-Besse
For baseball fans across the world, one of two things will be determined after this weekend sweep of the Yankees by the Red Sox this past weekend: a) it’s early in the season and the sweep means nothing or b) the Red Sox are the team to beat this year.
As of now, I’ll take the latter. I predicted at the outset of the 2007 season that the Red Sox will win the A.L. East and the Yankees will take the wildcard. This weekend’s three game sweep re-affirmed that for me, but we would be remiss to forget that objects in the rear-view mirror are closer than they appear. This will be the case all season long. This weekend’s match-up was perfect for the Red Sox. Schilling vs. Pettite was the toughest test on Friday night, but Beckett vs. Karstens and Matsuzaka vs. Wright were ideal. The Yankees’ pitching has been hampered by injuries early on, and this is what led to the downfall of Red Sox Nation late in the season last year. With Pavano, Mussina and Wang all out, the Yankees had to turn to two young pitchers with slightly more Major League experience than me. Karstens had made eight career appearances before Saturday’s start opposite the 2003 World Series MVP, while Wright was called up from Double-A earlier this year. For Wright, four was the number of the night (how poetic). He had made only four starts above A-ball heading into his Sunday night outing, and he seemed to be in control until surrendering a Red Sox team record four straight homeruns in the third inning. So while I feel that the Red Sox were the better team and will continue to be so throughout the season, the outlook is still to be determined with injuries leaving question marks in the Yankees clubhouse.
However, there were a few observations from the weekend that offered me some definitive answers.
1) Josh Beckett has matured as a pitcher and will be the dominant ace we signed to a 3-year, $30 million extension last season.
After watching Beckett get lit up in the first two innings of Saturday’s game, I said to myself that the next few innings would define what kind of season he will have. The 2006 version of Beckett would have continued to get lit up until Francona mercifully pulled the plug when the issue was no longer a doubt. Last year, when it rained, it poured for the hard-throwing righty. Of his 34 starts, there were eight outings that I termed as unacceptable, meaning Beckett pitched six innings or less and surrendered five earned runs or more. Within these eight outings, he threw a total of 40 innings, averaging five innings per start. Not bad, considering these were “bad starts.” But the statistic that I found alarming is that he surrendered runs in 25 of these 40 innings. Nine of these came after innings in which the Red Sox scored. And to top it off, Beckett was hammered for 55 runs in these 40 horrible innings. As a top of the rotation starter, these numbers are simply unacceptable.
There are some nights when as an athlete, particularly as a pitcher, you simply just don’t have it. As a Division 1, college pitcher, I’m fully aware of this (unfortunately, more than I wish). But regardless, it is your job to give your team every opportunity to stay in the game and have a chance to win in any way possible. By allowing runs to score in 62.5% of the innings in these starts, with 60% of those innings being more than one run, Beckett was simply not affording the Sox the opportunity to do this. In boxing and other combat sports, people always talk about athlete’s having a “puncher’s chance.” The baseball equivalent of this would be an offense like the Red Sox. As long as you keep the team in the ballgame, there’s always a chance they can comeback by rolling a yahtzee.
And herein lies my point: On Saturday afternoon, Beckett seemed to turn the corner. He surrendered a pair of two-out runs in the first only to have the Sox offense tie it up in the bottom of the inning. In the second, it looked like the Beckett of old as he continued to leave pitches up and over the plate, getting tagged for two more runs and again putting his team in the hole. But after a double play ball allowed that fourth run to score, what we saw was a transformation. Beckett went on a tear. After imploding time and time again last year, how could we ever see this coming? As Yankees’ manager Joe Torre said after the game, “It was a heavyweight fight for the first couple of innings. Once Beckett got the lead, he settled in.” And did he ever, retiring 15 of the next 17 batters holding the Yankees scoreless over the next four innings while Julio Lugo’s groundout and Big Papi’s big fly gave the Sox a 7-4 lead. Although he allowed another two-out run in the 7th, it could only be attributed to fatigue at this point as Hideki Okajima came in and shut the door on any comeback hopes the Yankees may have conceived. Simply, Beckett did what an ace is supposed to do in a slugfest like this. He limited the damage in innings in which the other team scored and kept his team in the game until they could deliver the big knockdown that would put them ahead on the scorecards. In other words, he gave them a puncher’s chance.
2) The Red Sox bullpen is better than the Yankees.
This weekend alone, the Red Sox bullpen pitched 7.2 innings surrendering only one run, which was earned. The Yankees, on the other hand, went to their bullpen for a total of nine innings and eight runs, all earned, including Friday night’s massive meltdown in the eighth inning and Sunday’s blown 5-4 lead in the seventh inning. Although he was touched for two runs and a blown save Friday, there is no doubt that Mariano Rivera is still among the top three most feared closers in the game today; Papelbon and Francisco Rodriguez of Anaheim are the only two others allowed to sniff his jock. But the Yankees don’t have anyone who can come in before the ninth to set up a save situation for Rivera, and this will become especially critical down the stretch when these divisional games become so critical. Instead what they have is a trio of unproven relievers (Viscaino, Bruney and Henn), Scott Proctor, who effectively took the loss on Sunday, Kyle Farnsworth, who pulled a Rick Vaughn and procured a cute pair of glasses so he can see home plate, Mike Myers, the age-less wonder-less lefty, and Colter Bean, who looks like he could provide a great “before” shot for the next Nutri-System commercial with Don Shula and Co.
