Verlander deal makes Lester a steal

Take a look at the American League leaders in ERA+ last season:

1. Zack Greinke, 205
2. Felix Hernandez, 174
3. Roy Halladay, 155
4. Jon Lester, 138
5. Justin Verlander, 133

With the news that the Detroit Tigers have locked up Verlander, three of those five pitchers now have signed contract extensions this winter -- and the other two signed extensions last winter. It's only natural to compare them. It's worth looking again at those five pitchers -- only this time in the context of their contracts:

1. Greinke, $38 million over four years ($9.5 million/year)
2. Hernandez, $78 million over five years ($15.6 million/year)
3. Halladay, $60 million over three years ($20 million/year)
4. Lester, $30 million over five years ($6 million/year)
5. Verlander, $80 million over five years ($16 million/year)

Any one of those stand out to you?

Lester last season ranked second in the American League in strikeout rate, fifth in ERA and sixth in strikeout-to-walk ratio. Among lefties in the American League, he's as good as it gets -- and that includes Cliff Lee, traded from Philadelphia to Seattle as part of the Halladay blockbuster.

The structure of the system, of course, had quite a bit to do with each of the above contracts. Halladay was set to hit free agency after the 2010 season, so his contract had to come close to his value on the open market.

Hernandez was arbitration-eligible last season for the first time and would have had two years left under team control before he got to the free-agent market. Same goes for Verlander. Greinke likewise had just two seasons of salary arbitration left when he signed his contract a year ago.

Lester wouldn't have been arbitration-eligible until this season, meaning his five-year contract really only bought out one or two years of free agency. His annual salaries ($3.75 million in 2010 and $5.75 million in 2011) don't exactly line up with what he'd earn in arbitration, but they're not too far off.

Still, though, in terms of raw production, the Red Sox might as well be stealing from Lester. If the lefty pitches anything like he has since he was pronounced cancer-free, he'll be a perennial Cy Young Award contender -- but he won't even earn $7 million in a season until 2012.

Maybe the Red Sox should buy him a pickup truck.

Learning a lesson from Seattle

Theo Epstein completed his offseason overhaul of the Red Sox defense on Monday evening with the acquisition of Adrian Beltre, one of the elite defensive third basemen in the major leagues. In much the same way Mike Cameron arrived to replace Jason Bay, Beltre brings with him an iffy bat but a spectacular glove.

Like Cameron and shortstop Marco Scutaro, Beltre won't hit 30 home runs or drive in 100 runs -- but he will help turn Terry Francona's team into one of the American League's elite defensive units. The Red Sox will send seven above-average defensive players out into the field on a regular basis -- and that number doesn't even include Jacoby Ellsbury, a flashy center fielder who even critics have to concede has all the ability to become an elite defensive player.

Defense isn't as easy to measure as offense is.

One way to measure the impact of the overhaul, however, will be to look at the numbers compiled by the Red Sox pitching staff next season. The more ground balls that get scooped up and turned into outs, the better Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, John Lackey and Clay Buchholz are going to look.

For the uninitiated, batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is a key stat here. BABIP eliminates all plays in which the defense is not involved -- walks, strikeouts and home runs -- and comes up with just what it says it does: The hitter's batting average on balls put in play.

BABIP has a little bit to do with luck. Line drives sometimes find gloves, and line drives sometimes find grass. That's part of the game. A hitter isn't always going to get on base just because he made good contact -- and a pitcher isn't always going to get an out just because he made a good pitch. An average hitter has a BABIP of .300 over the course of a season, and an average pitcher therefore sees opponents compile a BABIP of .300 against him over the course of a season, too.

Defense, though, can affect BABIP. The more range a group of defenders has, the more line drives get caught -- and thus the lower the opponents' BABIP will be.

The Red Sox, widely considered one of the worst defensive teams in baseball last season, saw opponents compile a BABIP of .313 last season, second-highest in the major leagues.

The Seattle Mariners, widely considered one of the best defensive teams in baseball last season, saw opponents compile a BABIP of .274 last season, lowest in the major leagues.

What does that mean? It means that if opponents put the ball in play 4,000 times over the course of a season, the Mariners would allow 156 fewer base hits than the Red Sox would. That's almost a hit per game less -- and that hit per game has almost nothing to do with the quality of the pitcher on the mound.

(The assumuption is that luck evens out over 162 games.)

Let's dig a little deeper into the transformation Seattle made from below-average defensive team to elite defensive team, the same type of transition Epstein is trying to replicate with his team:

2008
UZR: minus-20.9, 20th in the major leagues

2009
UZR: 85.5, first in the major leagues

Here's how it translates to a pitching staff:

2008
Erik Bedard: 3.67 ERA (.272 BABIP)
Felix Hernandez: 3.45 ERA (.316 BABIP)
Jarrod Washburn: 4.69 ERA (.306 BABIP)
Team: 4.73 ERA (.309 BABIP)

2009
Erik Bedard: 2.82 ERA (.271 BABIP)
Felix Hernandez: 2.49 ERA (.280 BABIP)
Jarrod Washburn: 2.64 ERA (.245 BABIP)
Team: 3.87 ERA (.274 BABIP)

Seattle's team ERA ranked first in the American League even while its pitchers' strikeout-to-walk ratio -- the best indicator, normally, of pitching success -- ranked ninth in the American League, ahead only of Kansas City, Texas, Detroit, Baltimore and Cleveland.

Most importantly: While the Mariners actually saw their hitters' on-base percentage go down (from .318 in 2008 to .314 in 2009), they saw their win total go up (from 61 wins to 85 wins).

Maybe Seattle pitching coach Rick Adair possesses a genius that was untapped until last season.

Maybe it was the defense.

One more: Check out Lester's splits from last season:

First half (.333 BABIP): 3.87 ERA
Second half (.289 BABIP): 2.82 ERA

In the first half, Lester frequently pitched with Mike Lowell and Julio Lugo on the left side of the infield behind him. In the second half, Lester frequently pitched with Kevin Youkilis and Alex Gonzalez on the left side of the infield behind him.

Starting from Opening Day of next season, Lester will pitch with four Gold Glovers behind him: Youkilis at first base, Dustin Pedroia at second base, Beltre at third base and Cameron in either center field or left field. Scutaro and J.D. Drew aren't too shabby at shortstop and right field, either, and Jacoby Ellsbury has all the tools to be an elite center fielder.

Hernandez morphed from a promising young pitcher into a Cy Young contender almost overnight. His strikeout rate jumped and his walk rate dropped, and that played a big part in his success. So, too, though, did a BABIP of .280 -- the first sub-.300 BABIP he'd seen opponents compile since his rookie season.

If Lester can avoid the type of bad luck that cost him so much success in April and May a year ago, he might just win himself a Cy Young Award.

The same type of leap might await Buchholz, one of the American League's best ground-ball pitchers a year ago, and Beckett and Lackey, potentially dominant pitchers who rank in the top half of that same list.

No, the Red Sox might not score 900 runs the way they have three times since Epstein took over as general manager.

Scoring runs, though, is only half the battle.

Red Sox MVP No. 2: Jon Lester

(A five-part series about the players most integral to the success the Red Sox enjoyed this season. Previously appearing on the countdown: Closer Jonathan Papelbon at No. 5, starting pitcher Josh Beckett at No. 4 and left fielder Jason Bay at No. 3.)

Jon Lester isn't going to win the Cy Young Award this season. Zack Greinke had a season of historic proportions, and Felix Hernandez was almost as good. Behind those two, Roy Halladay seemed to fade in the second half but still once again put up numbers worthy of Cy Young consideration for the fourth straight season.

The Adjusted ERA+ numbers bear that out:
1. Greinke, 203
2. Hernandez, 174
3. Halladay, 157

After that, though?

4. Lester, 139

Lester finished this season unquestionably among the elite pitchers in the major leagues. He might just be the best lefty in the game right now. His strikeout rate (9.96 per nine innings pitched) was second-best in the American League behind only Detroit's Justin Verlander. When Terry Francona chose Lester to start Game 1 of the American League Division Series instead of playoff hero Josh Beckett, it was met with shrugs everywhere because it was so easy a choice.

At risk of being a wet blanket, though, the sensational season Lester turned in doesn't ensure he'll keep dominating in the years to come. Before this season, eight lefties since Lester was born have finished a season with at least 9.0 strikeouts per nine innings -- and they haven't all turned into Randy Johnson:

1. Rick Ankiel, 2000 (194 K in 174 IP)
Everyone knows the story by now. Ankiel tore through the National League, posting an ERA+ of 134 in his rookie season with the Cardinals -- but when he got the the postseason, he suddenly no longer could pitch. He walked 11 hitters and threw nine wild pitches in his three appearances and never pitched effectively in the major leagues again.

