Are Sox prepared enough to deal with Wakefield what ifs?

What do the Sox do if Buchholz shines in Wakefield's absence?

Tim Wakefield went on the disabled list Tuesday afternoon in what was either the last in a series of remarkable coincidences or the final step in a meticulously plotted chain of events designed to provide the nearly 43-year-old some rest while allowing the Sox to maximize the depth of their starting pitching.

I’m going to assume it’s the latter, because even Quentin Tarantino would have trouble penning a script with this many random twists of fate. Think about all that transpired leading up to yesterday’s news:

—Wakefield made his final start prior to the All-Star Game July 8.

—Terry Francona announced on July 12, two days before the All-Star Game, that Wakefield would not pitch again until July 22, providing him 13 days of rest between starts.

—Francona also announced July 12 that the Sox—who were off on July 16, the first day of the second half, before playing six straight games—would employ a six-man rotation for that cycle of games and that Clay Buchholz would make the Sox’ first start of the second half against the Blue Jays on his regular four days rest.

—Joe Maddon said the day of the All-Star Game that he would utilize Wakefield as an emergency pitcher, one he would not call upon unless the game went deep into extra innings and he needed someone to throw multiple frames.

—Wakefield did not pitch in the All-Star Game and hurt his back in a side session in Toronto Saturday, leading the Sox to place him on the shelf and replace him with Buchholz, who starts tonight in Texas on, amazingly enough, his regular four days rest.

—Wakefield is placed on the disabled list retroactive to July 18, meaning the earliest he can return is Aug. 2—two days after the trade deadline.

If this really was all part of a grand plan, it’s further confirmation of how careful and thorough the Sox are in all matters, baseball and otherwise. If the Sox have been planning for Buchholz to take Wakefield’s spot in the rotation for the rest of July, then they’ve exhibited even more foresight than we gave them credit for last week.

It doesn’t help the Sox, from a competitive standpoint, to officially announce they plan to give Wakefield—who has been injured in each of the last four seasons—a few weeks off, even if they have in the past alluded to such plans for their pitchers. The longer a guy like Buchholz toils away at Pawtucket, the better the Sox’ depth looks to potential trading partners as the July 31 deadline approaches. And yet by bringing him up now, the Sox can see their 4-5-6 starters—John Smoltz, Brad Penny and Buchholz—pitch twice more apiece as they try to figure out what to do with the glut of starters come August.

That said, it’s also quite fair to be skeptical about the severity and location of Wakefield’s injury. During the AL Division Series two years ago, Francona admitted the Sox fudged the details of Wakefield’s “back” injury, which was first revealed to be a shoulder injury and then later a small tear of the right rotator cuff.

It’s also worth wondering if Wakefield, who authored the feel-good story of the first half, is headed for a far less satisfying second half even if he does return within a couple weeks. The last time Buchholz made a start for an ailing Wakefield, he threw a no-hitter. That probably won’t happen again tonight, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens if Buchholz strings together a couple good starts in Wakefield’s absence and the club still has five other starters when Wakefield returns.

The Sox can only reward Buchholz with trips back to Pawtucket so many times before they run the risk of damaging relations with their potential future ace. Smoltz is a future Hall of Famer whom the Sox signed with his October brilliance in mind, so he’s not likely to be dumped. If it comes down to Wakefield vs. Penny, Wakefield probably wins based on recent performance as well as organizational stature.

But still: As nice a tale as Wakefield spun the first three-plus months of the season, the fact is he was a league average pitcher outside of his inflamed win total. What if he’s clearly the Sox’ sixth-best starter when he returns? As studious as the Sox are about everything, I can’t imagine there’s any preparing for a scenario that awkward.

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.

Girardi's getting grumpy

Yup that pretty much sums it up.

Poor Joe Girardi. He’s channeling Michael Douglas in Falling Down faster than any of us could have anticipated. In the fourth inning of the Sox’ 6-4 win last night (last night being a relative term, since the game didn’t end until after 1 a.m., hooray for baseball teams not sticking it to their fans!), Girardi started hollering at Red Sox first base coach Tim Bogar. Of course, both men went into Las Vegas mode after the game when asked what happened, though The Journal News reports Girardi thought Bogar was stealing signs.

