006, when he won Manager of the Year honors and got fired anyway because of a personality clash with owner Jeffrey Loria. Girardi then worked for the YES Network and Fox Sports in 2007 and parlayed that season in the public eye into a gig as Torre’s successor.

But Girardi lacks that extra special layer that allowed Torre to escape scrutiny despite his multiple head-hunters. His people skills—inside and outside his clubhouse—were so lacking last year that the Yankees ordered him to undergo a Tom Coughlin-like metamorphosis. Girardi is better this year, but the Marine persona means he’ll never spin nor ever win over a crowd like Torre.

It doesn’t help Girardi that the Yankees are not the pillar of excellence they were under Torre, when they were the best, most consistent team in baseball. And if they wanted to plunk other teams and point fingers about it, well, there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about it.

Indeed, if the Torre-led Yankees were the heartthrob star quarterback, the Girardi-led Yankees are said quarterback five years later, after he’s quit the State U. football team, flunked out of school and gained 80 pounds. The layer of invincibility is gone, so now when he acts like a jerk, people recognize he’s acting like a jerk. Just ask Brad Penny.

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.

Free Clay Buchholz!

"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LET THE BOY PITCH IN YOUR HOUSE!!" Photo from this site.

I imagine this is a bit of East Coast hyperbole that could be disproved by someone with a couple hours and Baseball-Reference.com at his/her disposal, but here goes: Since Major League Baseball expanded to 30 teams, I cannot imagine there has ever been a team with more starting pitching depth than the Red Sox have right now.

I mean, Clay Buchholz just carried a perfect game into the ninth inning Monday, and he’s no better than eighth on the Sox’ depth chart. Justin Masterson certainly ranks ahead of him, since he’s in the majors, and the Sox didn’t sign John Smoltz last winter so that they could send him to the bullpen or Pawtucket once his rehab assignment ends (he made his second minor league start last night and is on schedule to debut for the Sox in mid-June).

Buchholz is 3-0 with a 1.31 ERA and a 49/12 K/BB ratio in 48 1/3 innings at Pawtucket this year and 27-12 with a 2.29 ERA and a 466/107 K/BB ratio in 392 1/3 innings overall as a minor leaguer since he signed with the Sox in 2005. At Pawtucket alone, he is 8-5 with a 2.15 ERA and a 147/42 K/BB ratio in 130 1/3 innings over 25 starts.

Nick Cafardo made a good point in his Sunday notes May 17, when he wrote that more development wasn’t a bad thing for Buchholz since he was just approaching the 500 professional innings that big league teams used to think pitchers needed before they were ready for the majors. (He’s actually at 501 after Monday) Curt Schilling had 890 1/3 innings under his belt—including 725 1/3 at the minor league level—before his first full season with the Phillies in 1992.

But still…Buchholz seems pretty darn developed right now. My guess is the Sox know Buchholz is ready to contribute at the big league level, but that they don’t mind being extra careful in light of his struggles last year.

In addition, the Brad Penny experiment has gone much better than most of us anticipated. Bob Ryan said yesterday he thinks the Sox are going to deal Penny before the trading deadline, but that still leaves them with six starters for five spots if Smoltz returns. And if Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Jon Lester and Tim Wakefield are all healthy, then that would, presumably, leave Buchholz in Pawtucket.

Might it be time for the Sox to go with the six-man rotation, as it appeared they might be ready to do when they re-signed Schilling in November 2007? Like then, they’ve got the optimal staff with which to try it: A pair of 40-somethings in Smoltz and Wakefield, a hurler who is used to pitching once a week in Matsuzaka and a couple of young homegrown starters whose innings the Sox would like an excuse to limit in Lester and Buchholz.

Theo Epstein said on the conference call announcing the return of Schilling that the Sox had pondered the possibility of a six-man rotation but that he didn’t want to commit to it because those things have a way of not working themselves out. And that’s exactly what happened: Schilling never threw another pitch and Sox starters were so decimated by injuries that the likes of David Pauley and Charlie Zink made starts for Boston last year.

If the Sox have better luck this season in the injury department, maybe they can unofficially go with the six-man rotation by handing every starter some “structured time off,” as Epstein called it in November ‘07. Conceivably, the Sox could give a different starter two weeks off beginning July 1—these would be like furloughs, except, you know, they’d get paid—and run through the rotation by the end of the regular season.

And with September roster expansion, the Sox would only have to come up with a DL-worthy ailment for four pitchers. Or maybe only three, since the All-Star Break provides a chance to give someone 10 days off anyway. Or maybe only one, since Lester and Buchholz can still be optioned out.

I’m just thinking out loud. Such suggestions are easier made than implemented, especially when it comes to something as radical as changing the big league rotation as we know it. But geez, somebody’s got to do something to get Buchholz up to the majors before he makes a run at Schilling’s minor league innings total, right?