2. Erik Bedard, 2007 (221 K in 182 IP)
In easily his best pro season, Bedard catapulted himself into the conversation about the major leagues' elite arms with a 3.16 ERA in his final season before his arbitration award was set to skyrocket. He was traded to Seattle in a deal that netted the Orioles top prospects Adam Jones, George Sherrill and Chris Tillman, shipped to a big ballpark in which he should have thrived. Instead, an issue with his shoulder landed him on the disabled list -- and he's made a total of 30 starts in the two seasons since.

That's not exactly what the Red Sox are hoping to get out of Lester.

3. Sid Fernandez, 1985 (180 K in 170 1/3 IP)
After a decent if unspectacular debut with the Mets in 1984, Fernandez finished fifth in the National League in strikeouts and led the National League in hits allowed per nine innings in 1985. He didn't let up from there, either: From 1985-89, he averaged 8.7 strikeouts per nine innings and accumulated a 3.18 ERA -- eighth-best in the major leagues during that span.

That's not a bad expectation for Lester, but his ceiling might be higher than that.

4. Johnson, 1991 (228 K in 152 IP)
One of the greatest lefties in the history of the game, the hard-throwing Johnson didn't put it together until he started to cut down his walks. He walked 152 hitters in that 1991 season -- no one has walked that many in a season since -- and 144 in the Mariners' awful 1992 season before morphing into the pitcher who will walk into the Hall of Fame in six or seven years. (He'll have to duck his head, of course, when he walks in.)

His strikeout totals jumped at the same time: He fanned 10.9 hitters per nine innings in 1993 and 12.3 per nine innings in 1995, the season he won his first Cy Young Award. After that, he didn't strike out fewer than 12.0 per nine innings again until 2002 -- the year he won his fifth Cy Young Award.

Johnson is in his own category. There's no comparison possible.

5. Scott Kazmir, 2007 (239 K in 206 2/3 IP)
The 23-year-old Kazmir made the Mets look silly as a 23-year-old, leading the American League in strikeouts and winning 13 games for the hapless Tampa Bay Devil Rays in their final year both of being hapless and of being the Devil Rays. He was poised to enter the season as the ace of the Rays' staff but strained his elbow in spring training and missed the first month. A year later, he missed another month with a quadriceps injury -- and he had a 5.92 ERA in 20 starts when the Rays traded him to the Angels.

That's not quite what the Red Sox have in mind with Lester.

6. Mark Langston, 1986 (245 K in 239 1/3 IP)
Much like Johnson, Langston broke into the league as a strikeout pitcher but didn't put it all together until he cut down on his walks. He walked more than 4.5 hitters per nine innings in each of his first three seasons but turned into a Cy Young candidate in 1987, the first year he had fewer than 4.5 walks per nine innings. His ERA then dropped in each of the next three seasons, tumbling all the way down to 2.74 in the 1989 season that prompted the Montreal Expos to deal -- who else? -- Johnson for him. Langston then signed with the Angels as a free agent and had a 3.90 ERA over the next seven seasons.

If Lester had a similar career to the one enjoyed by Langston -- he even went 15-7 with 142 strikeouts in 1995 -- it would be tough to be disappointed.

7. Oliver Perez, 2004 (239 K in 196 IP)
Here's the big cautionary tale. The Randy Johnson comparisons began to surface after a 2004 season in which the 22-year-old fanned a National League-high 11.0 batters per nine innings. A year later, though, he fought with shoulder stiffness in the spring and never recaptured the same type of magic. He then kicked a metal laundry cart in June and broke his toe, missing two months.

The goofy thing about Perez, though, is this: The Pirates treated him with kid gloves, even going so far as to forbid him from pitching in the winter leagues in his native Mexico after he threw 196 innings in that 2004 season. The team then claimed that Perez did not follow its prescribed offseason conditioning program and therefore saw both his endurance and his mechanics evaporate. A year later, they permitted him to go pitch for his hometown team in the winter -- and, a year later, his bad ERA (5.85) got even worse (6.55).

Lester saw a huge spike in his innings pitched a year ago, and many wondered if he might not last the season if he had to endure a similar workload. He and the Red Sox, though, seem to have figured out a way to keep his mechanics in order and his arm healthy. That's where the similarities between him and Perez seem to end.

8. Johan Santana, 2004 (265 K in 228 IP)
Billy Wagner didn't mince words when talking about Lester a couple of weeks ago.

"There's not really a better lefty than him," Wagner told ESPNBoston.com. "Johan is not as overall talented as him -- not to take anything away from Johan."

Santana and Lester have quite a few similarities, in fact: Not only are the two are close to the same height and weight, but Santana was 25 years old in his breakthrough season in 2004 -- the same age Lester was this past season. Santana had come up as a relief pitcher but became a workhorse starting pitcher for the first time in 2004. He had a sub-3.00 ERA in four of his next five seasons and has a 2.86 ERA since becoming a starting pitcher full-time; even with the elbow injury that cost him the final month of his season, he remains the standard by which all lefties are measured.

That elbow injury, though, is another warning sign: Both the Red Sox and Yankees had questions about the long-term health of Santana when they discussed acquiring him from from the Minnesota Twins two years ago. Santana had thrown more than 230 innings, including the postseason, in four of his last five seasons, and the strain might finally have caught up with him. That's exactly what the Red Sox are trying to avoid with Lester.

Then again, if the Red Sox can give five more years of best-pitcher-in-baseball performances from Lester, maybe anything else is gravy.

One pitch separates Lackey, Lester

One pitch.

The difference between John Lackey and Jon Lester on Thursday night -- other than the "h" missing from one of their first names -- was one pitch.

Baseball is a long-term game. Batting averages and on-base percentages are built up over a span of weeks and months; the difference between a .300 hitter and a .250 hitter, as they say, is about one hit a week. In any single game, be it in early April or in mid-September, the chances are pretty good that even the best hitter in the game will throw up an 0-for-4 once or twice a week. Nothing changes in October. Nothing makes Kevin Youkilis or Victor Martinez or Mike Lowell any less likely to throw up an 0-for-3 or 0-for-4 in Game 1 of the ALDS than on a random Tuesday in June. It happens. It's the way the game goes. Any one of those three hitters might go 2-for-4 in Game 2 and suddenly be hitting .285 and having himself a pretty decent postseason.

For pitchers, though, it's a different type of game. Pitchers go through the same work in the offseason as the hitters, take part in the same preparation in spring training, endure the same ups and downs during the season -- but one mistake on just one pitch can pretty much ruin everything.

Both Lackey and Lester pitched terrific games in Game 1 of the American League Division Series on Thursday. That should come as no surprise, of course, but it's worth making the point: Lackey earned the win and Lester took the loss, but both Lackey and Lester pitched terrific games.

Lackey pounded the outer half of the strike zone to lefties and righties, daring the Red Sox to extend their arms and take him the other way:

(Keep in mind that the approach plot is normalized for righties and lefties: Everything on the left side of the chart is inside, and everything on the right is outside.)

But it wasn't just that Lackey used the outer half of the plate: He threw his breaking ball for strikes on the outer half of the plate both to lefties and to righties. Jason Bay can hit the ball for power the other way, but he's only going to do that with a fastball up -- not with a curveball at his knees. Jacoby Ellsbury can be effective with those pitches if he slaps them into left field, but he tried to pull the ball in each of his first three at-bats. Not once did he get the ball out of the infield.

Lester didn't show the same aggressive adherence to a plan -- which, in a lot of ways, is a good thing. He worked both edges of the strike zone, particularly with his trademark cutter, and he threw five different pitches -- we're differentiating his four-team fastball from his two-seam fastball -- with relative consistency.

Ignore the colors and labels attached to the pitches on the chart. Based on the groupings, it's easy to pick out the four-seamer (around 96 miles an hour), the two-seamer (around 93 miles an hour with extra horizontal movement), the cutter (around 91 miles an hour), the curveball (around 80 miles an hour) and the occasional changeup (around 86 miles an hour).

But he still didn't give the Angels much to hit:

Like Lackey, Lester generally kept the ball out of the middle of the plate. When he gave up a double to Erick Aybar to open the fifth inning, for example, it was on a cutter down and in that umpire Joe West probably wouldn't have even called a strike. It was a good pitch, and Aybar yanked it down the third-base line. That happens. The double itself wasn't going to kill Lester.