The fun was just starting for Girardi, who was tossed an inning later when he stepped in between Derek Jeter and home plate umpire Jerry Meals, the latter of whom took quite literally the unofficial rule that a manager cannot argue balls and strikes and tossed Girardi as soon as he opened his mouth.

(Along those lines, what’s Jeter got to do to get tossed from a game? Has that guy ever met a called strike he liked? He’s like a slicker Paul O’Neill)

I was going to say you’ve got to like Girardi’s chances of making it two ejections in a row tonight, since Joba Chamberlain starts twitching when he goes more than one game against the Red Sox without trying to kill Kevin Youkilis. But Youkilis is sitting due to a sore left side so Chamberlain may have to wait until another month to get his head-hunting fix.

Of course, who can blame Girardi if he’s losing his mind? His week began with him jumping to the defense of Alex Rodriguez, and that’d be enough for anyone to slip into madness.

Along those lines, if I’m Terry Francona, Theo Epstein, John Henry or any member of the Red Sox’ PR staff today, I’m sitting down and penning a nice thank you note to Gene Orza. Because if Ozra hadn’t declared the proposed restructuring of Rodriguez’ contract unacceptable in late 2003, Rodriguez would be a member of the Red Sox right now and it’d be Francona, Epstein, Henry and the PR staff cringing as A-Rod: The Many Lives Of Alex Rodriguez, the Rodriguez biography penned by Sports Illustrated’s Selena Roberts, is released.

Technically, we can’t assume that Rodriguez’ life would have unspooled in such tawdry fashion if he’d been traded to Boston instead. But we can have a pretty good idea that he’d be a wreck right now regardless of where he is and that there’d be plenty of interest in his salacious biography.

Fortunately for the Sox, the restructuring was a hurdle impossible to overcome and the Yankees swooped in and traded for Rodriguez in February 2004. And so today it’s Girardi, Brian Cashman, the Steinbrenner family and the Yankees’ PR people dealing with A-Rod’s latest soap opera while the Sox are just, you know, trying to win their third World Championship since Rodriguez landed in New York.

Girardi didn’t do himself any favors Sunday in his defense of Rodriguez, during which he gave the Roberts book tons of free publicity by criticizing the timing and content of Roberts’ books and others of its ilk. This of course brings to mind the Seth Meyers/Amy Poehler Weekend Update bit “Really?”

You really thought mentioning the book wouldn’t generate more interest in it? Really? You don’t understand why a book like this would be written? Really? You don’t want Rodriguez to be a target? Really? You thought mentioning Rodriguez wants to be a father too wouldn’t remind everyone the guy is gallivanting around with Madonna and strippers? Really?

My favorite part was the militaristic Girardi mentioning he’s done things he’s not proud of and that he’s made mistakes. It reminded me of a square parent trying to curry favor with his or her rebellious child by saying he got into trouble as a kid too. Why do I picture Joe wracked with guilt over the time he had two scoops of ice cream even though he didn’t eat his vegetables?

In Girardi’s defense, he was asked multiple times about Major League Baseball’s possible investigation of Rodriguez and said the Yankees were “moving on” three times before he finally spoke at length about the topics. And he’s just doing his job by trying to protect his player, though given that Rodriguez’ popularity in the Yankees locker room is somewhere between tepid and non-existent, I’ll bet getting the hook Monday did more to inspire his team than Girardi’s actions Sunday.

But still, the Yankees would be better off if Girardi had swallowed his words Sunday. Not as well off as the Yankees would have been if Cashman had hung up on the Rangers five years ago, of course (which brings to mind the whole debate about how can the Yankees be better off without a Hall of Famer in the heart of the lineup, but that’s a topic for another time).

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.

Dog bites man

Nomar Garciaparra's iconic status in Boston, not to mention his Hall of Fame candidacy, has long been tossed aside. Photo from The Boston Globe.

The news you knew you’d read at some point in 2009 finally arrived last night, when the Athletics announced they were going to place Nomar Garciaparra on the disabled list, this time with a strained right calf.

