The 1-2 punch cannot be cut in half

An injury to Jon Lester or Josh Beckett could put the Red Sox down for the count in the playoffs. Photo from this site.

The Red Sox will enter the playoffs (and yes, with the magic number down to one, we’re well within reason in assuming the Sox will win once or the Rangers will lose once in the next six days) with one obvious edge over the rest of the American League playoff field. But the Sox were reminded of the precariousness of their starting pitching advantage twice in the last four days.

Jon Lester’s availability for the playoffs appeared to be in serious doubt when he could barely walk off the Yankee Stadium field after taking a line drive off his right leg in a 9-5 loss Friday. There still seemed to be plenty of reason for concern when the Sox announced shortly thereafter he had suffered a “quad contusion,” which seemed to be the fun-with-semantics strategy they used in describing Josh Beckett’s finger injury as an “avulsion”—and not a recurrence of his familiar blister issues—in 2007 as well as Jonathan Papelbon’s “shoulder subluxation”—and not a dislocated shoulder—in 2006.

But Terry Francona said Monday Lester is expected to make his next start as scheduled against the Indians Thursday, which qualifies as off-the-charts good news considering Lester appears likely to start Game One of the AL Division Series.

Alas, any relief the Sox felt over that was tempered by, if not outright negated by, the decision earlier Monday to scratch Josh Beckett from his start against the Blue Jays due to back spasms. It’s probably just a matter of the Sox playing it safe with their co-ace, especially given Beckett’s stated desire last week to get some rest before the playoffs, and Francona hinted after the game Monday Beckett will likely make a tune-up start against the Indians Saturday.

But still, it was another reminder that for all of Beckett’s excellence, this is the first season in which he has exceeded 205 innings—a mark previously reached by every other member of the Sox’ Opening Day rotation except Daisuke Matsuzaka, who threw 204 2/3 innings as a rookie in 2007—as well as of the oblique injury that wrecked his postseason a year ago.

And it’s another reminder of how brittle the Sox are beyond their top two, particularly if Lester or Beckett is compromised. The Sox should feel pretty confident putting the baseball in the hands of Clay Buchholz—untested in October but brilliant lately—for Game Three of the ALDS, but the Game Four starter, if necessary, will be Daisuke Matsuzaka, as much by necessity as merit despite his recent effectiveness.

That the Sox would have to start in a potential elimination game a pitcher who missed more than half the season and produced an ERA well north of 6 would have been inconceivable way back when we were all gushing about the impressive pitching depth the club had compiled. But John Smoltz and Brad Penny didn’t have AL-worthy stuff and Tim Wakefield has missed most of the second half, which has left the Sox in the same position as a year ago: Scrambling to find live bodies—one named Paul Byrd—to take the hill in September.

As I noted in this post about Smoltz and Penny in May, the Sox received a season’s worth of starts last year out of the sextet of Byrd, Bartolo Colon, Justin Masterson, David Pauley, Charlie Zink and Michael Bowden. Those hurlers pitched to a 5.00 ERA in 163 2/3 innings over 28 starts. Only five AL pitchers who pitched at least 162 innings last season fashioned an ERA of higher than 5.00.

The filling-in-the-gaps pitchers performed even worse this season. Masterson, Byrd, Smoltz, Bowden and Junichi Tazawa have combined to post a 6.68 ERA in 129 1/3 innings over 25 starts. Add Matsuzaka’s 11 starts into the equation and the six pitchers have compiled a 6.50 ERA in 182 2/3 innings. The highest ERA among big league qualifiers belongs to Livan Hernandez, who has a 5.48 ERA between the Mets and the Nationals. The Blue Jays’ Brian Tallet has the highest ERA among AL qualifiers (5.32).

All of which is to say we’ve learned our lesson when it comes to extolling the depth of a team’s starting pitching—and that the advantage the Sox enjoy atop their rotation with Lester and Beckett is a tenuous one, one that feels ever more precarious with every ache and pain experienced by the duo.

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jerrybeach.

Wakefield and Beckett! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty!

Tim Wakefield and/or Josh Beckett will have plenty of reason to bellow if they take down enough big league batters to approach or reach 300 wins. Photo from this site.

When he signed Tim Wakefield in the spring of 1995, Dan Duquette had no idea he was plucking off the scrap heap the man who would likely someday become the Red Sox’ all-time winningest pitcher. But Wakefield should surpass both Cy Young and Roger Clemens as the top winner in franchise history at some point next season, and his success over the last 15 seasons—but particularly this year, when Wakefield earned his first trip to the All-Star Game—had Duquette in an understandably gushy mood when Joe Haggerty caught up with him this week.