What followed, though, did: Lester threw his worst pitch of the game to Torii Hunter, and Torii Hunter didn't miss that pitch. Lester started Hunter's fifth-inning at-bat with a beautiful fastball on the outside corner of the plate. He then tried to come back with a similar pitch, he told reporters after the game, but he missed his spot pretty badly.

He didn't get his fastball far enough away or far enough down, and Hunter crushed it:

Baseball is a long-term type of game for hitters. An 0-for-4 in Game 1 doesn't mean much, particularly if it's followed by a 3-for-4 in Game 2. For pitchers, though, it can all come down to one pitch -- and if the Red Sox can't come back to win Games 2 and 3, Lester is going to spend most of the winter thinking about that one pitch.

Rest part of reason for Lester-Beckett choice

Terry Francona tried to tell reporters he'd chosen Jon Lester over Josh Beckett to start Game 1 of the American League Division Series because the starting rotation just happened to fall that way naturally.

"When you look at how our rotation was set up -- and Beckett knows we feel this way, because for us to get where we want to go, we're going to have to lean on both of them -- to flip-flop then around would have meant one guy was on normal rest and another guy was on 10 (days' rest)," Francona told reporters after Sunday's game.

That, though, is a cop-out. When the Red Sox scratched Beckett from his start last Monday, they could have inserted him back into the rotation whenever they wanted. They could have pitched him on Wednesday, for example, and then had him ready to pitch on six or seven days' rest in Game 1. Instead, they skipped his turn entirely and didn't bring him back until Saturday -- ensuring he was lined up between Lester and Clay Buchholz.

But when he started talking about Lester and Beckett pitching in Game 4 and Game 5, potentially, he started making much more sense.

You have to assume the Yankees will choose the Wednesday start to force the Detroit/Minnesota winner to turn around and play in New York the day after a one-game playoff in the Twin Cities. That hands the Red Sox this schedule:

Thursday: Lester (six days' rest)
Friday: Beckett (five days)
Sunday: Buchholz (six days)
Monday: Daisuke Matsuzaka (nine days) or Lester (three days)
Wednesday: Lester (five days) or Beckett (four days)

The Game 4 starter, Francona hinted, would depend on how the series had progressed to that point. If the Red Sox lead 2-1 at that point, Matsuzaka probably would start. If the Red Sox trailed 2-1 and faced elimination, Lester probably would start.

"We think Lester is situated where he comes back on short rest (in Game 4), and that would have Beckett, if there's a Game 5, on regular rest," Francona said. "There are a lot of options that are open to us that we're interested in exploring."

Here's why: Jon Lester hasn't started on three days' rest in his major-league career. Josh Beckett has made one start on three days' rest -- but that was in 2004. There's not much you can take from that information.

Lester, though, has a far better track record on four days' rest than Beckett. Here's how the two break down in their career numbers:

Four days' rest
Beckett: 4.00 ERA (113 starts)
(In 2008, it was 4.57. In 2009, it was 4.73.)
Lester: 3.93 ERA (46 starts)
(In 2008, it was 2.91. In 2009, it was 3.99.)

Five days' rest
Beckett: 3.90 ERA (77 starts)
Lester: 3.13 ERA (30 starts)

Six days' rest
Beckett: 2.93 ERA (33 starts)
Lester: 3.94 ERA (14 starts)

If there's a guy you want to bring back on short rest, based on those numbers, it's probably Lester. If there's a guy to whom you want to give an extra day, it's probably Beckett.

Oh, and the fact remains that Lester has been a better pitcher all season than Beckett. He took longer to see his numbers reach an elite level -- in part because of horrendous luck -- but he still has a better strikeout ratio (10.0 per nine innings) than any pitcher in the major leagues other than Justin Verlander. He's earned that Game 1 start.

Lester polishes off sensational regular season

Whatever mechanical adjustment Jon Lester had to make in the aftermath of his abruptly shortened start last Friday at Yankee Stadium, he didn't make it until after the second inning on Thursday against the Indians.

After the second inning, though, he was untouchable.

The lefty began to cruise when he began to keep the ball down in the strike zone. He allowed five deep fly balls and a pop fly in the first two innings, in large part because he was laving his fatsball and cutter consistently up in the strike zone:

Starting with Luis Valbuena, the first batter of the third inning, Lester seemed to get it figured out. He kept the ball down in the zone much more consistently and even threw a couple of kill curveballs down in the dirt -- including the curveball with which he fanned Valbuena:

He allowed a single to right on a cutter up and over the plate to Michael Brantley in the fourth inning, but he settled back in from there, striking out Jamey Carroll on three straight pitches down and away and inducing a double play to Jhonny Peralta with a fastball down and away.

"The first six hitters of the game all elevated the ball," Red Sox manager Terry Francona said, "and it was nice to see him start getting down in the zone, pitching the way he does."

The health of his knee, of course, appears fine.

"After my side day (on Monday), all the questions that were out there about my knee, I really didn't have anymore," he said. "I treated it like a normal start, like any of the other 31 I've had all season."

But it wasn't just a normal start. Even before he'd taken a line drive off his right knee last Friday, he'd allowed more than his share of hard-hit balls at the hands of the Yankees.

Given the way he pitched in the first couple of innings, the team's presumptive Game 1 starter did seem to have something to prove. His velocity dipped noticeably from the first inning to the second, perhaps a sign that he'd come into Thursday's start with a little more adrenaline than normal.

He even acknowledged as much.

"Sometimes when you go out there early on, you try to do too much or overthrow," he said. "You're not in sync, I guess. It took me a couple of innings to find that rhythm, and once I did, I felt a lot better consistency as far as all my pitches and just being down in the zone and repeating (my delivery) throughout the game."

Lester next is scheduled to throw a bullpen session on Monday with an eye toward Game 1 of the playoffs.

(Francona again declined to announce a tentative postseason rotation, but it's safe to surmise that Lester wouldn't throw a side on Monday if he was going to start on Friday. It's also safe to surmise that the Red Sox don't want Lester to pitch on eight days' rest -- which is what he'd have to do if he pitched Game 2 rather than Game 1.)

The lefty finished the regular season with a 15-8 record and a 3.41 ERA, a particularly impressive accomplishment given that his ERA was up over 6.50 in mid-May. He finished with a career-best 225 strikeouts, a number that will rank him third in the American League behind Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke. He might even get some Cy Young votes for the first time in his young career.

He also pitched his way into elite company: Only two pitchers have struck out at least 450 hitters while accumulating an ERA of less than 3.75 in fewer than 100 career starts: Lester and San Francisco wunderkind Tim Lincecum.

He cemented himself this season, without question, as one of the best pitchers in the major leagues. You could make an argument that he's the best lefthanded pitcher in the major leagues, period. (Cliff Lee, CC Sabathia and Johan Santana would have something to say about that, of course, but that's a discussion for another day.)

It was a tremendous regular season by any measure. But the next step remains the most important step.

"It really doesn't mean anything unless we win a World Series," he said. "The season was good. I'm happy with how I came back from the beginning of the season and got on a little bit of a roll and threw the ball better. But here, with this organization, our seasons are judged by what we do in the postseason and not by what we do in the regular season."

Lester throwing with Farrell at Fenway Park

Jon Lester has begun a routine side session, throwing on the Fenway Park warning track with pitching coach John Farrell. He jogged out to the bullpen with no apparent limp.

The two began by throwing from 40 or 50 feet and stretched out to 60 feet and then around 100 feet and then started throwing from somewhere around 150 feet. Farrell was standing on the spot where Dwight Evans made his famous catch in the 1975 World Series, and Lester was standing in front of the garage door in the center-field triangle.

Lester next moved back to within 60 feet of Farrell and began pitching lightly out of a full windup.

(In other words, a completely routine side.)

Apparently still feeling good, he then moved into the bullpen to throw off the mound. The first 10 or so pitches kind of looped in to bullpen catcher Mani Martinez, but he picked up the pace from there. He paused for a conversation with Farrell after he'd thrown about 30 pitches, and he paused again after about 50 pitches to do some dry runs with his windup and his plant.

He called it quits after about 75 pitches, counted unofficially from the press box. All told, he was throwing for about half an hour from start to finish.

Right-field fence seemed to spook Lester

Postgame comments from Red Sox manager Terry Francona did quite a bit to alleviate the concern about the right knee of Jon Lester, the knee struck by a line drive off the bat of Melky Cabrera on Friday night.

"When it first happened, it looked terrible," Francona said. "It sounded terrible. He was in a lot of pain. But I think it caught enough meat or muscle where it wasn't a direct blow on that bone. He got X-rays, and they came back clean. From talking to Dr. (Larry) Ronan and our trainers, he might be right on turn -- and the fact that we're even talking about that is good news."

