Said I wasn’t going to talk about the six-man rotation anymore, but I lied

Will Daisuke Matsuzaka revolutionize American baseball--by becoming the sixth member of the first six-man rotation? Photo from this site.

Turned out that Tuesday was indeed the day the Red Sox revealed their plans for John Smoltz. As expected, Smoltz will make another start for Triple-A Pawtucket tonight before entering the Sox’ rotation next Thursday against the Nationals.

Somewhat surprisingly, Terry Francona said the Sox could employ a six-man rotation for the time being. Not surprising was the careful way in which Francona delivered the message.

“It might be [a six-man rotation] for a time or two through,” Francona told reporters Tuesday. “It certainly could happen. I don’t know that we need to make our rotation out a week or two ahead of time.”

That’s Francona’s well-practiced way of saying you can ask all you want but he ain’t saying squat. But addressing the six-man rotation without actually committing to it is a typically savvy move by Francona and, by extension, Theo Epstein, as well as another example of the increased cautiousness with which Francona and Epstein have operated over the past few years (you can read all about that in the final two chapters of Fighting Words, aha, another plug for the book!).

Francona and Epstein learned long ago it doesn’t make sense to make any declarations in Boston, because to officially change one’s mind is to invite days and days of stories examining why the Sox changed their mind.

In fact, the most pivotal move of the Epstein/Francona era occurred without an official announcement. It was abundantly obvious that Jonathan Papelbon was the Sox’ new closer when he trotted out of the bullpen and preserved a one-run victory by retiring the Rangers in order on just 11 pitches in the Sox’ first save opportunity of the 2006 season. But Francona continued to insist during the subsequent series in Baltimore that the Sox wanted to find a way to return Keith Foulke to his old role.

“The aim is to get Foulke back as the guy where, every time you get to the ninth, you hand him the ball,” Francona said. “I really do want that to be where we end up. This isn’t the passing of the torch. I really would be happy if we can get to that.

“There might be times when the starter goes five, ‘Pap’ can pitch two innings and sort of force my hand to use Foulke in the save, which is good. I want to make sure that when we give him that responsibility, that he’s ready to tackle it, and we’re not hoping that it works or we need a lineout.”

Of course, none of that ever happened and Foulke had already passed the torch to Papelbon, who pitched at least two innings seven times that season but never appeared prior to the eighth inning. Foulke didn’t pitch the ninth inning in a save situation at all in 2006—in fact, he entered in the ninth inning just 10 times in 44 outings and did so with the Sox tied or trailing by three runs or less only three times—and didn’t record his next big league save until 2008, when he pitched for the Athletics following a one-year retirement.

Nor have Francona and Epstein said anything concrete about Nick Green overtaking Julio Lugo at shortstop. Then again, is there a need to confirm the obvious? Green has started 11 of the Sox’ last 15 games and the Sox are 27-9 when he starts at shortstop, as opposed to 10-13 with Lugo. And notice the familiar verbiage used by Francona when he was asked recently how he’s going to juggle Green and Lugo once nominal starter Jed Lowrie returns.

The intentional ambiguity of Tuesday, meanwhile, provides the Sox plenty of flexibility—to either scrap the six-man rotation before it ever actually begins, implement it indefinitely or just stick with it as the temporary solution envisioned by Francona.

“But that wouldn’t be the worst thing for a short period of time,” Francona said. “Again, not for a long period, because guys don’t pitch enough. With days off, the All-Star Break, you have too many good pitchers that won’t pitch enough. But for a short period of time, we could live with that, yeah.”

We’ll have an idea of what’s going to happen by Saturday morning. If Daisuke Matsuzaka pitches poorly again Friday against the Braves—and let’s be bluntly honest, that’s about as likely as a sellout that night at Fenway—then maybe Matsuzaka is either sidelined with a case of Oliver Perez-itis (apparently, it’s catching among Scott Boras clients) or sent to the minors and the six-man rotation never gets off the ground. It’s well worth noting that Smoltz’ first turn in the rotation will come on the day Matsuzaka would typically pitch.