The Red Sox, meanwhile, found out they have another guy to trust in the ninth when Papelbon is not available in Okajima. His delivery hides the ball well and he has great differential in speeds to keep hitters off-balance. Then there's Brendan Donnelly, who made a name for himself with the Angels after being cut in 1999 by the Devil Rays to make room for 36 year old school teacher Jim Morris. I still wonder why Disney didn’t give Donnelly a cameo and show that locker room scene. But back to the ‘pen. Donnelly will be a great compliment to Okajima when Francona chooses to utilize lefty and righty matchups late in the game, and also can go to J.C. Romero before handing things over to a now healthy Mike Timlin to pave the way for Papelbon. And speaking of Papelbon, I’m scared shitless just watching him, especially when he does a more controlled, tempered version of Mike Fetters. Even the expressions on the faces of Damon and Jeter said it all: they were overmatched and they knew it. Papelbon was easily sitting at 95-97 and even touched as high as 98 and 99. Plus, he threw a 94 mile-per-hour splitter on Sunday night that made me question if the radar gun is even credible anymore. I had to open the DVD player and make sure “The Scout” wasn’t playing, because it looked like Steve Nebraska was out there on the mound. Which reminds me, can you imagine what kind of deal Nebraska would have gotten with the Yankees had Boras been his agent instead of the washed-up Al Percolo?
3) Matsuzaka will experience more growing pains this season like that of Sunday night.
Let’s face it: Matsuzaka is a talented pitcher, no doubt about it. But his tendency to leave pitches up in the zone will leave him vulnerable to getting hit like he did against a potent Yankees’ lineup on Sunday. For example, in the first inning against Giambi, he threw a changeup early in the count that started at the knees and ran low and off the plate. With two strikes, that would be exactly where Daisuke wants to put that pitch, particularly against a left-handed hitter like Giambi who likes to hit the ball to right field. Yet after working to two strikes against Giambi later in the count, he went back to the change-up...this time he left it up knee high and over the outside half of the plate as this one didn’t have that arm-side run. The result? A two-run double to left-center that staked the Yankees to an early 2-0 lead. Giambi got to Daisuke again in the third on another pitch that was left up in the zone. Although Giambi got jammed by a slider that came in on the hands, the pitch was again up in the zone. Because of this, it gave Giambi a chance to use that upper body strength to muscle the pitch out into shallow right field just out of the reach of the vertically challenged Dustin Pedroia. Speaking of which, did anyone catch the awkward interaction between Jon Miller and Joe Morgan following that play? Find a rough copy of the transcript below:
Miller: Perhaps if Pedroia was a couple inches taller he would have gotten to that ball!
Morgan: I don’t say things like that….
Miller: Well, perhaps if he added a couple inches to his vertical then…
Morgan (brief pause): I don’t say things like that…
(Awkward silence ensues)
Morgan was obviously bitter at Miller’s comments, considering he is only 5’7 and realized, while sitting in the booth, that he never would have made that catch during his playing days. In fact seeing Pedroia fully extend and still miss by an inch probably brought back flashbacks of the several times Morgan came up just short while playing up the middle. You almost have to wonder if he comes up short in other areas, as well. I mean it got pretty tense in that booth. Don’t be surprised if he’s wearing lifts and sitting on a copy of the Yellow Pages during their next telecast.
But back to Matsuzaka. It’s no secret that the knock on him was his propensity to pitch up in the zone. With a mid-90’s fastball, pitchers will tend to have confidence in trying to blow it by a hitter. In Japan, there is not a consistent threat of power that exists in Major League Baseball, and so Matsuzaka will continue to get banged around if he leaves his pitches up in the zone. Personally, I think it’s more mechanical than it is anything else. After watching his throw in his last couple of outings, it appears that he tends to finish higher when throwing his fastball. Although he finishes his off-speed pitches better, he still finishes high and actually shows a bit of a re-coil. Now this guy was worth over $100 million for the Red Sox, so I’m going to step in and say “Look guy, we need to change up a few things.” But I think he needs to make a more concerted effort at finishing all of his pitches and working lower in the strike zone. He’s leaving too many pitches up and over the plate. While he’ll certainly rattle off his fair share of strikeouts – he currently leads the Red Sox with 31 K’s in 27 innings (10.33 per 9IP) – but he has shown that he can lose command of the zone at times and pay for it. Another case in point was his last outing against the Blue Jays. During that fourth inning in which he surrendered the Jays’ only two runs of the game, which ended up being the game winning runs, he issued three walks and two hits. The three walks all evidenced the claim I made earlier. He was missing up in the zone. In this case, his pitches weren’t being hit because they weren’t strikes, but it supports the criticisms that Daisuke has received during his transition to Major League Baseball. He’ll need to learn how to work the bottom half of the strike zone more consistently. If he can do eventually do that, I have no doubt that this guy will be unhittable.
There are a lot other things from the weekend, and beginning of the Red Sox season in general that have left an impression with me thus far. But these were a few that I felt were the most significant and had the most impact.
If you have any questions, thoughts or comments about my observations, please send them into the Sports Brief at sportsbrief@gmail.com.
-Besse
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