It remains to be seen, of course, how Lester feels in the morning. But the lefty professed a strong desire to avoid skipping a start before the playoffs -- "Regardless of how many simulated games or bullpens you throw, it doesn't give the full effect of seeing live hitters," he said -- and expects to pitch against the Blue Jays back at Fenway Park this week.

If that's the case, then, we can move onto the next pressing issue: Something about pitching at Yankee Stadium has spooked Lester.

Yankee Stadium has spooked many pitchers this season. Something about the way the ballpark was constructed has turned right field into a conveyor belt for home runs. Dustin Pedroia, for example, had never hit an opposite-field home run in his life, at any level, before he did so at Yankee Stadium. Far more home runs have landed in the right-field seats than the left-field seats, something you seldom see given the preponderance of righties swinging the bats:

(It's the complete opposite, as you can imagine, at Fenway Park. Thanks to HitTrackerOnline for the charts.)

Lester, as a lefty, has a built-in advantage pitching at Yankee Stadium. The switch-hitters in the Yankees' lineup -- Melky Cabrera, Jorge Posada, Nick Swisher and Mark Teixeira -- all have to turn around and hit righthanded against him, and that makes it far more difficult to take aim at the Little League dimensions out in right field.

Lester had surrendered three home runs in his first two starts at The House That Scott Brosius Built, but two of those home runs went to left-center field rather than right field. The homer-happy right-field corner hadn't seemed to be a problem for him against either righties or lefties. He'd done well to pitch away from the ballpark, to prevent lefties from pulling the ball or righties from taking a crack at going the other way.

He took the strategy to an extreme on Friday, though, and it came back to bite him.

In Lester's up-and-down first inning against the Yankees, 29 of the 30 pitches he threw were on the left-field side of the plate. Throwing to that half of the plate -- inside to righties and outside to lefties -- made it difficult for anyone to take a shot at the right-field fence, and no one really did.

"We were trying to go in a lot (on righties)," he said. "We've done that before."

But because he also tried to go away a lot against lefties, too, it made his sequence totally predictable. The Yankees could eliminate half the strike zone and adapt their swings accordingly.

Here's what the first inning on Friday looked like:

Compare that to his first inning at Yankee Stadium on Aug. 9:

Not much changed the rest of the way. Here's his strike-zone chart for the entire game, once again from the perspective of the catcher:

And here's his strike-zone chart from Aug. 9:

(Pitch charts once again come from brooksbaseball.net.)

Lester began to mix and match in the second inning but reverted to old habits in the fateful third inning that saw him surrender four runs and take a line drive off the knee. He actually threw a pretty decent pitch to Alex Rodriguez, but with the outer half of the plate a non-factor, Rodriguez had a pretty good idea he was going to see something on the inside corner. He turned on a fastball on the inside corner and at the knees and ripped it into the second deck in left field.

"Alex hit a good pitch, down and in," Lester said. "He was obviously looking in, and he turned on it and didn't miss it. That's the way it goes."

That might the way it goes, anyway. But it seems like Lester gave Rodriguez no choice but to look for something on the inside half. A veteran hitter wouldn't miss a pattern that obvious.

Should Lester have a chance to pitch at Yankee Stadium again in Game 1 or Game 2 of the ALCS, it'll be interesting to see if he tries the same strategy or if he mixes it up just a little bit.

Choice of Lester for Game 1 a no-brainer

Josh Beckett has the resume, but according to Sean McAdam of the Boston Herald, Jon Lester has the Game 1 start for the Red Sox when the playoffs begin in a couple of weeks.

The choice, really, was a no-brainer.

As well as Beckett has pitched all season, the numbers show that he's no longer the ace of the staff. Lester, the best lefthanded pitcher the Red Sox have had since Bruce Hurst, has been a more reliable and more consistent pitcher all season long. A sampling:

ERA
Beckett: 3.78
Lester: 3.33

ERA since May 1
Beckett: 3.22
Lester: 2.95

Playoff ERA a year ago
Beckett: 8.79
Lester: 2.36 in 26 2/3 innings
(Granted, Beckett was hurt -- but did you remember Lester was that good?)

K/9IP
Beckett: 8.4
Lester: 9.9

BB/9IP
Beckett: 2.3
Lester: 2.8

GB/FB
Beckett: 0.89
Lester: 0.94

It comes down to this: If both Lester and Beckett win Games 1 and 2 in whatever order but Clay Buchholz loses Game 3, who do you want to pitch Game 4 to close it out before an anything-can-happen Game 5?

The answer is clear. It's Lester.

(Does that, then, set up Victor Martinez to catch Game 1 and Jason Varitek to catch Game 2? Maybe -- but given that there'll be a day off before Game 3, maybe not.)

***

Lester, by the way, remains in the same elite company he was in earlier this season, back when he had an ERA higher than 5.00. Back in early May, Lester was one of nine pitchers with a K/BB ratio of better than 3-to-1 who also was averaging more than a strikeout an inning.

That group is down to six:
* Javier Vazquez (2.91 ERA)
* Zack Greinke (2.08)
* Justin Verlander (3.41)
* Ricky Nolasco (5.34)
* Tim Lincecum (2.47)
* Jon Lester (3.33)

Back in May, both Lester and Verlander had outlier-type ERAs.

Now, though, Lester's ERA was right where it should be -- among the best in the major leagues.

Clay Buchholz and financial flexibility

What Clay Buchholz has brought with him back to Boston isn't just renewed confidence and a devastating changeup. He's brought with him the financial flexibility that will allow the Red Sox to fill gaping holes elsewhere.

The Red Sox have deep pockets, but even the Red Sox have to draw a line somewhere. We've seen the line before -- particularly with Mark Teixeira this past winter -- but we've also seen it more subtly: When the Red Sox acquired Billy Wagner, for example, Theo Epstein cited the budgeted performance bonuses for Brad Penny and John Smoltz as the reason he could afford to assume the contract of Billy Wagner.

Buchholz, who will finish this season with a little more than two full years of service time in the major leagues, will earn somewhere around $500,000 next season. He'll be arbitration-eligible for the first time a season after that. Combined with Jon Lester, whose contract doesn't break $10 million until 2013, Buchholz will give the Red Sox unprecedented payroll flexibility within their starting rotation and beyond.

Here's how the projected Red Sox rotation breaks down next season:
1. Josh Beckett, $12 million
2. Jon Lester, $3.75 million
3. Clay Buchholz, ~$500,000
4. Daisuke Matsuzaka, $8 million
5. Tim Wakefield, $4 million
Total: Just shy of $26 million

Compare that to the Yankees' projected rotation:
1. CC Sabathia, $23 million
2. A.J. Burnett, $16.5 million
3. Joba Chamberlain, ~$500,000
4-5. Fill in the blank
Total (1-3): $40 million-plus

But it's not really about the Yankees. It's about the Red Sox, and it's about Theo Epstein's ability to spend money in the areas his team needs help. The key comparison, really, is with the way the Red Sox spent money on pitchers in the past -- and we'll look at recent two seasons chosen completely and totally at random:

2007
1. Beckett, $6 million
2. Curt Schilling, $13 million
3. Daisuke Matsuzaka, $8 million
4. Wakefield, $4 million
5. Julian Tavarez, $3.35 million
Total: $34.35 million

2004
1. Pedro Martinez, $17.5 million
2. Schilling, $12 million
3. Derek Lowe, $5 million
4. Wakefield, $4.35 million
5. Bronson Arroyo, $332,500
Total: $39.1825 million

(Numbers all lifted from Cot's Baseball Contracts.)

Pitching, of course, is everything.

But when you don't have to spend money on pitching -- particularly in a free-agent market as weak as the upcoming free-agent market will be -- you're a step ahead of the game.

Think of it this way: If Buchholz was pitching more like a No. 4 starter than like a No. 2, the Red Sox would have to think about signing Jon Garland, John Lackey or Jarrod Washburn to a big-money contract to fit in behind Beckett and Lester. Lackey in particular is going to be looking for A.J. Burnett-type money -- and rightfully so, given that he's a better pitcher than Burnett -- and he's going to get it from someone.

Thanks to Buchholz, though, it won't be from the Red Sox.

For a team with fairly deep pockets, saving money on pitching isn't usually a yellow-brick road to the playoffs. We've all seen the Red Sox burned before when they've gone bargain shopping for starting pitchers.

But with a starting rotation already filled up with quality major-league pitchers at less than $30 million for the entire package, the Red Sox can afford to spend elsewhere. That's going to be essential for a team that's going to need to spend elsewhere.

Consider the financial considerations for next season:
(Italics denote estimate.)

