Hey now, Tim Wakefield's not an All-Star

Will Tim Wakefield bag the All-Star appearance that eluded Mike Timlin? Photo from this site

I’m quite sure Terry Francona wishes the Red Sox had managed to win Game Seven of the ALCS last year, a victory which would have made him the manager of this year’s American League All-Star team. But with every win Tim Wakefield earns, I’m betting you that somewhere deep inside, Francona is glad he’s not the guy who has to decide whether or not Wakefield deserves a spot on the AL roster.

Actually, the two managers are part of a committee that determines the All-Star reserves and pitchers. But when players who aren’t selected despite worthy resumes are looking for someone to blame, they never blame the committee, only the managers. And Major League Baseball pretty much condones this: Check out how those fine folks not-so-subtly pass the buck to the managers in this press release announcing last year’s All-Star teams.

It’s especially uncomfortable when an All-Star manager has to tell qualified players on his own team that they’re not going to the Midsummer Classic, as Francona learned in 2005, when Mike Timlin and Matt Clement were none too pleased to miss out. Clement ended up going as an injury replacement, but Timlin was right: His best chance at an All-Star Game berth came and went with, well, no berth. (But here’s a consolation prize, Mike: An appearance in this weekend’s Hall of Fame Classic)

And if Francona thought Timlin’s case made for an awkward situation, imagine the ordeal that could come out of having to leave Wakefield—the very definition of a sentimental favorite—off the team.

At 42, Wakefield would likely be the oldest first-time All-Star since Satchel Paige, the Negro Leagues veteran who wasn’t allowed to reach the majors until he was 42 and who made the All-Star Game for the first time at 45.

At an age when most pitchers are winding down or retiring, Wakefield has turned into one of the game’s most consistent pitchers: He averaged 12 wins and 187 innings per season while compiling a WHIP of 1.29 from 2003 through 2008.

Wakefield is also on the verge of becoming perhaps the most decorated Sox pitcher ever. He’s made 380 starts for the Sox, two shy of Roger Clemens’ team record. He’s 112 1/3 innings away from toppling Clemens and becoming the club’s all-time leader in that category. And with 173 wins in a Sox uniform, he’s just 20 away from breaking the record shared by Clemens and Cy Young.

That’s not to say Wakefield is better than Clemens or Young, of course. But he has produced one of the most impressive careers in the history of a franchise rich with tradition, and he hasn’t been racking up meaningless wins and innings: He’s been a vital contributor to the Sox’ finest era in almost a century.

Add into the equation Wakefield’s reputation as one of the most selfless players, on and off the field, in the game and how warmly received his inclusion on the team would be by fellow players and the fans alike and what better way is there to reward Wakefield than with a well-deserved trip to the All-Star Game?

Except…he’s not among the most deserving candidates.

Wakefield is certainly having a fine season. With nine wins in 13 starts, he’s tied for second in the AL in wins with Kevin Slowey and more than halfway to setting a career high in wins. He’s thrown 82 innings, one-third of an inning less than Sox leader Josh Beckett. He’s recorded nine quality starts and has lasted at least six innings 10 times in 13 starts.

And Wakefield was the Sox’ best pitcher when the team needed him the most: He posted a 1.86 ERA and threw seven innings three times in four starts in April, during which Beckett, Jon Lester, Brad Penny and Daisuke Matsuzaka combined to post a 7.29 ERA and barely averaged five innings per outing.

But Wakefield’s peripheral statistics indicate his gaudy win total is at least partially a result of good fortune and better run support. He is 7-2 in nine starts since May 1, yet has posted a 5.77 ERA and a 1.66 WHIP while allowing opposing batters to hit .306 against him.

He ranks fourth in the AL in run support (9.66), and he’ll move up two spots after today’s games, when both the Rays’ Jeff Niemann and the Rangers’ Brandon McCarthy will no longer average an inning pitched per team game.

