The Bard, Bard, Bard, Bard is the word

Rhode Island's own Peter Griffin has been calling for the Red Sox to recall Daniel Bard for weeks.

Unlike Hunter Jones and Michael Bowden, who had one big league appearance apiece under their belts when they were entrusted with a lead against the Yankees during a national TV game Apr. 26, there was no dramatic emergence on the big stage last night for Daniel Bard. But that didn’t diminish the pride felt by an organization that patiently oversaw Bard’s transformation from a potential draft bust who couldn’t find the strike zone as a starter to an almost incomprehensibly dominant late-inning reliever who could someday replace Jonathan Papelbon as the Red Sox’ closer.

“It’s exciting, obviously, and I’m really happy for Daniel with everything he went through that first year back in ’07 just to see how he responded to that situation,” Red Sox director of amateur scouting Jason McLeod said Sunday night. “And really, from that time and the time leading up to that winter, [he] really stepped into this new role with both his feet. And it really has just been a lot of fun for us to watch, when you see the hard work that he’s put into it get rewarded in terms of performance at the minor league level and then obviously with a call-up today. It makes everyone in the organization very proud.”

Theo Epstein probably had no idea in October 2006 that Bard would one day serve as the poster child for his re-commitment to player development. Bard, a first-round pick by the Sox that June out of North Carolina, signed with the Sox weeks earlier following a summer of negotiating. He made his professional debut the following spring at Single-A Lancaster, where he didn’t exactly provide the Sox an immediate return on their $1.55 million investment.

Bard, pitching in one of the most extreme hitter’s parks in minor league baseball, walked 22 and allowed 21 hits in just 13 1/3 innings over five starts. After a stint on the disabled list, he was demoted to Single-A Greenville, where he improved only slightly pitching at sea level: Bard walked 56, allowed 55 hits and posted a 6.42 ERA in 61 2/3 innings over 17 starts.

After the season, the Sox suggested he go to winter ball in Hawaii and pitch in relief. At the time, the Sox weren’t necessarily committing to him as a reliever: Management just hoped he’d be able to end the year on a positive note.

Bard continued to battle his control in Hawaii, where he had a 1.08 ERA and struck out 15 but also walked 15 in 16 2/3 innings. But McLeod sensed an increased confidence in Bard at the end of the season in Hawaii and believed he might have found a home in the bullpen.

“One thing I know we discussed that off-season was I know a lot of times when we saw Daniel as an amateur really dominate was in short stints, whether it be on the Cape or with Team USA,” McLeod said. “When he came out of the bullpen, you just kind of saw a different demeanor from him. He was much more aggressive in the strike zone and I think it just suits his personality a lot better.”

Nobody expected it to suit him as well as it did last season, when Bard—armed with a modified delivery he’d begun working on in Hawaii—began the season by striking out 43, walking just four and posting a miniscule 0.64 ERA in 28 innings at Greenville. He continued to impress at Double-A Portland, where he struck out 64, walked 26 and posted a 1.99 ERA in 49 2/3 innings while recording seven saves.

Bard performed well during spring training this year and was almost unhittable at Triple-A Pawtucket, where he earned the promotion to Boston by striking out 29, walking just five and posting a 1.13 ERA in 16 innings. He notched six saves and pulled off one of the rarest feats in baseball Apr. 22, when he struck out the side on nine pitches against Rochester.

There’s no guarantee, of course, that Bard’s minor league success will translate—instantly or otherwise—into similar results at the big league level. But if Bard does emerge as a quality reliever for the Sox, it’ll be another organization-wide victory for a franchise that is committed to nurturing its prospects, even through multiple hiccups in the most demanding market in the game.

Manny Delcarmen is one of the Sox’ top set-up men now, but he had a 7.30 ERA in his final 23 appearances of the 2006 season and opened 2007 by posting a 7.24 ERA in his first 10 outings at Pawtucket. Clay Buchholz hasn’t gotten his second extended shot with the Sox yet, but he’s responded to a rough 2008 with the Sox (2-9 with a 6.75 ERA in 16 games, including 15 starts) by going 2-0 with a 1.33 ERA and 26 strikeouts over 27 innings in five starts thus far at Pawtucket.

“What [vice president of player personnel] Ben Cherington and [director of player development[ Mike Hazen are doing on the player development side and the system that they put in place over there, the minor league coaches and the staff that we have over there,” McLeod said. “Getting to go see first-hand how these guys work with our young players, watching these guys in the Rookie Program when they come in and the things that they put them through—not just the physical but the mental. I think when guys come up here, they’re mentally prepared to handle it.