1. Left field: $7.5 million in 2009. $15 million for 2010.
Jason Bay is a free agent, and the Red Sox will either have to pony up for Bay or Matt Holliday or replace that production at another position. Bay cost the Red Sox just $7.5 million a year this season, but they'll have to pay double that either to him or to his replacement.

2. Shortstop. $1 million in 2009. $6 million in 2010.
The team holds a $6 million option on Alex Gonzalez, a reasonable price to pay for Jed Lowrie insurance. The idea of Jose Reyes remains on the table, and if you don't think Epstein will have that conversation with Omar Minaya a couple of times, you're crazy.

3. Catcher. $6 million in 2009. $11 million in 2010.
The $7.5 million option the Red Sox hold on Victor Martinez might be the biggest no-brainer of all time, but that's more money than they spent on Jason Varitek and George Kottaras combined this season. Oh, and they'll still owe $3 million to Varitek whether they save a roster spot for him or not.

4. Third base. $12 million in 2009. $12 million in 2010.
Mike Lowell is looking a little more spry these days, but it's still a gamble to count on a 36-year-old with limited range to play third base every day. Chone Figgins and Marco Scutaro both are options, and while Scutaro might come relatively cheap, Figgins won't.

5. Designated hitter. $12.5 million in 2009. $12.5 million in 2010.
David Ortiz came alive in June but has seen his slugging percentage drop every month since -- even with his pinch-hit double on Sunday, he's still slugging just .400 -- and the Red Sox might not want to risk their designated hitter looking as lifeless next season as Ortiz did in April and May.

6. Other monies owed.
The Red Sox still will have to pay Julio Lugo $9 million next season no matter what uniform he wears. Should they jettison Lowell or Ortiz, they'll have to eat quite a bit of that money, too, and that starts to add up.

Without Buchholz looking like Zack Greinke in the middle of the Red Sox rotation, Epstein would have to shell out quite a bit of money for a workhorse like Lackey -- or he'd have to unload a half-dozen prized prospects for a young phenom like Felix Hernandez.

Instead, though, Epstein can spend that money on a slugger to play left field or for a super-utility infielder like Figgins or Scutaro to play third base and shortstop -- or he can use it to pay another big bopper while turning Ortiz into a $12 million-a-year pinch-hitter off the bench.

The Red Sox have shifted their focus to their farm system because financial flexibility is everything in baseball. When you only have to pay your No. 2 and No. 3 starters a combined $4 million, it gives you the opportunity to do just about anything else you want.

Widespread intrigue surrounds Dice-K's return

Jon Lester takes everything about his pitching seriously, so one always has to raise an eyebrow when he smiles or laughs about anything that has to do with the Red Sox rotation.

That was his reaction, though, when a reporter asked him if he, like everyone else in Boston, was curious to see how Daisuke Matsuzaka would look on Tuesday.

"It would be big for us if Dice-K comes back and is Dice," Lester said. "He's looked good. I've seen some of his bullpens he's thrown, and he looks strong, looks good. ... It's a tough lineup: With the Angels, I think everyone in their lineup is hitting .300. Hopefully, he can come in and establish that he's back and he's healthy."

Lester might be optimistic -- but he's as in the dark about anyone about how Matsuzaka will fare in his first major-league start since mid-June. He looked OK in his final minor-league start, but there's only so much you can take from minor-league starts.

"It'll be really interesting to watch," Red Sox manager Terry Francona said.

Francona loves to pull out his "Hall of Fame thing": If a pitcher throws seven shutout innings in his first start, Red Sox fans will start designing his plaque for Cooperstown -- but if he gets shelled, they'll be ready to run him out of town.

Still, though, there's a lot riding on this start for Matsuzaka.

He was a different pitcher this season than he's been for the Red Sox in the past, but he's been a different pitcher for the Red Sox than he was in Japan.

"He kind of evolved the last couple of years and got away from the guy we signed -- for a few different reasons," Francona said with a surprising candor. "What we're hoping to do is see closer to the stuff we saw when we signed him. You might not see the exact same stuff -- I don't know if that's fair -- but closer to it."

The key for Matsuzaka, as it is for every pitcher, will be to command each of his pitches. Matsuzaka came to the United States with a reputation for throwing half a dozen or more pitches, but he's whittled his repertoire down to a fastball, a cutter, a changeup and a curveball. The issue for him earlier this season was that he couldn't distinguish any of his pitches from each other.

Below is a start from last September in which he tossed seven shutout innings against the Toronto Blue Jays:

Below is a start from early June in which he allowed five earned runs in five innings against the Texas Rangers:

The issue is pretty clear: Matsuzaka's fastball looked like his cutter, and his cutter looked like his breaking ball. When a pitcher can't distinguish his pitches, none of them are going to be very effective.

Combine that with the fact that he was pounding the strike zone the way coaches and fans alike have begged him to do, and it's not surprise he got hit hard.

(Here's his strike-zone chart from last September. Compare that to his strike-zone chart from June.)

If he can pound the strike zone with a variety of pitches that don't all look the same, he might just be successful.

That would mean a lot to the Red Sox -- and not just because they have a $103 million investment to justify.

They might lead the wild-card race by a growing margin, but there's nothing locked up that a bad week couldn't undo. If the Angels knock Matsuzaka out of Tuesday's game in the third inning and Paul Byrd follows that up with a stinker on Wednesday, the Red Sox could find themselves reeling -- and with a depleted bullpen -- with no days off until the end of the season.

Then again, with Michael Bowden and Junichi Tazawa still available, one bad start from Matsuzaka doesn't have to throw the Red Sox into a tailspin.

"I don't know that it necessarily needs to derail us," Francona said. "We're at the point in the season where we have other options. We have backups. We don't have to do something we're not comfortable with.

"It is unique. I understand that. But I don't think it has to get in the way of what we're doing."

Buchholz, Lester baffle Rays

If you want to see scoring, watch Adrian Peterson run.

If you want to see pitching, watch the Red Sox in the playoffs.

Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz look at Josh Beckett as a role model. Lester and Buchholz look at each other like buddies. The two often can be found on perched on the clubhouse couches, a laptop on the table and guitars in their respective laps, working out chords together for whatever song happens to be on the screen.

A day after Beckett tossed a rain-shortened pseudo-complete game, his best outing in a month, both Buchholz and Lester one-upped the hard-throwing righty. Buchholz threw seven sterling innings, allowing only one run on an infield chopper, and Lester threw eight even better innings, a broken-bat single to left the only hit he allowed until after he'd thrown 90 pitches.

"I didn't show up today saying I was going to pitch better than Josh or pitch better than Clay," Lester said. "I don't work that way. ... As far as competitive nature, no, I'm not trying to come in here and outdo those guys. They threw the ball really, really well. I'm just trying to pitch my game and execute pitches."

When a reporter asked Red Sox manager Terry Francona about the back end of his starting rotation, he lumped his top three pitchers together in that top tier -- perhaps for the first time.

"Buchholz, Beckett and Lester, if they’re pitching the way they’re supposed to, you start filling in those other spots, it’s a little bit easier," Francona said. "If those guys stumble, that’s when it looks a little bit harder."

Beckett, unless his bounce-back start becomes more aberrational than indicative of progress, remains the staff ace. Lester and Buchholz, however, might be the best No. 2 and No. 3 starters in major-league baseball. Lester had already surpassed Beckett in terms of ERA (3.29 to 3.82), and Buchholz (3.66) did so with his sensational effort on Sunday.

Here's a closer look at how Buchholz and Lester combined to surrender just one run and seven hits in 15 innings against the Rays on Sunday:

Clay Buchholz
That changeup. Oh, that changeup.

Buchholz came up with a plus curveball. He's developed a plus slider. He's spent the entire season refining his fastball.

The Rays, however, couldn't touch his changeup.

The 25-year-old righty threw mixed 24 changeups into his repertoire on Sunday. The Rays swung and missed at nine of them -- an absurd number.

All in all, Buchholz induced a season-best 15 swings and misses -- one with his slider, two with his curveball, three with his fastball and nine with that beautiful changeup.

To put that in perspective, Beckett hasn't gotten 15 swings and misses in any of his starts this season. Cy Young front-runner Zack Greinke has induced 15 swings and misses in just three of his 29 starts.

If not for one fluky ground ball up the middle, Buchholz would have escaped seven innings without allowing a single earned run.

"It's unfortunate that a bleeder up the middle gets him," Lester said. "It's unlucky. If the ball's hit a little bit harder, it's an out. But he threw the ball really well. You could tell early on he was really feeling it with his changeup, and he carried that confidence over."