Overall, Wakefield is tied for 23rd in the AL in opponents’ batting average (.256), 28th in ERA (4.39) and 33rd in WHIP (1.41). There are 19 pitchers who rank ahead of Wakefield in all three categories. In addition, Wakefield’s strikeout-to-walk ratio of 1.34 (47 whiffs/35 walks) is fourth-worst among AL qualifiers.

None of this is intended to minimize the season Wakefield is having, or the contributions he continues to make to the Sox. And Wakefield is not the type to raise a ruckus if he’s not selected to the All-Star Team, which Joe Maddon should learn if he and the rest of the committee remove sentiment from the selection process next month.

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.

Fighting Words Q&A: Mike Timlin

Mike Timlin has bagged his last batter. Photo from The Boston Globe.

Mike Timlin visited his old haunts Sunday, when he threw out the first pitch prior to the game against the Orioles at Fenway Park and admitted he was all but officially retired. Such news makes me feel very old. I remember being a 19-year-old hanging out in my friend Dan’s basement, eschewing the usual Saturday night shenanigans in favor of watching Timlin get the last out of the 1992 World Series and realizing he may have been the most unlikely guy to ever earn the Series-clinching save.

Now I’m 35 and my Saturday night shenanigans consist of my wife and I watching TV or going to the bookstore. Oh yeah. We’re hip. We’re happening.

Anyway, well over a decade later, I came to consider Timlin one of the most interesting, candid and accessible people on the Red Sox. I understand the disdain some people have these days for the idea of intangibles and clubhouse leadership, but Timlin—who pitched for four World Series winners—was a valuable mainstay and mentor in a bullpen that underwent a youth infusion under Theo Epstein as well as a player who came to personify the stoic professionalism that defined the 2004 and, particularly, the 2007 champions.

He had the best and busiest seasons of his career with the Sox, for whom he pitched six seasons. And he threw most of those pitches with a chip on his shoulder, always feeling as if middle relievers such as himself were overlooked and underappreciated.

After Alan Embree was released in 2005, Timlin said he thought middle relievers were viewed as the “ugly stepsister” of baseball players. “We realize that middle relief is kind of the bastard child of the major leagues,” Timlin said. “Most teams feel that’s where they need to save money. It’s kind of like an ugly stepsister—a lot of families have them, but you don’t really want to talk about it.”

The morning of the 2006 regular season finale, I saw Timlin putting baseballs in a sock. I asked him why he was doing this and he said, in his familiar no-nonsense drawl, that the baseballs were from the saves he’d earned that season and that he was saving them in case the Sox got rid of him and he never got another save.

Timlin was similarly wary and distrustful of the media, and I presume he would have been perfectly content to never utter a word to any of us. But he felt it was part of his job to speak to the press and had a perfectly professional relationship with reporters, many of whom sought out Timlin when seeking the pulse of the team.

Of course, a first encounter with Timlin could be abrupt, as I learned when I approached him for this interview before a home game against the Yankees in late September 2004. This meanders a bit, because I was trying to get replies beyond the one- or two-sentence variety. It took a little while, but I think his reply about the assumptions made on both sides of the player-reporter relationship not only summed up how a lot of people feel about the media but was also one of the most interesting things anyone said to me during the interview process. Enjoy.


Do you guys find you receive more attention when you play the Yankees?

Yeah, it gets a little ridiculous. I just think some of the New York reporters want to get out of the city of New York, so they come stand in our locker room and mess our stuff up.

Did you grow tired at all of the questions about a possible feud between you and Derek Jeter after he bunted with the Yankees up 7-1 [in the sixth inning of a game Sept. 19, 2004]?

Not tired. It’s just the media makes a really big thing out of [nothing]. It doesn’t matter what happens between our teams. I could have a really good friend on that team and say something during the game and the guys in the media are gonna make it sound like or play it into something that it’s absolutely not.

Does it bother you when people proclaim the Red Sox are out of the race?

