Major League Baseball

BoSox hope Beckett demotion pays off

Published Mar. 21, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

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Bob Klapisch

Call it a flash of genius or simple manipulation of the calendar, a head game, tweak or confidence booster, but Terry Francona made the right call when he recently tabbed Josh Beckett as the Red Sox’s No. 4 starter. If it looks like a demotion for the former ace, it is — but it’s part of Francona’s plan to get Beckett in touch with his inner 2007, a key factor in Boston’s dream of burying the Yankees.

In assessing the race between the AL East’s two superpowers, most scouts believe it’s pitching that separates them: the Sox have, on paper, the better rotation, despite Bartolo Colon’s surprising performance in Tampa this month.

Colon, who turns 38 in May, hasn’t been in his prime since 2005. He’ll be paired with the talented but still unproven Ivan Nova as the Yankees’ fourth and fifth starters, which is the weakness the Sox hope to exploit.

To do that, though, the Boston will need bounce-back seasons from Beckett and, to a lesser extent, John Lackey. As one talent evaluator said last week, “those two guys are the difference-makers. If you can tell me Beckett is going to be the old Beckett, I could see (the Red Sox) turning into a 100-win team. But I don’t know that he will or can.”

Beckett hasn’t exactly inspired anyone with a 5.02 ERA this spring, which no doubt influenced the way Francona aligned his starters in the first three series of the regular season. He’s holding Beckett out until the fourth game against the Indians, thus protecting the right-hander from the Rangers and Yankees.

It’s a small dent to Beckett’s ego, but Francona is pragmatic enough to understand if anyone needs to get off to a good start, it’s his former ace. Beckett is emerging from a disappointing 2010 season pock-marked by a 5.78 ERA, 151 hits in just 127 innings and a team-high 20 home runs.

Francona was blunt in his assessment of those numbers, telling the New York Daily News, “last year was a disaster for Beckett.”

Lackey was almost as much of mystery, with a 4.40 ERA that was his highest since 2004 and 1.42 WHIP that marked his career-worst. The right-hander’s performance could be partly explained by family issues (he reveled his wife was is undergoing treatment for early-stage breast cancer) and the hurdles that accompany a transition from the AL West to the AL East.

Francona is rolling the dice here, too, installing Lackey as his No. 2 starter ahead of Clay Buchholz — no doubt to temper expectations after his 17-win season.

Thus, the parallels with the Yankees: the front of Boston’s rotation matches up well with the Bombers’, as Jon Lester and CC Sabathia cancel each other out. Phil Hughes, an 18-game winner, does likewise with Buchholz. And Lackey’s wobbly 2010 season was only slightly less inexplicable than A.J. Burnett’s.

So if you want to believe the Sox are on the way to the World Series, you’ll have to take Beckett over Colon, and Daisuke Matsuzaka over Nova. The ballot favors the Sox, but you better have proof that Beckett can be reborn in 2011.

For one, he has to stay on the mound for an entire season, and somehow prove he’s beyond the clutches of a million nagging injuries: whether it’s been his back, his neck or oblique muscle, Beckett hasn’t been anywhere near the machine he was in ’07 — he’s spent a total of 115 days on the disabled list.

When he was younger and healthier, back in ’02 with the Marlins, Beckett was almost entirely reliant on his fastball, throwing it 75 percent of the time. Now, according to Fangraphs.com, Beckett is throwing nearly as many breaking pitches and changeups as he is fastballs, testimony, perhaps, to wear and tear on his labrum, and the reality that he’s lost a hair off his fastball.

The drop-off isn’t steep — Beckett’s four-seamer is still clocked in the 93-94 mph range — but his lack of control is what’s sabotaged him. For the first time in his career, fewer than 50 percent of Beckett’s pitches were in the strike zone. Similarly, he threw fewer than 60 percent of first pitch strikes for the first time since 2002, falling to a mere league average 58.4.

The result was the highest contact-ratio of Beckett’s career — 81.6 — or as another scout put it, “he just doesn’t make hitters as uncomfortable as he used to. Too many bad counts.”

The Sox are relying on two bounce-back qualities they hope (pray) will be in Beckett’s favor. The first is his age. Only 30, the right-hander is remarkably young, still in his theoretical prime. The second is his ego. If anyone can be motivated by a fall from grace, it’s Beckett, who, warranted or not, still has a gunslinger’s mentality.

Of course, Beckett still has to forge a relationship with Jarrod Saltalamacchia; the March struggle might be partly explained by having to work with a new catcher. Same goes with Beckett synching with Curt Young, the new pitching coach for the Sox. It’s possible the right-hander stopped listening to John Farrell, Young’s predecessor.

But those are peripheral possibilities, not real explanations for what happened to one of the American League’s fiercest right-handers. Question is, what did happen to Beckett? Boston’s summer hinges on the answer.

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