But if Matsuzaka pitches well—or if the Sox can’t convince him to go on the DL, to the bullpen or to Pawtucket—then the six-man rotation is a reality, at least for a little while. And “a time or two through” takes the Sox to the week leading up to the All-Star Break, and if the Sox are doing well with it, why wouldn’t they maintain the unusual alignment until the Break or even beyond?

In addition, as noted below, the Sox’ rotation lines up prior to the All-Star Break in such a fashion that the club can plan for extra rest for the two starters most likely to be selected to the game—Jon Lester and Tim Wakefield—while also ensuring no. 1 starter Josh Beckett starts the first game after the Break with seven days of rest, a reasonable figure given the Sox’ All-Star Break actually lasts four days:

June 16: Wakefield
June 17: Penny
June 18: Lester
June 19: Matsuzaka
June 20: Beckett
June 21: Wakefield
June 22: OFF DAY
June 23: Penny
June 24: Lester
June 25: Smoltz
June 26: Beckett
June 27: Matsuzaka
June 28: Wakefield
June 29: Penny
June 30: Lester

July 1: Smoltz
July 2: OFF DAY
July 3: Beckett
July 4: Matsuzaka
July 5: Wakefield
July 6: Penny
July 7: Lester
July 8: Smoltz
July 9: Beckett
July 10: Matsuzaka
July 11: Wakefield
July 12: Penny

It gets a little more complicated after the Break, since the Sox play six games before their next off-day. To maintain the six-man rotation as constructed prior to the Break would mean Beckett would make his second start of the second half on six days rest. Unless, of course, the Sox keep Beckett on his regular turn at the expense of Matsuzaka:

July 17: Beckett
July 18: Smoltz
July 19: Lester
July 20: Penny
July 21: Wakefield
July 22: Beckett

I won’t bore you by projecting the rest of the season for the second straight day. But don’t be surprised if we’re in projection mode in late July because the six-man rotation is still working, even if nobody ever actually confirms the Sox are sticking with it.

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.

America follows the lead of its athletes, stops reading the paper

Some of us preferred the newspaper to See Spot Run. Photo from this site, and surprisingly not from my parents' house.

Bad week for the newspaper business. Of course, when was the last time the industry had a good week? 1972?

Anyway, on consecutive days this week Keith Foulke and Joba Chamberlain declared they do not read the newspaper. This of course brings to mind what Curt Schilling said in September 2004, when I asked him about players who say they don’t read the paper during an interview for Fighting Words (shameless plug).

“Well, most of them are lying,” Schilling said. “That’s one thing I’ve learned: The guys who yell and scream about someone reading the newspaper or checking the stats—they’re the first ones in the morning. Don’t read the paper? They read it.”

That said, having covered the blissfully defiant Foulke, I have little reason to doubt he’s telling the truth. I haven’t covered Chamberlain, but since he’s only 23 years old, I have little reason to doubt he’s telling the truth, either.

Why would Chamberlain ever have to read the newspaper? Typing this sentence makes me feel quite old, but Chamberlain probably doesn’t remember a time when he couldn’t fire up the computer and have the entire world at his finger tips. Back in my day we handwrote letters to friends across the country whom we’d never met and had to write research papers by going to the library and thumbing through the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. And we liked it!

Unfortunately, but not without considerable justification, the rest of us old fogeys are following in the footsteps of the hippity hoppity young’uns like Chamberlain. We’re a product of our times, too, and we want all the information we can possibly absorb and we want it now. Most of us have become accustomed to having the news of the day delivered right to our Palm.

Full disclosure on the latter point: I’m not one of those folks—yet—because I spend enough time tethered to the computer. Allowing me to feed my latent case of ADD by surfing the Net from a hand-held device and looking for whatever strikes my fancy at the moment would really destroy my already tepid productivity.

Most of all, though, we’re not stupid, and we recognize that the people running newspapers into the ground are treating us as if we are in fact idiots. They’re gutting the staff and the news hole, eliminating the coverage we most want to read and then charging us more to read a whole lot less. A few weeks ago, I was in Connecticut and I finished The Hartford Courant sports section before I finished my bagel. Sad.