It doesn’t bother me. A lot of things you guys say don’t bother me. But if you say something that’s completely out of the realm and you don’t really know what you’re talking about, why say it? We don’t say things about you guys and make stuff up or just take part of a fact and play it as far as we can. Because you guys can walk up and challenge us.

How different is the media here than in Philadelphia?

It’s not different than Philly. It’s the same thing in Philly. Philly is just as bad as here.

What’s it like watching the locker room on a day like today?

Best part about my locker right now is that I have these [temporary] lockers here to block the view of you guys standing there watching TV.

What was your perception of what happened between you and Howard Bryant in 2003, when he wrote a column about the bumper sticker hanging in your locker that said the peace sign was a symbol of the American chicken? (Note: I couldn’t find a link to Bryant’s original story, but the gist of what transpired is in the above link, which is an opinion piece from a publication with a political bent. Such a link is not intended to convey the thoughts or opinion of management at Fighting Words The Blog, which has no interest in talking politics on either side of the aisle)

It kind of goes along with my [earlier] answer: It was taken, part of the facts, by a guy [who] ran with it not knowing the complete facts and not knowing completely who I am. And he based a lot of his article on my assumptions of me and how I view the world. We talked about it and worked it out. No big deal.

Everybody does it, it’s not just media. We all make assumptions. That’s why they have that little saying that goes with assume.

Did you ever have to attend any sort of media training seminar?

Major League Baseball has a small class, they bring two or three of the players—or probably up to five—that they considered the [top] rookies coming in that would probably be in the big leagues in the next year or two and they have a rookie training seminar to deal with the media, deal with the pressures of the game, off-field stuff, on-field stuff. Took care of it all.

What was your conception of the media before that?

I had a conception of the media that they dealt in facts, they dealt in truths and they dealt with a non-biased mind. And now I know completely differently.

What changed your mind?

I can’t—I’m not going to paint any such person. I’m just saying, unfortunately, there’s a line drawn between the media and the athletes and that a lot of assumptions [are] made on our side. There’s a lot of assumptions made on their side. Our assumptions don’t get printed. Our assumptions don’t get television coverage. Your assumptions, as in the media, are printed. They’re put on TV and people see it. If you have a problem and you’re wrong, say, in print, where are you gonna write a retraction? You’re gonna write a retraction on the last page of whatever magazine or newspaper you have, or you’re gonna walk up and apologize personally. The apology is relatively accepted, most of the time, because you’re talking about me so I’ll throw myself in there. If you said something about me, I’ll accept your apology and that’s great.

But for the 40,000 people that read the article are not going to see you apologize to me, nor would you write a complete article on why you should apologize or who you apologized to. You won’t do that. There is not a media guy out there that will do it, unless the television person—your editor or your producer says you’ve gotta go on the air and do exactly as in the case of Dan Rather. He had to go publicly apologize. No one wants to do that. That’s the problem that we have with a lot of you guys. If you make a mistake, you will walk up and apologize to us. You will not walk up and say ‘Look, I wrote this article and this is what I’m going to print in the paper and it’s going to be in the same spot where my normal article’s going to be, because that’s where everybody reads it.’ It’s going to be in this itty bitty box way in the back and no one’s going to see it.

I sound disgusted and I sound fed up. I’m not. Just, you know, it’s a fact of life.

Are you surprised to hear that so many stars in Boston have had problems with the media over multiple generations?

It’s not just Boston. You can’t just put it on Boston. It’s not just Boston. It’s everywhere. And that’s why a lot of people don’t talk. One of the best guys I’ve met in the game, Eddie Murray—I mean, a tremendous human, one of the best players I’ve ever seen, best human beings I’ve ever seen, quality in and out—wouldn’t talk to you guys. Why? You get fed up with it.

So why haven’t you said the heck with it and stopped speaking to the press?

Most of the guys, we’re dealing with facts. Most of the answers that I have to give—why’d you throw that pitch?—and you get sick of saying why, why, why. The reason is, most of the time, I’m trying to get the guy out. I may make a mistake. It’s just part of my job, the speaking part.

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.