Contrasting Beckett's two Stadium starts

(This is all part of an ongoing effort to understand and explain some of the data included in PitchFX charts, an incredible reservoir of information about pitchers and pitching and everything that goes into that part of the game. You can find those charts for every major-league pitcher in every game at www.brooksbaseball.net.)

Josh Beckett, like fellow ace Jon Lester, found himself knocked around a little bit to start the season. He had a 7.22 ERA at the end of April and allowed 10 hits in three straight starts, a stretch that included a May 5 start at Yankee Stadium in which he escaped having allowed just three earned runs in six innings.

He then went back to Yankee Stadium on Friday night and pitched seven spectacular innings, holding the Yankees without a run on four hits in a game that eventually went deep into the night before Alex Rodriguez went deep against relief Junichi Tazawa.

When you look at the PitchFX charts, you can see some significant differences between the way Beckett attacked the Yankees on May 5 and the way he attacked the Yankees on Aug. 7:

1. Using the whole plate against lefties
Part of the issue with the new Yankee Stadium is the short porch in right field, the only place in the world where Dustin Pedroia can hit an opposite-field home run. A strong lefty can get a ball in on the fists and, as long as he gets his body turned just a little bit, muscle a ball over that fence.

Check out the way Beckett pitched lefties on May 5 -- keeping in mind that the chart is from the perspective of the catcher...


... and the way Beckett pitched lefties on Aug. 7:

He consciously pitched away from the inside half of the plate against lefties -- and switch-hitters like Mark Teixeira and Nick Swisher, naturally hitting lefthanded against him -- and instead worked the outer half. He didn't give lefties a chance to take the ball over the fence in right field, but he did give them a chance to extend their arms and a chance to dive out over the plate a little bit. If Beckett gives up the inside half of the plate, he gives up quite a bit of his effectiveness.

The next time he pitched at Yankee Stadium, he didn't pitch to the ballpark. He pitched his game. He attacked the inside half of the plate. In doing so, he regained control of every at-bat.

(One thing he also did: He buried his curveball. Rather than throwing his curveball in a spot where it could be hit, he threw it down and in and even in the dirt occasionally. If it's going to be a strikeout pitch, that's what he has to do with it.)

2. Reintroducing the two-seam fastball and changeup
Beckett is dangerous enough with two pitches. When he can throw a third pitch with effectiveness, it makes him all the more lethal.

Check out two more charts, first from May 5...

and, second, from Aug. 7:

It helped that he threw his fastball with a little more velocity, of course. But the key to pitching isn't speed as much as it is differential and timing: The more a pitcher can keep hitters off-balance, the better. Throwing a 95-mile-an-hour four-seam fastball isn't going to help much if your two-seam fastball is 92 or 93 with similar movement. You might as well ditch the two-seamer and just throw four-seamers all night long.

In Beckett's Aug. 7 start at Yankee Stadium, though, he found a way to differentiate his two-seam fastball from his four-seam fastball. Both pitches had the same type of movement but were separated by six or seven miles per hour rather than three or four miles per hour.

On top of that, he threw his two-seamer with consistency. Graphs like the above graphs can be overwhelming, but what's often most telling is how closely grouped the points of data are. A pitcher always strives to throw his pitches with consistency, to have the same velocity and the same movement on every fastball and simply to vary the location and pitch selection to keep the hitter off-balance. If fastballs show different amounts of movement, they're going to be difficult to control and thus throw with pinpoint control.

The chart from May 5 shots Beckett throwing two-seamers and changeups with varying wildly varying amounts of movement. You couldn't draw a circle around that group of data points; you'd have to draw an awkward-looking oval. His changeups and two-seamers from Aug. 7, though, fit neatly into a confined area and indeed could be contained within a pretty small circle.

That's what consistency and pinpoint control looks like.

Making do without Kevin Youkilis

(Update: Youkilis has been suspended for five games and will begin serving his suspension on Wednesday night.)

The Red Sox will be without the services of Kevin Youkilis for between five and eight games over the next couple of weeks, the severity of his punishment for charging the mound likely to be announced at some point today.

Red Sox manager Terry Francona, who was ejected the same inning for an argument unrelated to the brawl, seemed resigned Tuesday to losing his best hitter and most versatile infielder.