“And also, it’s just the kids and the types of players that we’re drafting, all the way down to our area scouts that are trying to find out what players have the right mental makeup to perform in Boston. I really do believe it’s just an organization-wide accomplishment when these guys come up and do good.”

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.

If George Mitchell was a Dodgers board member, none of this ever would have happened

"You got busted last, so that means you've got to drive us to Cooperstown and pay for our visit to the Hall of Fame." Photo from this site.

So I was away for a couple days. Did I miss anything?

Manny Ramirez is busted, and my first thought is he can forget about the Hall of Fame. And that’s too bad, because I don’t care if he was on the stuff by accident or by design or for 15 days or 15 years. The guy was on the very short list of the best of the best during the most offense-friendly era in the history of the sport.

It’s a bit of a tired cliché, but for me, when it comes to judging who is and isn’t a Hall of Famer, I use the same standard Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart used for judging pornography: I can’t describe it, but I know it when I see it. (Bully for me: That and 50 cents…err, wait a minute, 75 cents…err, wait a minute, 100 cents will get me a newspaper, for now anyway, since I’m not in the BBWAA and don’t have a Hall of Fame vote) But as Terry Francona—no card-carrying member of the Manny Ramirez Fan Club—put it to Sean McAdam last year, nobody ever went for a beer or to the bathroom when Ramirez stepped to the plate.

Ramirez’ flaky behavior already made him far from a sure thing despite his first ballot-worthy numbers. Add into the equation this stain and the reluctance of many writers to vote for confirmed or suspected cheaters (the tally among Fanhouse writers with a Hall of Fame vote is 6-1 against) and we’re almost surely going to be robbed of Manny Being Manny: The Hall of Fame Speech. Which sucks, because whether he spoke for 30 seconds or 30 minutes, it’d be the most entertaining address ever.

My second thought is nobody should ever again write gushing prose about a player’s work ethic or his workout regimen. Because no matter what you thought of Ramirez and his antics, the one thing I think everyone had to acknowledge—even grudgingly—was the dude worked. We all heard and read stories of his early morning workouts and the hours of cage work before a game and his savant-like approach to hitting.

How much of it was true? We just don’t know. And that four-word caveat should apply to everyone, from Albert Pujols to David Eckstein. It’s unfair to those who are clean, and it’s too bad that the willful ignorance of the union and the owners, both of whom were only too happy to get fat off the golden goose following the strike of ’94, has forced us to wonder about every player we see.

But while it’d be nice if everyone was au natural, let’s stop pretending we live in a world that doesn’t exist. Let’s stop demonizing players for having the audacity to try to keep up with the Ramirezes and the Rodriguezes. It would be nice if everyone could be like Chad Mottola, who was drafted one spot ahead of Derek Jeter in the first round of the 1992 draft, got a grand total of 125 big league at-bats during a 16-season professional career and resisted the urge to take steroids the entire time.

I’d like to think I’d mimic Mottola if I was in his shoes, and I’d love it if everyone else followed in his footsteps (that’s probably too many walking analogies for one sentence). But theory and reality are entirely different things. What would you do if a needle could provide the difference between lifelong benefits for you and financial security for your family…or a career in the bushes preceding the hunt for a Real Job in your mid-30s?

As my favorite Bruce Springsteen lyric goes: “Well, you may think the world’s black and white and you’re dirty or you’re clean. You better watch out you don’t slip through them spaces in between.”

Be more upset that these fringe guys are the ones who are most severely punished by the arrogant hypocrites who run Major League Baseball and its teams. (Count me among those who think it's a joke that MLB not only believes we should take seriously its own report on steroids but one overseen by a guy on the board of one of the 30 franchises)

Don’t worry about Manny. He’ll be fine, and if he decides to re-enter free agency after this year—and you can forget that now, but let’s just say he does for the sake of the argument—you can bet someone will throw a crapload of money at him.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, Jay Gibbons kicks a garbage can. Hooray for making an example of someone! (Of course Gibbons has also made $27 million as a big leaguer, which makes my point yet also makes it a little tough to feel bad for the guy, all at the same time)

Most of all, I try not to waste any pixels blasting steroid users because it’s been my experience that the vast majority of fans just do not care. Nobody’s going to wring their hands over Ramirez getting busted outside of people who already hate Ramirez. I know a lot of Yankees fans down here who reveled in Ramirez’ demise, chortled about the Red Sox’ two tainted titles and enthusiastically welcomed back Alex Rodriguez, all in the same day and without any sense of irony. That’s fandom though. It’s not supposed to be rational and reasoned.