The powers that be have also gotten us accustomed to getting the product for free online, and it’s awfully hard to put that particular genie back in the bottle.

The demise of the newspaper as we know it is too bad, because devouring the sports section from the time I could read is what inspired me to become a sportswriter. And it’s disappointing that today’s 20-somethigns probably have no idea what they missed.

I remember being in college in 1996 and trying to avoid reading the box scores on espnet.sportszone.com (and you had to type the whole damn thing in too) on the one computer that had Internet access in the newspaper office because I didn’t want to ruin the ritualistic and daily joy of reading the box scores in the Newsday that was delivered to my dorm room. Now, I’m actually thinking about going to campus the first day of the fall semester to see if Newsday even bothers selling subscriptions to students anymore.

As for Foulke and Chamberlain, they weren’t making some grand societal statement. For ballplayers, “I don’t read the papers” is an automated response—a self-defense mechanism for whenever criticism or bad press comes up, or perhaps something they are instructed to say during media training sessions.

The medium might be dying but the message is timeless: We don’t pay any attention to what the media writes or says. Maybe it’s time to tweak the phrasing though. Then again, “I only use the Internet to check my email and my Facebook” or “I don’t subscribe to the Twitter feed of my team's beat writer” doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily.

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.

Foulke vs. Clark: The most gripping at-bat ever?

The Sox had another game to win, but the Yankees empire was toppled when Keith Foulke whiffed Tony Clark to end Game Six of the 2004 ALCS. Photo from this site.

As noted Wednesday, Keith Foulke will forever be known as the guy who recorded the most anticipated out in Red Sox history when he induced Edgar Renteria to ground back to the mound at 10:40 p.m. CST on Oct. 27, 2004. Foulke fielded the ball, jogged a couple steps towards first base and tossed it to Doug “Mine Mine Mine oh boy this is all mine!” Mientkiewicz to set off a celebration 86 years in the making.

But that’s not Foulke’s most memorable out, at least as far as I’m concerned. I figure he got the most pressure-packed out in the history of baseball to end Game Six of the ALCS.

East coast hyperbole? Maybe. But I can’t imagine there’s ever been more on the line in a single at-bat.

The Sox had an avalanche of momentum as Foulke came on in the ninth inning to try and preserve a 4-2 lead. They were, of course, three outs away from becoming the first baseball team to force a Game Seven after falling behind three games to none and on the verge of an unimaginably unique opportunity to end eight decades of torture at the hands of the Yankees.

The Yankees were trying desperately to hang on to their aura of invincibility and already quite possibly aware there was no way they were going to win a Game Seven (in The Yankee Years, Mike Mussina says the Yankees knew the afternoon of Game Seven they were toast because they had no faith in starter Kevin Brown).

But Foulke, running on fumes after throwing 72 pitches the previous two days and getting no favors from the small strike zone of home plate umpire Joe West, issued a leadoff walk to Hideki Matsui and a two-out walk to Ruben Sierra to bring up Tony Clark.

And it felt, as Clark ran the count full, that the rivalry would forever be defined by the result of this at-bat. Either Foulke would retire Clark and allow the Sox to send the Yankees’ empire toppling towards ruin…or Clark would homer to win the pennant, rob the Sox once again of blissful redemption and hand them a defeat inconceivable even by Boston standards.

I know the concept of a Curse makes Sox fans wretch, but had Clark homered, I imagine even the most rational Royal Rooter would have wondered if the Sox really were hexed. Aaron Boone was bad, but losing the pennant on a walk-off blast for the second straight year—this one off the bat of Clark, who hit .207 with three homers in 275 at-bats in 2002 for a Sox team that missed the playoffs by five games—would have been a devastating Job-like blow. How much suffering can one team and its fan base endure?

Somewhere inside Yankee Stadium, Theo Epstein was wondering the exact same thing. “I’m thinking ‘the guy basically ruined our 2002 season,’ now he’s going to ruin our 2004 season,” Epstein told WEEI in January 2005 (click on the link for more candid comments by Epstein). “After Aaron Boone the year before, I think that would have made me jump. But yeah, you figure you gotta throw him a fastball, he doesn’t have a good change-up, the strike zone’s really small. Clark, if he runs into one, is going to hit one out to end the season, and that would have been the worst possible way.”