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.

History not on the side of Smoltz, Penny

Will John Smoltz beat the odds and become the low-risk, high-reward starter that pays off? Photo from The Boston Globe.

The Red Sox have shut down John Smoltz for up to two weeks, though they say he isn’t hurt. But let’s face it, rarely is someone shut down when he isn’t hurt, especially when that someone is 41 years old, has thrown 3,395 big league innings, has undergone four elbow surgeries and is less than a year removed from major surgery on his right shoulder.

It’s understandable that the Sox would paint this delay in the most optimistic terms possible (it’s also consistent with their philosophies since 2005, as you can read about in Chapter 9 of Fighting Words, coming soon to a bookshelf near you!). But I also recall how optimistic the Sox seemed about Wade Miller in 2005, when he first missed a start in July with a sore shoulder and then went on the disabled list in August with tendinitis that Terry Francona said was not an injury.

Miller didn’t throw a ball for 15 days, during which he had two throwing sessions postponed, and made two minor league rehab starts but eventually underwent surgery on his labrum. He returned to the big leagues with the Cubs in 2006 but hasn’t come close to regaining his past form and is currently pitching for the Blue Jays’ Triple-A affiliate.

I bring up Miller not out of some odd nostalgia for the summer of 2005 (man, remember when Craig Hansen was The Next Big Thing?), but because he was the first injured starting pitcher on whom Theo Epstein made a low-risk, high-reward investment.

Unfortunately for the Sox, the next one to pay off will be the first. The Sox got just 23 starts combined out of Miller (16 starts) and 2008 fliers Bartolo Colon (seven starts) and Curt Schilling (no starts).

Epstein tried again last winter by signing Smoltz and Brad Penny, who was hampered by a bad shoulder last year with the Dodgers and joined the Sox shortly before Smoltz was brought into the fold. But while Smoltz works in Florida, Penny has a 8.66 ERA and nearly twice as many walks (11) as strikeouts (six) in four starts. (He’s also 2-0)

If missing on a bunch of rehabbing veterans is the worst thing about Epstein's resume, well, it’s a pretty damn good resume. And if a general manager is going to miss, better to do so on incentive-laden one-year deals than on the four- and five-year deals that really hamstring a team’s financial flexibility.

Nor did the Sox have outsized expectations for Miller, Colon, Schilling, Smoltz or Penny. The hurlers were signed with the hope they could provide high-upside depth, to safeguard the Sox against the injuries that inevitably deplete a rotation and, in the case of everyone except Miller, to buy the club more time to develop its homegrown starters on the farm.

Only Penny began the season in the big league rotation, though the Sox didn’t expect Schilling to be on the shelf come April when they re-signed him in November 2007. But even that deal was executed with the belief that Schilling was more likely to pitch 120 innings than 180 innings.

Even though Miller, Colon and Schilling didn’t work out, it’s easy to understand why Epstein would go to the well again with Penny and Smoltz this year. The Sox last year scrambled for starting pitching a lot more than their 95 wins would indicate. Every member of the projected Opening Day rotation hit the disabled list aside from Jon Lester, who emerged as an ace-quality starter (16-6 with a 3.21 ERA) in his first full big league season. In addition, Clay Buchholz, he of the no-hitter in his second big league start, had a brutal season that underscored the Sox’ desire to proceed as cautiously as possible with their young pitchers.

The Sox ended up receiving the equivalent of a season’s worth of starts from Colon, rookie Justin Masterson (who opened the season in Double-A but made eight starts for the Sox before finishing the season in the bullpen), post-trading deadline acquisition Paul Byrd (eight starts), organizational arms David Pauley (two starts) and Charlie Zink (one start) and top prospect Michael Bowden (one start). Those six hurlers combined to record a 5.00 ERA in 163 2/3 innings. Only five pitchers of the 40 American League pitchers who qualified for the ERA title posted an ERA higher than 5.00 last year.

So even though history suggests Smoltz and Penny will spend more time on the shelf than on the field, why not take a flier on a pair of veterans who could provide far more upside than last year’s fill-ins—or, for that matter, Miller, Colon or Schilling?

Smoltz has the greatest postseason resume ever (15-4, 2.67 ERA in 207 innings), is almost surely bound for the Hall of Fame, led the NL in wins and starts at age 39 three years ago and struck out 36 batters in 28 innings even as his shoulder throbbed last year. And Penny won 16 games in consecutive seasons in 2006-07, started the All-Star Game for the NL in ’06 and is still only 30 years old.

They were worthy risks, and risks Epstein will likely continue to take in future winters. But as for this year, don’t be surprised if Penny is replaced by Buchholz by the end of the month—or if the closest Smoltz comes to pitching for the Red Sox is on the back fields in Fort Myers.

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.