And hey, maybe this brings together those Yankees fans as well as any Red Sox fans who are mad at Ramirez for his bizarre exit. Manny Ramirez: Bringing peace to the world, if not the Red Sox clubhouse.

After Deion Branch’s messy exit for Seattle, Bob Ryan wrote a really good column in which he compared professional football to a sausage factory: The only way to enjoy it is to not think too much about what goes into it.

Really, though, all professional sports are a sausage factory of some sort. It’s difficult to enjoy sports if you think about what players go through to get on to the field. The beauty and purity of baseball is wonderful, and also not at all consistent with the coldly businesslike approach of most executives and players.

For all the righteous indignation and Helen Lovejoy-like caterwauling the steroids issue has inspired, it took the worst economy in more than 70 years for MLB to see a decrease in attendance. And that football players die at a rate far faster than other athletes in order to entertain us every Sunday hasn’t diminished the popularity of the NFL one bit.

And hell, art is imitating life. Mickey Rourke hasn’t exactly denied he took method acting to a whole ‘nother level while filming The Wrestler. Sylvester Stallone admitted he took testosterone and HGH to bulk up for Rambo IV.

Nobody disqualifies actors from awards consideration and moviegoers still fill multiplexes. Why should we demonize ballplayers and wish for fans to bolt stadiums? Too bad for Manny he’s not an actor. Even so, after last week, he’s still got a better shot at winning an Oscar than making the Hall of Fame.

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.

Remy takes leave of absence

It was revealed yesterday that Jerry Remy, the ex-Red Sox second baseman and incredibly popular analyst on NESN games, has taken a leave of absence to deal with complications from lung cancer surgery he underwent last year. Best wishes to Jerry in his recovery and here's hoping he gets back to the booth soon.

Pavano, Class of '04 a cautionary tale

Most biting tabloid-inspired nickname ever. Thanks to this site for the photo.

Exhibit 1A of why it’s usually a bad idea to sign free agent pitchers to long-term contracts was on the mound at Fenway Park last night, where Carl Pavano tossed six solid innings to earn the win as the Indians beat the Red Sox 9-3.

It was the first appearance at Fenway for Pavano since he was the poor sap who started for the Marlins when they fell to the Sox 25-8 June 27, 2003. That he’s gone nearly six years between starts at Fenway is just one way to measure how off-the-charts badly his tenure with the Yankees unfolded.

Pavano seemed like a pretty good bet to make a lot of starts at Fenway back in the winter of 2004, when both the Sox and Yankees were hotly pursuing him as a free agent. He chose to go to the Yankees for four years and $39.95 million, which was about the best thing that could have happened to the Sox and the worst thing to happen to the Yankees.

Pavano threw just 145 2/3 innings for the Yankees as he battled numerous injuries, most of which appeared skeptical to inside and outside observers alike and at least one of which was self-inflicted. The Yankee Years, the book that Joe Torre didn’t write even though his name is splashed across the front cover, spells out in jaw-dropping detail just how much Pavano’s teammates despised him.

Yet the really frightening thing about the free agent class of 2004-05 is that Pavano wasn’t even its biggest bust. That honor, such as it is, goes to Russ Ortiz, who signed a four-year, $33 million deal with the Diamondbacks and provided them a grand total of 28 starts, during which he went 5-16 with a 7.00 ERA, before he was released in June 2006. ESPN.com’s Keith Law had an interesting take on Ortiz’ release and the misguided perception that the Diamondbacks were eating the contract when they cut him.

Matt Clement, whom the Sox signed to a three-year deal worth $25.5 million after they lost out on Pavano, was a bargain compared to Pavano and Ortiz, but his pockmarked tenure in Boston—Clement went 18-11 with a 5.09 ERA in before he underwent what turned out to be career-ending shoulder surgery at the end of the 2006 season—made the Sox more determined than ever to develop their own pitching and avoid the major league free agent market whenever possible.

Such tales of woe were common for the class of ’04. The nine free agent starting pitchers who signed multi-year deals that winter—Pavano, Ortiz, Clement, Derek Lowe, Pedro Martinez, Odalis Perez, Brad Radke, Kris Benson and Eric Milton—were paid a combined $277 million to go 199-207 with a 4.63 ERA.