Of course, it didn’t happen that way. Foulke, with his 100th pitch in a span of about 48 hours, struck Clark out swinging, and with Brown going for the Yankees in Game Seven, the Sox could have begun preparing for the Cardinals right then and there.

“That was probably the at-bat that I was the most nervous for during the year,” Epstein told WEEI. “And I still kinda cringe when I think about it, because I could just see him running into one and ending our season.”

Foulke doesn’t cringe when recollecting the at-bat, nor, in keeping with his uncomplicated approach to baseball, does he really recollect it at all.

“Nah, not really,” he said Monday when I asked him if he thinks about the pressure of the confrontation with Clark. “When you’re there and you’re working in it and it’s your job—fans see it a lot different [than] me. It was just exactly where I wanted to be, you know?”

And all he did was finally send the Sox exactly where they wanted to go.

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.

Oh Lord, please don’t let Keith Foulke be misunderstood

The celebration won't be quite this wild if Keith Foulke wins a title in the Atlantic League.

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y.—This doesn’t make any sense.

What is Keith Foulke, whose gutsy pitching in October 2004 made him perhaps the most valuable player of the Red Sox’ epic world championship run and who recorded an out 86 years in the making, doing pitching in an independent league?

What is a guy who famously said his favorite part of closing was the first and 15th of each month and declared he’d talk more to the print media if he was rewarded with a truck—like he received for his weekly appearances on WEEI—doing in the Atlantic League, where he’ll have to pitch more than three months to make as much as he made per pitch for the Red Sox in 2006?

What is a guy who said he looked forward to retiring when his Sox contract expired in 2007 and created controversy by saying it was uncomfortable to fly cross country aboard the Sox’ charter plane doing in a league in which teams travel by bus and stay in hotels that are nice, but not big league caliber? And for goodness sake, what is a guy who ticked off anyone who has ever walked into a Burger King doing in a league that prides itself on running a fan-friendly and accessible operation?

“It’s not like I turned down other jobs,” Foulke said in his typically frank fashion Monday, an hour before his new team, the Newark Bears, played the Long Island Ducks in an Atlantic League game. “I just didn’t have any other opportunities.

“I still want to be back in the big leagues, so this is a stepping stone to get me back to where I want to be.”

That Foulke—who emerged from a one-year retirement to go 0-3 with a 4.06 ERA with the Athletics last season despite missing three months due to neck and shoulder injuries—is going to such lengths to return to the majors at age 36 might come as a surprise to those who remember him as the guy who hated baseball (enter the words “Keith Foulke hates” in Yahoo and the search assist function adds the word “baseball”). That’s one of many misconceptions Foulke admits he generated during three eventful and outspoken years with the Sox.

“I’m definitely not a media darling,” Foulke said. “I say what I feel and what I think. I don’t speak to please everybody. I speak my mind and I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not going to try to trick you. There’s probably a lot of people that don’t understand [him].”

It doesn’t bother Foulke that he’s probably remembered less than fondly in Boston, where he had perhaps the shortest honeymoon period of any member of the ’04 champions despite his yeoman work that season: After recording 32 saves, a 2.17 ERA and a 0.94 WHIP in helping the Sox win the wild card, he allowed just one run and struck out 19 in 14 innings while appearing in 11 of the Sox’ 14 playoff games. He threw 100 pitches during Games Four, Five and Six of the ALCS as the Sox mounted the most shocking comeback in baseball history before he recorded the final out in all four World Series games.

But Foulke’s knees were hurting before he even showed up to Ft. Myers the following spring—“I still say the biggest mistake I made was trying to fight through it in ’05, should have just taken the year off and gotten healthy”—and he gave up a game-winning homer to Derek Jeter in his first appearance of the regular season. He bottomed out June 28, when he blew a save opportunity against the Indians by allowing five runs in 1 1/3 innings.