It's easy to see why the changeup was effective. The chart:

The horizontal axis is speed. The vertical axis is up-and-down movement. When Buchholz throws his changeup, it looks exactly the same as his fastball but comes in 10 or 12 miles an hour slower.

Compare that to his final halfway decent start a year ago:

(The colors are different, but you can see how his changeup and his slider run together and how neither are along the same vertical axis as his fastball.)

If a hitter can't see the ball start to break, he's going to read fastball -- and he's going to be way out in front with his swing. That's what Buchholz did to the Rays on Sunday.

It's even more difficult to see the difference during the sunshine of the afternoon under which the skinny Texan was pitching.

"When you change speeds on a day like today when it's bright and it's not bright and it's bright, that makes it even tougher," Francona said. "I even asked (umpire) Randy Marsh when I made a change, I said, 'Can you see?' He said, 'Some of it.' You see part of the ball. Anybody that's changing speeds, it's making it that much more difficult."

Said Buchholz, "It's a pitch I feel I can throw on hitters' counts. It's just a ptich you can throw with the same arm speed as your fastball just to get them off just that little tick and maybe get a mis-hit ball or pop up somebody. It's been a good pitch for me."

Buchholz now has a 1.59 ERA in his last four starts, all wins, and opponents are hitting .170 against him in that span. Through out one lousy start against the White Sox, and Buchholz has a 1.71 ERA since Aug. 8.

It's tough for Francona not to get ahead of himself.

"When he pitches well, it’s hard not to think of the future," the manager said. "I know we’re caught in the present, but he’s a young pitcher that’s trying to establish himself as a winner. When he does that, he certainly makes the future a lot brighter. You can’t find pitching, ... and you’ve got a guy right in your own backyard."

It's hard for us not to get ahead of ourselves, too.

The last time a Red Sox pitcher showed off a changeup like that, though, fans waved Dominican flags in the bleachers and chanted "Ped-ro! Ped-ro!" every five days.

Jon Lester
Not only has Lester surpassed Beckett in several statistical categories this season, he might just have surpassed Beckett as the best power arm in the Red Sox rotation. The lefty touched 97.7 miles per hour on an admittedly generous Fenway Park gun and averaged better than 94 miles in his eight innings.

It was a particularly impressive effort given the false start he'd endured on Friday. He had to rush his warm-up pitches and threw 23 pitches in a driving rain before umpires called a halt to the proceedings.

He then came back two days later and threw 105 pitches across eight shutout innings.

"I was kind of surprised at the way my body responded," he said. "It was almost like an extended bullpen. I'm guessing, but I'm right around 40 pitches in the bullpen and 20 pitches out there. A 60-pitch side has been done by me many times. I've been out there grinding away.

"I figured I'd be a little more sore (on Saturday) than I was, but it turned out to work pretty well."

The lefty didn't command particularly well in the rain on Friday: He allowed three hits and a fly ball to center field, and all four came on either fastballs or cutters that he'd left in the middle of the strike zone:

It was a far different story on Sunday. He left one pitch in the middle of the strike zone -- a first-pitch fastball right down the middle to Jason Bartlett that inexplicably was called a ball -- but the pitches the Rays put in play all were on the edges of the zone:

From there, it was a matter of doing what he's done all season. Lester fanned the side in the third inning on a fastball, a curveball and a fastball. He then walked the dangerous Evan Longoria in the fourth ining but followed that by striking out Ben Zobrist (swinging at a curveball) and Erick Aybar (swinging at a cutter).

Francona could have lifted him for a reliever after he allowed a leadoff single to Dioner Navarro in the top of the eighth. But with Navarro on third base and pinch-hitter Pat Burrell at the plate, Lester struck him out with three straight elevated fastballs and a nasty curveball down and in:

It's easy to compare Buchholz now to Lester a year ago. But even if you take Lester's cancer out of the equation, they're two different pitchers -- and they've traveled two different career arcs.

"Clay came up right away and throws a no-hitter," Lester said. "After his second start, he's already got expectations. It took me a while to build those expecations.

"That's got to be tough. You come up here and throw a no-hitter, and it's like, 'Oh, this is easy.' It's not, and he learned that kind of the hard way -- but I think it's going to make him a better pitcher. As you've seen, I think he's grown up quite a bit, and he's done unbelievably well."

So, too, has Lester.

While Buchholz can make a pretty good argument to be considered the No. 3 starter in the Red Sox rotation, Lester can make a pretty good argument to be considered the best lefthanded pitcher in the major leagues.

Lester's luck turns as Red Sox rally

Jon Lester now has nine no-decisions this season -- including five in his last six starts. He won't remember many of them much more fondly this season than he will the no-decision he recorded in perhaps the most entertaining Red Sox game of the season.

A short summary: Lester lost his win when a nasty curveball took a bad hop in the dirt. Hideki Okajima tried to basket-catch a pop-up and dropped it -- and he then missed a return throw from the catcher to allow the runner to move to second base. Victor Martinez drove in Nick Green in the seventh and eighth innings, a result even more unexpected given that both players spent the first six innings on the bench. Okajima pitched himself into a jam, and Manny Delcarmen pitched himself out of one.

Jason Bay, who had struck out looking twice already on offspeed pitches, hit a home run on an 0-2 offspeed pitch. Jonathan Papelbon met with the media about Billy Wagner in the afternoon and absolutely blew away the White Sox in the evening. Oh, and Jacoby Ellsbury broke the franchise record for stolen bases on the first pitch to Dustin Pedroia in the bottom of the third.

That's the short summary. Here's the long summary.

1. Ellsbury. The 25-year-old speed demon had gone four games without a left before stealing his team-record-tying 54th stolen base of the season on Friday against the Yankees. Tommy Harper was in the house on Sunday, presumably in hopes Ellsbury would break the record that night. It didn't happen.

"Maybe he was hoping I'd break it -- or not break it," Ellsbury said with a smirk. "He was here and he wished me good luck, so I appreciated that."

But Ellsbury didn't steal a record that night -- he went 0-for-5, in fact, and never even got to first base. He then doubled and tripled on Monday but went without a stolen base.

He didn't wait long on Tuesday, though. He jolted a ground-rule double into the Red Sox bullpen and took off on the first pitch Freddy Garcia threw to second baseman Dustin Pedroia. But it didn't stop there. When Pedroia went out to get a slider away and rolled it to first base, Ellsbury cruised home with the game's first run.

"When I go, there's usually a purpose behind it," he said. "I'm not just out there to steal bases. If I was out therej ust to steal bases, I know I could steal quite a few more. But I want to steal at a high success rate to help the team win. That's the most important thing."

2. Lester. The snakebit lefty now has a 2.97 ERA in his last six starts -- and one measly decision to show for it. He fought through fluky adversity in April but has seen his bad luck return in August -- twice has he struck out double-digit batters in six innings, allowing three or fewer runs in the process, and still not earn himself a win.

"It's kind of getting old sometimes," he said. "But you've got to keep plugging away and keep working. The main thing is that we won the ballgame. That's why I'll go home and sleep good tonight."

He didn't look like he was going to sleep good when he left the field in the seventh inning.

He'd gone the whole game without his best stuff, fighting at times to find pitches that would work for him. He'd hit 96 miles an hour in the eighth inning in Toronto last week but saw his velocity track downward as his pitch count climbed from 50 to 75 to 100.

"There are innings when you go out there and you feel really good," he said, "and other innings where you're just battling to find a rhythm. That's what's tough about starting pitching. Sometimes, form inning to inning, you don't know what you have, and sometimes, from game to game, you don't know what you have. You just have to make adjustments from pitch to pitch. At times I did that, and at times I didn't. ... The nice thing is that the times I didn't feel too good about my mechanics or location or what we were trying to do, I was able to minimize the damage and keep the team in the ballgame."

He got himself into a little bit of a jam in the seventh when he allowed a first-pitch single to Paul Konerko and folloewd with a four-pitch walk to Jermaine Dye. A.J. Pierzynski then bunted the runners to second and third. When Alex Rios hit a line drive to J.D. Drew in right field that failed to score Konerko, it looked as though he was about to escape unscathed -- and with the lead.

He threw three straight curveballs to Alexei Ramirez: A called strike at the knees, a nasty swinging strike at the knees and a nastier swinging strike in the dirt. But the third pitch somehow ricocheted off the left edge of the plate and over the right shoulder of catcher Jason Varitek and rolled all the way to the backstop, allowing Ramirez to reach first and Konerko to score from third.

"It hit the right part of the plate with the wrong spin and got over his head," Lester said. "Nine times out of 10, that ball stays in front of the plate and we get out of the inning."