Gordon Edes wrote an entertaining piece for Yahoo! Sports last week pondering how history would be different if the Sox completed that trade for Alex Rodriguez following the 2003 season. Nobody ever wonders what might have happened if the Sox held on to Garciaparra, which is just one way to measure how far and how fast he’s fallen.

There’s something rather sad about watching Garciaparra end his career as a utilityman who is limited to a handful of games per week even under the most optimal of circumstances—kind of like watching a band that topped the charts multiple times playing new stuff nobody wants to hear at the country fair. You figured they were headed for Cleveland and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but here they are, no longer hitting the high notes as they perform in between the pie-eating contest and the cow-milking contest.

Garciaparra was a franchise icon from the moment he stepped on to the field in 1996 and seemingly on the fast track to Cooperstown by the end of the ‘90s. His numbers from 1997 through 2003, during which he played at least 130 games six times (and was limited to 21 games in 2001), are across-the-board better than the ones produced by Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. during his first six full seasons from 1982-87:

Ripken 1982-87: 160 HR, 570 RBI, .284, 625 R, .350 OBP, .479 SLG
Nomar: 1997-03: 169 HR, 653 RBI, .325, 674 R, .372 OBP, .557 SLG

Of course, that’s where the favorable comparisons end. Ripken played in 2,632 straight games from 1982 through 1998 and never left Baltimore. Garciaparra, hampered by a genetic condition that leaves him particularly susceptible to leg injuries, has played for three teams since leaving Boston and has yet to reach the 130-game mark.

The biggest Red Sox superstar in decades is already an afterthought in Boston. Am I the only one who has to remind himself that Garciaparra was a member of the 2004 team? And it’s hard to imagine Garciaparra ever emerging from out-of-sight status. He’s not going to hop aboard the Fred Lynn/Carlton Fisk nostalgia tour, showing up multiple times per season at Fenway to wave to the crowd from a luxury suite as his career highlights air on the scoreboard and make thousands of men in the stands feel two decades younger.

Perhaps nobody wonders “what if” about Garciaparra because the awkward and hostile negotiations between Garciaparra and the Sox in 2003—"You turned down a four-year, $60 million offer through 2008! No I didn’t! Yes you did! No I didn’t! Yes you did and anything you say bounces off me and goes back to you!"—makes it abundantly clear neither side really wanted the marriage to continue.

To re-sign an unhappy player who was already injury-prone and showing signs of slowing down—Garciaparra hit .305 with a .349 OBP and a .526 slugging percentage in 2002-03 before he missed more than two months at the start of the 2004 season with that ever-mysterious Achilles ailment—would have required a level of constant maintenance that probably would not have appealed to the Sox.

It’s pretty darn impossible to argue the decision to move on from Garciaparra was anything less than a stroke of brilliance. The Sox have won two championships without Garciaparra, who has missed 309 of a possible 723 games since the trade. His injury-prone nature has forced him to spend most of his time since 2005 at the infield corners, where he is not nearly the plus offensive weapon he was at shortstop for the Sox. Had he stayed in Boston and been forced to first or third base, perhaps Kevin Youkilis and/or Mike Lowell—two players who have come to symbolize the grind-it-out nature of these Sox—never emerge.

But just because they’ve won it all twice without Garciaparra doesn’t mean the Sox have replaced him. Shortstop has been the weak link in the lineup for most of the past four-plus seasons, during which the Sox have employed four full-time shortstops, none of whom have been markedly better than a weakened Garciaparra. Here are the numbers for Sox shortstops and Garciaparra since Aug. 1, 2004:

Red Sox shortstops: .258 (711-2759), 35 HR, 311 RBI, 356 R
Garciaparra: .287 (430-1496), 49 HR, 237 RBI, 206 R

To assume the Sox could have figured out a way to keep Garciaparra upright, at shortstop and even moderately content half the time since August 2005 is to assume a lot. But still: could the Sox have been even better over the last four-plus years if Garciaparra was their quasi-regular shortstop?

Maybe it all would have worked out. But with the Sox in the throes of a golden era and Garciaparra playing the country fair circuit, we’ll never know.

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.