The most disturbing thing is that you’re not surprised by how poorly Josh Beckett pitched yesterday. You didn’t expect his performance against the Yankees to match his enormous talent. You didn’t expect him to be the stopper, a pitcher who can raise his team at its lowest moments, as we’ve seen over the years from Roger Clemens, Pedro MartÃnez, and Curt Schilling. Those are No. 1s, and even if Beckett is a No. 2, we used to see Bruce Hurst, Mike Boddicker, or Frank Viola throw a beauty when his team needed it most.
You didn’t expect it from Beckett because he hasn’t done it. Not for the Red Sox, anyway. His sterling performance in Game 6 of the 2003 World Series, a 2-0 shutout over the Yankees that clinched it for the Marlins, is a distant memory.
Maybe someday Beckett, who has the most hollow 13 wins in the majors this season, will return to that form. But someday should have been yesterday. And whether he was squeezed by plate umpire Joe West or simply lacked command, whether he was tipping his pitches or just didn’t feel right, Beckett walked nine batters. There’s no excuse for that. And there’s no chance you’ll beat Randy Johnson doing that.
You have to go back to enigmatic lefthander Rogelio Moret on Aug. 22, 1975, to find the last Sox starter to issue nine free passes. This is a team that has employed the likes of Matt Young, Mike Brown, John Dopson, and many other pitchers who didn’t know where the ball was going half the time. And none of them ever walked nine.
Beckett was correct when he described his performance as “unacceptable” and “brutal.” Even Jason Johnson, who went 4 1/3 innings and allowed four runs in Game 1 of Friday’s doubleheader before being designated for assignment, pitched better than Beckett.
Alex Rodriguez, who is as confused at the plate as he’s been at any time in his illustrious career, had the sense to look at four straight balls with the bases loaded in the sixth inning yesterday, making it 6-5 in what would become a 13-5 Yankee win, before Sox manager Terry Francona, who had made a trip to the mound just prior to A-Rod’s at-bat, returned to get to the ball from his 26-year-old righthander.
“I was wondering if there was something wrong with him,” Yankees pitching coach Ron Guidry said of Beckett. “I don’t recall him pitching that way ever. If you’re plugging away at a guy like that and make him work, you can get his pitch count up.
“From where I was in that third base dugout, I couldn’t necessarily see whether he was missing side to side, up and down, but he missed a lot. He just wasn’t comfortable out there.”
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