He then caught a little too much of the plate with a sharp cut fastball -- but appeared to catch a break when Nix hit the ball straight at Mike Lowell at third base. The ball hit Lowell square in the glove -- and it bounced away for a run-scoring infield single.

"You couldn't hit 100 fungoes to Mike Lowell and have that exact same result where you hit a ball out of his gloves," Bay said.

An inning-ending strikeout had given way to a two-run rally and a 3-2 White Sox lead and had knocked Lester from the game. The lefty stalked into the dugout and down the stairs and into the clubhouse, a pat on the back from John Farrell his only solace as he stormed away from what looked to be another defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

3. Okajima. On a day the Red Sox acquired a flame-throwing lefty in Billy Wagner, the incumbent finesse lefty demonstrated once again why he's been one of the best middle relievers in baseball over the last three seasons. He inherited Lester's jam and promptly saw the White Sox load the bases when Scott Podsednik rolled a ground ball into no-man's land between first base and the pitcher's mound.

But the 33-year-old from Japan came back with his best Wagner impression, throwing three splitfingered fastballs to Gordon Beckham before blowing an 88-mile-an-hour fastball at the eyes -- OK, easing an 88-mile-an-hour fastball at the eyes -- past him to end the inning.

4. Martinez. You'd have to guess that Terry Francona doesn't often exchange late-night text messages with his catcher. Last night, though, Francona got a message from Martinez around 1:15 a.m. that said, "Let me play."

"I finally wrote back," Francona said after the game, "and I said, 'Leave me alone. You'll come in and pinch-hit and get the game-winning hit.' He said, 'OK. Good night.'"

It didn't quite go that way. But it still was a big spot when Francona pinch-hit Martinez for Alex Gonzalez with one out in the seventh inning and the Red Sox still trailing by a 3-2 score. He sent shortstop Nick Green to run for Jason Varitek at the same time, effectively a double-switch with his shortstop and his catcher.

Martinez didn't wait long, jumping on a Matt Thornton fastball in the middle of the plate and ripping it into left field to score Green from second with the tying run. Martinez knew what to expect from Thornton, having faced him 19 times in his days with the Cleveland Indians, and he didn't expect the 6-foot-6 lefty to mess around at all.

"I just went up there and looked for his strength," Martinez said. "It's no secret. Everybody knows he's got a great fastball. I went up there to go get one and put a good swing on the ball."

Tie game.

5. Delcarmen. Carlos Quentin popped the second pitch he saw in the eighth inning over the pitcher's mound, a pop-up just high enough to make Okajima hesitate rather than calling for it himself. The result was a botched basket catch on the back of the mound to allow the runner to reach. (The play first was ruled an error but later changed to a hit.)

"It's got to be Oki's ball because of the height," Francona said. "It was like somebody punched me in the stomach -- and before I could look even look up, I felt like I got hit with the other hand."

The other hand? That came when a return throw from Martinez to Okajima missed the pitcher's outstretched glove and rolled all the way into center field, allowing Quentin to scramble to second base and threatening to turn a tie game back into a White Sox win.

Francona stuck with Okajima long enough to let him induce a pop fly to Dye and strike out Pierzynski, the last lefty in the White Sox lineup for a little while. But he then went to Delcarmen with two outs and runners on first and third and Rios striding to the plate.

Delcarmen found himself on the periphery of controversy this week after the report that both he and Jonathan Papelbon weren't overly enthusiastic about the then-rumored move for Wagner. He also hasn't exactly been the most lights-out pitcher in the Red Sox bullpen and has seen himself passed by both Daniel Bard and Ramon Ramirez in terms of the faith Francona has in him in big spots. Part of the reason is the fact that he's averaging almost a walk every other inning he pitches. When he comes into a game with runners on base, he often puts more runners on base.

True to form, he missed with back-to-back fastballs to Rios.

(Ozzie Guillen made an interesting call, by the way, in not pinch-hitting Jim Thome for Rios. Rios has hit lefties and righties equally in his career, but Thome has crushed righties to the tune of a 1.045 OPS in his career. It seemed logical that once Francona called for Delcarmen, Guillen would send up Thome. But Delcarmen has a goofy reverse split: He's a righthanded pitcher, but righties have hit .260 off him in his career while lefties have hit just .216.)

The third pitch Delcarmen threw was a 92-mile-an-hour fastball at the letters, and Rios popped it into shallow center field. Pedroia caught it for the third out.

6. Bay. Not much has been consistent about Bay's season. He began the season on a tear that turned "Sign Bay!" into a "Don't Treat On Me"-esque New England anthem, but his OPS numbers dwindled from there -- from 1.123 in April to .978 to .701 to .689 in a miserable July in which he hit just one home run.

But things have taken a turn for the better in August. He went into Tuesday's game with seven home runs for the month, and that meant he was feeling a little better in the eighth inning even though he'd already taken two called third strikes against Garcia in the early going.

"It was a constant battle," he said. "You go up there looking for a pitch you can drive, and I had some early on that I didn't swing at. It's kind of nice to do it when it matters."

It mattered in the bottom of the eighth with the game still tied at 3. David Ortiz had turned on a Thornton curveball and put a nice stroke on the ball and hit a line drive almost to the warning track in right field before Dye hauled it in. Bay then came up and took a called strike on a curveball and fouled off a slider to put himself right into the hole he didn't want to be in.

"The problem is, when I look breaking ball, half the time, that's when I swing at it when it bounces because you're looking for it and you get it," he said. "At that point, he had thrown me two (breaking balls), but it's still in the back of your mind that he throws 96 miles an hour. You're just basically looking for a strike."

Thornton hung a splitter, a terrible two-strike pitch right of the middle of the plate, and Bay crushed it into the Green Monster seats.

"It's easier said than done, just to react, but that's basically what it was," he said.

Green, Martinez and Ellsbury followed with hits to score two more runs and push the score to 6-3, a more than manageable margin for a dominant-looking Papelbon in the ninth.

Postscript: Bay's night ended with, of all things, a drug test. He took longer than usual to emerge into the locker room because, he said, "I couldn't go." Two Red Sox players were tested -- Bay and, of course, Ellsbury.

Did they find anything on the record-breaking base-stealer?

"I'll let you know," he said with a grin.

Pitching rotation: From Point A to Point B

Tim Wakefield will start Wednesday for the Red Sox in place of Brad Penny, the veteran who might have seen his Red Sox career come to an inglorious end in similar fashion to John Smoltz two weeks ago.

Smoltz was rocked by the Yankees at Yankee Stadium, and Penny was rocked by the Yankees at Fenway Park to the tune of eight runs in four innings. Red Sox manager Terry Francona didn't come with the "At least he was throwing strikes" optimism he's brought to previous post-Penny press conferences, and he told reporters this afternoon that Penny had lost his spot in the Red Sox rotation.

"I told him he's got to kind of hang tight a little bit and get through today, and then we'll go from there," Francona said.

Odds are long that Penny will make another start for the Red Sox this season. It would be easy enough to "skip" Penny in the rotation this week, optioning Enrique Gonzalez to Triple-A Pawtucket to make room for Wakefield and filling out the bullpen with extra arms when rosters expand five days later.

The return of Wakefield and the marginalization of Penny means just more upheaval in a Red Sox pitching staff many believed to be the deepest in baseball coming out of spring training. Francona and Theo Epstein developed contingency plan after contingency plan -- and they've had to put almost all of them to use.

It's amazing, really, how the Red Sox depth chart, to borrow a phrase from football, has evolved from its Opening Day incarnation to the way it looks right now:

Late March
1. Josh Beckett
2. Jon Lester
3. Daisuke Matsuzaka
4. Tim Wakefield
5. Brad Penny
6. Justin Masterson (in the bullpen)
7. John Smoltz (rehabbing)
8. Clay Buchholz (in the minors)
9. Michael Bowden (in the minors)
10. Junichi Tazawa (in the minors)

Late August
1. Beckett (3.38 ERA)
2. Lester (3.58 ERA)
Not much has changed at the top of the rotation. Beckett and Lester each have double-digit wins and a couple of complete games to go along with a strikeout-to-walk ratio right around 3.5. Only nine pitchers in the American League have a strikeout-to-walk ratio of better than 3.0, and two of them are atop the Red Sox rotation.

(Roy Halladay, by the way, has 151 strikeouts and 23 walks -- a ratio of 6.57. Amazing.)

3. Buchholz (3.99 ERA)
One thing Buchholz does better than anyone on the Red Sox pitching staff is induce the ground ball. As a team, the Red Sox have a ground ball/fly ball ratio of 0.73; that is, they allow four fly balls for every three ground balls they induce. Both Beckett and Lester do better than most -- they have GB/FB ratios of 0.90 and 0.96, respectively -- but they both still allow more fly balls than ground balls.