Duquette recalled how Phil Niekro, the Hall of Fame knuckleballer, told Wakefield shortly after he signed with the Sox that if he could harness and master the pitch, he could pitch until he turned 50. At that point, Haggerty points out, Wakefield would have Hall of Fame-caliber numbers.

Of course, possessing the potential to pitch until 50 and actually doing so are two different things, to which Haggerty also alludes. Hall of Fame knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm retired weeks before his 50th birthday in 1972. Niekro retired at 48 and fellow knuckleballer Charlie Hough retired at 46 due to physical issues (Niekro felt he could no longer cover first and Hough needed a hip replacement). Wakefield, of course, has endured his own increasingly frequent ailments since he turned 40.

For the sake of this blog entry, let’s say Wakefield wins one of his two or three starts before his 43rd birthday Aug. 2. That would give him 91 wins since his 36th birthday. To maintain that pace for another seven years would mean he ages in more graceful fashion than either Niekro (78 wins after turning 43) and Hough (30 wins after turning 43), yet still leave him at “only” 283 as he turns 50.

And to win another 17 games to reach the magical, Cooperstown-worthy 300-win mark would rank as one of the most remarkable feats in baseball history, since no pitcher has ever won a single game after his 50th birthday. Jack Quinn came closest, recording his final big league victory at 49.

All of which is to say that Wakefield’s probably not going to reach 300 wins. It’s hard to say any active player has a good shot at 300 wins (though Jamie Moyer is at 255 after he one-hit the Marlins over seven innings last night), but the more I think about it, the more I think Josh Beckett has a pretty interesting shot at it.

Beckett won his 100th career game Sunday at the age of 29, which puts him three years ahead of Johnson and in the same ballpark as recent 300-game winners Greg Maddux (won his 100th game at age 27), Roger Clemens (won his 100th game at age 27) and Tom Glavine (won his 100th game at age 28).

It also means he compares quite favorably to the likes of Moyer (won his 100th game at age 35), Wakefield (won his 100th game at age 36), David Wells (won his 100th game at age 34) and Curt Schilling (won his 100th game at age 33), all of whom were far better in their 30s and 40s than in their 20s.

Beckett is in good physical condition, has avoided the surgeon’s knife—though he’s had his share of injury scares—and seems like the type of player who should remain competitive and inspired well into his 30s. It’ll be pretty fascinating if Beckett is being discussed as the next legitimate candidate to join the 300-win club seven or eight years from now—but, admittedly, not nearly as fascinating as if Wakefield is still in the discussion, too.

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.

Leaning on Beckett good baseball business

Josh Beckett hasn't been taking it easy this year. Photo from this site.

Josh Beckett had perhaps his most impressive regular season start as a member of the Red Sox Wednesday, when he carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning and ended up allowing three unearned runs on two hits and two walks while whiffing nine over 7 2/3 innings in the Sox’ 10-5 win over the Tigers.

As fascinating as it was to watch Beckett flirt with the no-hitter, the most interesting thing about his performance was in the box score: One hundred nineteen pitches. It was the 10th straight start in which Beckett has exceeded 100 pitches and kept him on pace for the busiest season by a Sox starter since Terry Francona became manager in 2004.

Beckett has thrown at least 100 pitches in 10 of his 11 starts (he threw 93 in the opener against the Rays), has exceeded 110 pitches seven times and is averaging 112 pitches per start. If he maintains that kind of workload, he’ll almost certainly break the Francona-era records for most 100-pitch starts (26 by Curt Schilling in 2004), most 110-pitch starts (17 by Daisuke Matsuzaka in 2007) and highest average pitch count (109 by Matsuzaka in 2007). He’s less likely to match or exceed the records for highest pitch (133 by Schilling in 2006) or the most 120-pitch outings (six by Matsuzaka in 2007).

It says a lot about how baseball has evolved when two months of 100-pitch starts send a guy to Baseball-Reference.com for hours (or maybe it just says something about me). We’re so used to big red flashing lights accompanying the 100-pitch mark that the first instinct is to wonder if Beckett is being overworked.

But immersion in the numbers indicates Beckett’s workload is perfectly reasonable. He’s only averaging six more pitchers per start than Jon Lester and 12 more pitches per start than Tim Wakefield.

And Beckett—who, at 29, has pitched 200 innings just twice due to a variety of injuries but who hasn’t undergone an operation on his right arm—will never be better equipped to throw more than 100 pitches every five days than he is right now.

This is also the first time under Theo Epstein that the Sox have had an ace in the prime of his career. So why shouldn’t the Sox take advantage of the rarest commodity in baseball and allow their best pitcher—and the one best-prepared for a heavy workload—to pitch deeper into games than most, especially given the number of close games the Sox have played with Beckett on the mound? The game Wednesday marked only the third time this season Beckett exited with a lead or deficit of more than two runs.