Afterward, Foulke made the infamous “Johnny from Burger King” comment in which he said he was far more concerned with what his teammates thought of him than the fans. Foulke said he uttered the words out of defiance and self-confidence, not a disregard for the working man.

“I said I wasn’t going to invite Johnny from Burger King to my World Series party,” Foulke said. “It had nothing to do with the people going out and having to get jobs. The point of the whole statement was I thought we were still going to be good enough to win the World Series. I thought I was still going to be able to be there to help. That’s what it was.”

Declaring he wouldn’t be quick to welcome those who criticized him was just one of the many times Foulke voiced what his teammates were thinking, albeit in his own uniquely acerbic way. Kevin Millar had many of the same thoughts about the doubters in 2005.

Nor, in 2004, was Foulke the only Sox player to believe the team could have found a more efficient way to fly a bunch of 30-something players around the country (note: Foulke’s comments are in the May 17 entry). “I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true,” Foulke said. “I just said it’s hard to go coast to coast sleeping in coach, laid across three seats. It’s one of those deals where I wasn’t trying to get anybody in trouble. Somebody asked me about it, I told the truth.”

And he played with Curt Schilling and David Wells, among others, so Foulke certainly wasn’t the only player to find he liked talking a whole lot more when his pockets were lined.

There are no paid radio appearances in the Atlantic League, and the few reporters that make their way to Newark and the league’s other outposts are far more interested in asking him about 2004 than why he’s pitching for the Bears.

“I answer a lot more questions about [2004] than I think about it,” Foulke said. “But to me, ’04 is ’04. If I retired after that year, yeah, [shoot], things would be peachy. But I still want to go out and play for another couple years.”

Foulke is not in the Atlantic League to pen the easy feel-good story about the one-time All-Star who yearns to play one more summer for the love of the game and to travel the nooks and crannies of small-town America. Foulke says he is motivated to return to the majors “…everyday I walk into a bad hotel. My wife just says ‘Hey, it’s another reminder.’”

Yet pitching at perhaps the purest level of professional baseball is also another reminder that Foulke enjoys baseball a whole lot more than his reputation suggests. The most obvious hint was buried in the agate copy of the transactions in February 2007, when Foulke—whose knee woes in 2005 ruined his mechanics and eventually led to an elbow injury—announced his retirement the day before he was to report to the Indians, who signed him to a $5 million deal to be their closer. He liked payday in the big leagues, but not enough to keep pitching hurt.

“My elbow was killing me,” Foulke said. “After spending the two previous years on the DL, I didn’t want to do it. It wasn’t good for me. The Indians, I’m sure, [were] a little chapped at me. But I’d have been miserable. And dealing with the injuries and the DL in Boston, I was already miserable enough. That’s no way to live life. It was an honorable thing to do and as soon as I made that decision, I felt 100 times better.”

Foulke spent 2007 recovering from elbow surgery and traveling the country with his family. He is still trying to regain his mechanics at Newark and his fastball-changeup combination isn’t as dominant as it once was (he’s still 1-0 with an 0.75 ERA and seven saves in 11 games). But he said he had fun again coming to the ballpark with the Athletics last season and is enjoying his time with the Bears, where his teammates include Carl Everett, another famously controversial ex-Sox player.

With a laugh, Foulke said he’s “…probably not nearly as worried as my wife” that he’ll never get another shot at the big leagues. So for now he’ll keep riding the buses up and down the east coast and participating in the type of grip-and-grins that he’d never have to endure in Boston or anywhere else—he’s signing autographs before each of the Bears’ games this weekend.

And, perhaps, along the way, he’ll be able to convince people that it actually does make plenty of sense for him to continue playing even though the pay is as low ($3,000 a month) as the odds of resuming his big league career are long.

“The part I don’t like about baseball, I guess you could call it the business side of it—I’m at the ballpark 3:30, 3:45 everyday, but yet I don’t work until 9:30, 9:45,” Foulke said. “That’s a lot of time to kill. I don’t like that part of it. But that’s a part of your job.

“But I love pitching. I love to pitch. That’s all there is to it. That’s why I’m still standing here.”

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.