Not Buchholz. The 25-year-old righty has a 1.30 GB/FB ratio in his seven starts this seasno, and he's getting outs via the ground ball at a rate of better than 2-to-1. (Double plays, of course, inflate that rate. Still, though, even ground-ball specialist Justin Masterson only had a rate of ground outs to air outs of 1.59.)

If the season ended today, Buchholz almost certainly would start Game 3 of the Red Sox's first-round playoff series.

4. Wakefield (4.31 ERA)
The All-Star knuckleballer surrendered just two hits and one run in 5 2/3 solid innings for Triple-A Pawtucket on Friday and reassured the Red Sox that he could field his position well enough to pitch in the major-league rotation. He had an ERA of 4.31 in 17 starts before he landed on the disabled list with a back injury and, later, with pain related to a sciatic problem in his calf.

"He can cover his position and he's a really good pitcher," Francona told reporters on Saturday, "so I think we're OK."

He gets the edge over the team's No. 5 starter because he, if healthy, almost certainly would pitch Game 4 of any first-round playoff series. His knuckleball might always be a wild card, but he's far more difficult to bring out of the bullpen because of it.

5. Tazawa (3.57 ERA)
The 23-year-old rookie erased the memory of Penny's disastrous start by tossing six shutout innings and, perhaps even more impressively, outpitching A.J. Burnett, the Yankees' No. 2 starter. Tazawa now has a 3.57 ERA in his four appearances in the major leagues and appears to be getting more and more comfortable with his role.

Barring injury, it appears he'll be the fifth starter in the Red Sox rotation the rest of the way.

One thing he did particularly well was attack the strike zone -- especially against the Yankees' lefties. Tazawa pitched mostly away from the lefties in the Detroit lineup in his first start two weeks ago, conceding the Green Monster in order not to give up solid contact on the inside half of the plate. That's a mark of a rookie pitcher, a pitcher who doesn't quite believe that his stuff is good enough on its own.

Against the Yankees, though, he pitched inside to lefties with both his fastball and his curveball, and he got results. Check out the two graphs. First is his strike-zone chart -- as viewed from behind the plate -- against Detroit on Aug. 11...

... followed by his strike-zone chart against the Yankees on Saturday:

He also disguised his curveball far better in terms of release point, not giving away his pitch simply with the location of his hand when he let go of the ball. (The idea is for each pitch to come out of the hand in the same spot, so if the purple data points are distinguishable from the other data points, that's a problem.)

The first chart, again, is that start against Detroit...

... and the second is Saturday against New York.

Tazawa has all the goods to be a terrific major-league pitcher. He's not exactly the ground-ball specialist Buchholz is -- he recorded 11 fly-ball outs on Saturday and just four ground-ball outs -- but he's making a case right now to be part of the Red Sox rotation from the get-go next season.

6. Matsuzaka (rehabbing)
The pitcher who finished third in Cy Young voting is expected to make a rehab start in the Gulf Coast League on Monday and begin to climb the minor-league ladder from there. He might be a maddening pitcher at times, but he did throw seven shutout innings in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series a year ago and was viewed as the team's clear-cut No. 3 starter before the season.

If Matsuzaka returns in time to show off his progress before the season ends, he might again be that No. 3 starter in the team's postseason rotation.

7. Paul Byrd (in the minors)
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the struggles of Penny and Smoltz prompted the Red Sox to sign Byrd to a contract in hopes he could round himself into form in time for the stretch run. The veteran threw 74 pitches in four innings for the PawSox on Wednesday, surrendering three runs on six hits, and he'll likely pitch twice more in Pawtucket before rosters expand on Sept. 1.

8. Bowden (in the minors)
Don't make too much of Bowden's disastrous two innings against the Yankees. For one thing, he's been a starting pitcher all season and not only did he have to pitch in relief on Friday, he had to do so (a) after having warmed up once already only to sit back down; (b) with runners on first and third and no outs; and (c) against a lineup already feeling good about itself, as Francona would say.

If Wakefield gets hurt again and neither Matsuzaka nor Byrd pan out, Bowden likely would become the team's fifth starter in September.

9. Brad Penny (in limbo)
Here's the chart from Friday that tells the story:

Penny threw his fastball with good velocity (95 miles an hour) and even offset it with changeups, sliders and curveballs. But everything he threw was right down the middle of the plate. You can't win pitching like that.

Penny indicated earlier this season he has no desire to pitch out of the bullpen. He might not, however, have any say in the matter. His repertoire actually makes him a better fit as a reliever than as a starter, and he'd have a vested interest in performing well in mop-up duty as he heads back out on the open market this winter. (You can bet the Mets will be watching.)

With rosters due to expand a week from Tuesday, the Red Sox appear to have no reason to release Penny outright. If they can stash him away for seven or eight days, they can use him in mop-up duty out of the bullpen. If something goes terribly wrong in mid-September -- such as half the starting rotation catching swine flu -- he can make a spot start. Otherwise, though, he's all finished pitching meaningful innings in Boston.

N/A. Smoltz (DFA'ed) and Masterson (traded to Cleveland)
Both are gone. Neither is coming back.

Masterson, though, earned his first win as a member of the Cleveland Indians on Thursday night, tossing 6 1/3 strong innings to beat the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. He now has a 3.78 ERA since the Red Sox traded him to the Indians as part of the Victor Martinez deal on July 24.

But you have to give something to get something, right?

Clay Buchholz's year off

Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester are not, in any way, the same pitcher. Lester is a lefty and Buchholz is a righty, for one thing. Lester is more of a power pitcher with an outstanding cutter; Buchholz can touch 96 on the gun but does most of his damage with his changeup and curveball.

But the track record Lester left behind certainly can be a teaching tool as we evaluate Clay Buchholz's first two starts. Lester, like Buchholz, reached the major leagues and pitched into August of his first full season before enduring a rude interruption. (For Buchholz, the interruption was an inability to get major-league hitters out and a demotion to Double-A Portland. For Lester, of course, it was lymphoma.)

Lester, like Buchholz, returned to the major leagues in July and did not exactly pitch like a future ace right away. But Lester, like Buchholz, has always been viewed as someone who could be a No. 1 or No. 2 starter in the Red Sox rotation for years to come.

The Red Sox stayed patient with Lester. You'd better believe -- barring a sudden eagerness on the part of the San Diego Padres to get rid of Adrian Gonzalez -- they'll stay patient with Buchholz, too. Let's go straight to the numbers:

Jon Lester
Overall Triple-A numbers
25 starts, 3.42 ERA, 1.403 WHIP, 1.68 K/BB ratio

First big-league stint
15 starts, 4.76 ERA, 1.648 WHIP, 1.40 K/BB ratio

First two starts of second big-league stint
12 2/3 IP, 4.26 ERA, 2.25 K/BB ratio, 193 pitches, 61% strikes

Clay Buchholz
Overall Triple-A numbers
33 starts, 2.73 ERA, 1.075 WHIP, 3.12 K/BB ratio

First big-league stint
18 starts, 5.56 ERA, 1.601 WHIP, 1.84 K/BB ratio

First two starts of second stint
9 2/3 IP, 3.72 ERA, 1.2 K/BB ratio, 193 pitches, 63% strikes

That last number is interesting. The issue for Buchholz hasn't been results as much as it has been efficiency: He threw 90 pitches through four innings on Wednesday and forced Terry Francona to go to his bullpen far too early.

But while Lester was more efficient in terms of pitches per inning, he actually threw fewer strikes in his first two starts post-cancer than Buchholz has.

Either way: They can't all be Tommy Hanson and tear the major leagues apart right away. Sometimes, even if a pitcher has a little bit of experience in the major leagues, it takes some time to get re-acclimated.

Oh, and in case you're wondering about how Lester fared in his next few major-league starts, here are the next two:
* Aug. 3 at Seattle: 5 IP, 8 H, 4 ER, 4 K, 2 BB, 99 pitches
* Aug. 8 at Los Angeles: 3 1/3 IP, 8 H, 5 ER, 3 K, 3 BB, 93 pitches

His ERA at that point was 6.43. His strike rate still was just 61 percent.

It wasn't until three weeks after his return to the major leagues that he started to look like the Jon Lester who has become one of the most unhittable pitchers in the major leagues:
* Aug. 14 vs. Tampa Bay: 7 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 4 K, 1 BB

(He threw 62 of his 97 pitches for strikes, a rate of 64 percent.)

Two months later, he was pitching in the World Series.