In addition, it’s made sense for the Sox to go longer with Beckett in the three starts in which closer Jonathan Papelbon was not available. Papelbon threw 39 pitches Apr. 11, the day before Beckett threw 103 pitches against the Angels. Papelbon threw 32 pitches May 4, the day before Beckett threw 108 pitches against the Yankees. And Papelbon threw 35 pitches Tuesday.

What is interesting is to wonder how Beckett’s workload will affect the Sox’ plans after next season, when his contract expires (the Sox’ $10 million option for 2010 vests if he makes 28 starts this year). If Beckett remains healthy through 2010, he’ll be the unique no. 1 starting pitcher who hits free agency at or near his peak.

But the Sox aren’t in the business of paying for past performance, and he’s almost certainly gone if he’s looking for CC Sabathia-type money. Even if he’s not, the Sox—with an enviable stockpile of young arms throughout the minor league system—may decide they’ve already gotten the best years of Beckett’s career and that it’s better to reinvest elsewhere.

So from a pure business standpoint, it makes sense for the Sox to get all they can out of Beckett this year and next. The Indians and Brewers wrung all they could last year out of Sabathia, who threw 100 pitches 29 times in 35 starts for the two teams, exceeded 110 pitches 16 times, averaged 109 pitches per start and pitched on three days’ rest in each of his final three outings for the Brewers as he helped pitch them into the playoffs for the first time since 1982.

Sabathia profited, too, to the tune of the seven-year, $161 million deal he signed with the Yankees in December. The Yankees would seem to have plenty of reason to proceed cautiously with him, especially since he can opt out after three years and would be far less likely to do so if his arm explodes. But the Yankees have worked Sabathia as hard as the Indians and Brewers did last year: He has thrown at least 100 pitches in each of his last six starts, in all but two of his 11 starts overall and is averaging 110 pitches per outing.

Of course, why wouldn’t the Yankees want what they paid for out of their 28-year-old former Cy Young Award winner? The Mets played it safe with Johan Santana last year and missed the playoffs as a result: They lost three games in which Santana was pulled with the lead or the score tied after 105 pitches or less.

Perhaps the Sox and Beckett will spend the rest of this season and next season maximizing their relationship. Even if that’s not the Sox’ goal, it makes even more sense, from a purely baseball perspective, to rely as much as they can on him.

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.

Who am I? Why am I here?

Josh Beckett says read my blog, or else. (Note: This does not constitute an endorsement from Josh Beckett. Thanks to Boston Dirt Dogs for the photo.)

I’d like to make an interesting entrance here and declare my arrival with equal parts white-hot rage and vinegar, a la Josh Beckett in the 2006 home opener. But Beckett foil Shea Hillenbrand is running a rescue shelter for animals in Arizona, so polite and old-fashioned will have to do.

I’m Jerry Beach, the former managing editor of Diehard Magazine and the author of Fighting Words: The Media, The Red Sox And The All-Encompassing Passion For Baseball In Boston, the first-ever book about the Red Sox and the media. This blog is intended to promote Fighting Words, which is finally coming to bookshelves near you in the next month, a mere five-and-a-half years after I came up with the idea while sitting in the right field press area at Yankee Stadium during the ALCS. (Before I go any further, many, many thanks to Bill Nowlin, the founder of Rounder Books and a tireless supporter of this project, even when the many delays were driving him nuts)

This idea originated with a single thought: Why do so many Red Sox players have contentious relationships with the press? Over the subsequent five seasons, I learned there were many more layers to the story, one of which was the passion Boston-area fans have for the media that covers their favorite teams.

I’m hopeful I can feed some of that interest by posting many of the more than 100 interviews I conducted for the book and posting some of the material that got left on the cutting room floor. The book evolved over the five years and what I asked someone and what I wrote about in 2004 was a whole lot different than what I asked and wrote about in 2008. I think the metamorphosis was interesting and I hope you do too.

I'll also try to provide some analysis of the Red Sox as well as the issues facing the media that covers the team world from my perch here in sunny Long Island, in the shadow of the Evil Empire and its less successful, wannabe kid brother.

What am I doing here? Well, I lived on Long Island with my wonderful wife and our cats even as I covered the Sox, which is a whole ‘nother interesting blog post in and of itself. As for the present, I am that rare species: The out-of-work sports journalist. (Or, as the Latins call us: “Homo sportus nonlaborans”) Despite the industry’s inability to return my faithfulness and devotion (warning: sales pitch coming!), I still harbor hopes of trying to get back in and get back up to Boston. With that in mind, please find on the lower right-hand side of the page some links to my Red Sox clips.

Thanks for reading and please stop back every weekday for original content about the book and the BoSox. I look forward to writing this blog and to receiving your feedback at jbeach73@gmail.com. Thanks again.