Only three of those pitchers—Perez, Radke and Lowe—did not undergo arm surgery at some point during their lucrative deals. Perez (21-27 with a 5.49 ERA for the Dodgers and Royals, the latter of whom acquired him during the second year of his three-year deal with the Dodgers) pitched as if he should have gone under the knife while Radke (21-21 with a 4.17 ERA with the Twins) had such a ravaged shoulder by the end of his two-year deal that he couldn’t brush his teeth or pour milk with his right arm.

Clement, Martinez and Benson all underwent shoulder surgery while Pavano, Ortiz and Milton all had Tommy John surgery. Of those six, the only one not to miss an entire season recovering was Martinez, who went 11 months between starts after his operation.

Only Lowe (54-48 with a 3.59 ERA) provided a quality return on the investment. He pitched 850 1/3 innings over his four years with the Dodgers. The only pitcher among the Class of ’04 to pitch even half that many innings during his deal was Martinez, who had an excellent first year with the Mets and might have helped them to the World Series in 2006 if he didn’t miss the postseason due to his shoulder surgery. Think the Mets might have liked to have Martinez start one game in the NLCS instead of Steve Trachsel?

Today, Clement and Radke are retired, Perez and Martinez are unsigned, Milton is playing in the minor leagues and Benson and Ortiz are barely hanging on to roster spots with the Rangers and Astros, respectively. Lowe pitched so well in Los Angeles that, at age 35 and in a rotten economy, he actually got a raise when he signed a four-year deal with the Braves last winter.

That means Pavano, who signed a one-year, $1.5 million deal with the Indians and slid into the middle of their rotation, is in the second-best situation of the Class of ’04 hurlers. How’s that for a summation of how badly the entire group fared? But on the bright side, after last night, he’s only 114 1/3 innings away from reaching his total with the Yankees!

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.

Fringe benefits for the Sox, not the Yankees

About the only thing J.J. Abrams isn't doing these days is making a movie or TV show about the Yankees. Thanks to this site for the photo.

The Red Sox are 5-for-5 (Hey! That’s almost Carl Crawford-esque!) against the Yankees this year after last night’s 7-3 win in The House That Nobody Can Afford To Visit. By any measurement, the Sox’ dominance of the Yankees thus far is not a mirage: The Sox have outscored the Yankees 38-23 and have trailed the Yankees for a grand total of one-half inning in the last three games.

Peter Abraham, who authors a must-read blog about the Yankees at The Journal News’ website, wrote early this morning that the Yankees might actually have overachieved in recording a 13-13 mark thus far. He theorizes that nearly half the Yankees’ current 25-man roster—11 players, to be exact—could be defined as borderline big leaguers.

Here’s what should scare the Yankees: You could make a case that a pretty good percentage of the Sox are place-holders, too.

Hunter Jones has been in the bigs for less than three weeks. Javier Lopez only pitches when the Sox are desperate, and his last action was in right field. He was replaced on the mound that night in Tampa by Jonathan Van Every, who has 25 big league at-bats at age 29. Backup catcher George Kottaras is 3-for-21 this season and is a .238 hitter with almost twice as many strikeouts as walks in 808 at-bats at Triple-A. Nick Green entered this season with 121 big league at-bats since 2006 and spent last year with the Yankees’ Triple-A affiliate. Jeff Bailey has hit .273 with 68 homers and 229 RBI since 2005…at Pawtucket.

That’s six players—basically one-quarter of the roster. If you’re feeling particularly critical this morning, you could throw into the “not quite ready for prime time” discussion the likes of Julio Lugo (in the process of losing his starting job for the second time in 12 months), Jason Varitek (who is hitting .219 with 138 strikeouts in 498 at-bats since the start of last season) and Brad Penny (battled shoulder woes all of last season and has allowed 43 baserunners while recording a 7.61 ERA in 23 1/3 innings this year).

In addition, not all of the Sox’ core players are clicking. David Ortiz is starting to get annoyed at all the questions about his home run drought that extends back to Sept. 22. And the Sox’ bullpen is overworked, just like in New York.

That’s a lot of question marks and a lot of areas that could be shored up, yet the Sox are already 3 ½ games ahead of the Yankees. What happens if they fix some of those flaws?

“They outplayed us,” the always-candid Johnny Damon told reporters last night. “They outpitched us. At this point in the season, they are a better team than us.”

He’ll probably be able to say that in August, too.

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.

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.