Inside Baseball
Dice-K just one of many Red Sox pitching worries
Wasn’t it just a couple of months ago the Red Sox were talking about a six-man rotation? Now it seems, to borrow the old Milwaukee Braves adage, that they’re down to Josh Beckett and Jon Lester and pray for rain.
The Sox got Victor Martinez from Cleveland when they needed Cliff Lee. You wonder what it would have taken to get Roy Halladay from the Blue Jays. GM Theo Epstein’s desperate answer was to sign Paul Byrd to a minor-league deal Thursday. He hasn’t pitched since October.
Brad Penny and Clay Buchholz have been mediocre. The Yankees may have pummeled John Smoltz into retirement Thursday night. Tim Wakefield is on the disabled list with lower back trouble.
And Daisuke Matsuzaka has been ineffective and got engaged in a debate with manager Terry Francona and pitching coach John Farrell.
The Sox have not been happy with Dice-K, who did nothing (1-5, 8.23 in eight starts) in the wake of his participation in the World Baseball Classic and was finally shut down in June because of shoulder trouble.
Dice-K was 33-15 in his first two years in Boston—including 18-3, 2.90 last season. He led the majors by holding opponents to a .211 batting average last year and was fourth in the Cy Young Award voting. Seemed like he was worth every bit of his $52 million deal.
He won his second straight WBC MVP award in March, going 3-0 for Japan, but has simply not performed in the big leagues. The Red Sox were concerned he was overweight and was throwing too much too soon. Their fears were borne out once the season started.
But things blew up in the last two weeks as Dice-K vented to a Japanese magazine about a meeting with Francona and Farrell where he complained that the Sox weren’t letting him train the way he likes and that was thus stunting his return. Francona and Farrell, the former Bison, were not pleased their pitcher went public with concerns and Francona had private conversations with him to try to clear the air.
“We do not discourage him from throwing as long as his shoulder can handle it,” Francona said. “He likes the touch and the feel—the repetition, which, I understand, he has to be able to handle that physically or it doesn’t do him any good. [Otherwise,] he’s going to regress.
“. . . We’ve had to cut his throwing back, and we told him if he shows up and he is in shape and his shoulder is strong, we will not get in the way of his throwing.”
Before Wednesday’s game in Tampa, Matsuzaka briefly addressed reporters in English for the first time.
“I want to clear up a few things,” Matsuzaka said. “It was not my intention to make the meeting public or to criticize the Red Sox. The person who wrote the article is my old, old friend. I still trust her and this has never happened before. Training, no problem. No problem with the Red Sox. We will work it all out.”
Dice-K is expected to throw off a mound for the first time Tuesday, a big step on his path to return in September. Francona insists there are no hard feelings. So does Dice-K. We’ll see what they’re saying if he still can’t get anybody out and this team is still pitching-poor.
Tribe money woes
So what were the Indians thinking when they dumped Lee and Martinez? Money.
Team President Paul Dolan dropped a bombshell Thursday when he revealed the Tribe is expected to lose $16 million this season even though it received revenue sharing funds from Major League Baseball.
A big reason is that attendance is only expected to be in the 1.7 million range when preseason projections had it at 2.2 million. That was before the bottom fell out of the Tribe’s season and the fire sale began. Dolan said the Tribe is not getting loans from MLB like the Texas Rangers reportedly are.
“On the ranks of financial losers in Major League Baseball, we are high on the list,” Dolan said. “But we’re not in a situation like that one that’s being described in Texas.”
Dolan said there will be a complete review of the organization after the season and said the last two seasons have been a major disappointment after the team was one win shy of the World Series in 2007.
“If every four or five years we can have a shot at the World Series like we did in 2007 and compete for a playoff spot like we did in 2005, that’s as good as it gets in this market,” Dolan said. “That said, I think we’ve had the talent the last couple of years to do better than we have.”
Dolan was far from complete in endorsing manager Eric Wedge, whose contract expires after next season. After first saying Wedge deserves credit for building the team since he took over in 2003, Dolan dropped this ominous note:
“We have not been successful the last few years with a team that should have been. We have to understand why that is. We have to understand that fans need and want to hear a different voice and feel a different approach. We have to balance that as we make our decision in the next couple of months.”
Ryan goes home
B. J. Ryan has put his comeback on hold for now, asking for and getting his release from the Cubs’ Triple-A Iowa team. Ryan made five scoreless appearances for the I-Cubs but did not crack 90 mph on the radar gun. Cubs GM Jim Hendry said the team might be interested if Ryan, the onetime Blue Jays closer on the road back from elbow surgery, wants to try again next spring.
“He just didn’t feel like he was going to be able to help us this year and kind of wanted to go home and regroup,” Hendry said. “He was really professional. He gave it everything he had and was a pleasure to have around the other guys.”
Around the horn
• As far at Mets’ injuries go, Jonathon Niese’s torn hamstring and Luis Castillo’s sprained ankle—suffered when he fell down the dugout stairs Tuesday night—seem to be the capper for a bizarre year. Anyone wondering if it’s the curse of that cat that cavorted on Citi Field’s turf on Opening Night?
• Rays manager Joe Maddon has ordered a cleanup in his bullpen after the go-ahead run was lost in the eighth inning Tuesday against the Red Sox. Boston reliever Daniel Bard threw wildly past first after fielding a bunt and the ball rolled under an equipment bag and was ruled dead. No more bags on the ground for Maddon’s crew.
“The umpires interpreted it right,” Maddon said. “It’s one of those things if we win, it’s OK. If you don’t, it’s not OK.”
• I really hate when the Yankees and Mets games aren’t on YES and SNY, respectively, and get cherrypicked on to Time Warner 13 and 72. For one thing, Time Warner’s picture quality is an open disgrace and has the grainy look you’d expect in 1987.
But the kicker was Thursday night’s Yankees-Red Sox game on TW13. Discussion at the end of innings or during pitching changes was constantly getting cut off by Time Warner for local commercials, mostly with ex- Channel 7 anchor Susan Banks pushing nursing homes.
I doubt we saw the score graphic more than a couple of times at the end of an inning all night. Complete amateur hour.
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