"I'm sure something will happen," he said. "We'll just wait and see. Youk's a real good player, and his versatility makes it even better for us. But we have guys -- we should be able to do this. You don't want to lose any players, but I'm sure something will happen."

Might the throw of the helmet tack on a game or two?

"Yeah, probably," Francona said.

To take a quick look at history, Coco Crisp charged the mound against Tampa Bay a year ago and had a suspension of seven games handed down the next day. Crisp appealed the suspension and played for the next two weeks or so before a conference call with league officials could be scheduled, and he then served a five-game suspension at the end of June.

(Crisp did not throw his helmet the way Youkilis did, but he did throw a punch, and that might even things out.)

It's unlikely the league will allow Youkilis to drag out his appeal as long as Crisp did given how little time is left in the season. The Red Sox travel to Texas for a three-game set on Friday and host the Yankees for a three-game set starting Aug. 21, and that means it might be most convenient for Youkilis to start serving his suspension on Aug. 24, right in the middle of a lengthy homestand.

Either way, though, Youkilis is going to miss some time.

The Red Sox will have to piece things together without him -- and the biggest impact actually won't come at the plate, particularly given the way Francona has managed his lineup to this point.

Mike Lowell will play third base just about full-time during the suspension with Nick Green or Chris Woodward perhaps being able to spell him for a day or two. (Woodward played third base 15 times for the Seattle Mariners earlier this year.) Lowell has made just five starts -- including just three in the field -- since the team's July 31 trade for Victor Martinez, and the Red Sox have made it a point of emphasis to give him frequent days off as they juggle their glut of corner infielders.

"I don't think we need to take credit for him swinging the bat well," Francona said. "He’s been a good hitter for a lot of years. I have a feeling his hip hopefully feels a little bit better. I think he would like to play more. I completely understand that. I would hope his hip feels better as he doesn’t grind on it as much, but I don’t think we need to take credit for him being a good hitter."

But the 35-year-old is hitting .333 and OPS'ing 1.107 during that span, and he's been among the team's most productive hitters in the month of August:

* Jason Bay, 1.303 (including a home run on Tuesday)
* Youkilis, 1.133
* Lowell, 1.107
* Dustin Pedroia, 1.044
* J.D. Drew, .770
* Victor Martinez, .755
* Jacoby Ellsbury, .666
* David Ortiz, .339
* Jason Varitek, .310

(As an aside: It's getting more and more obvious that Lowell needs to be taking at-bats away from Ortiz, whose OPS is only six points higher than Lowell's batting average. Ortiz has 40 plate appearances in August so far, and Lowell has just 25. If Lowell keeps tearing the cover off the ball during Youkilis' suspension, he's eventually going to force Francona's hand.)

Playing Lowell every day in place of Youkilis -- with Victor Martinez and Casey Kotchman sharing time at first base -- isn't going to ruin the Red Sox offense.

Defensively, though, it's going to be a problem.

It's been well-documented here and elsewhere: Lowell has been a woeful defensive third baseman this season. His Ultimate Zone Rating now is minus-9.9, third-worst among all third basemen, and if he'd played as many games as the Rangers' Michael Young, he'd be second-worst among all third basemen. He's made just nine errors all year, but his limited mobility means it's almost impossible for him to get to anything hit more than two steps to his left or to bunts or slow ground balls in front of him.

Youkilis hasn't been a spectacular defensive third baseman this year -- his UZR is minus-1.7 after coming in at 4.8 last season -- but his athleticism has given him a chance to make some plays Lowell has not.

On top of that, by playing Kotchman or Martinez at first base, the Red Sox have to make a compromise in some area. Kotchman has never become the Will Clark-type hitter many expected him to be, but he is a terrific defensive first baseman. His UZR this season is plus-3.8, and that's coming off back-to-back seasons in which it was at least 5.1.

According to John Dewan's Fielding Bible plus-minus system, Kotchman has been the sixth-best defensive first baseman in the major leagues this season. (The best? Youkilis.)

Martinez, on the other hand, is an All-Star hitter but an average defensive first baseman -- and certainly not in the category of either Kotchman or Youkilis. He certainly could play catcher most of the time and take at-bats away from a clearly struggling Varitek, but if Francona hasn't made that choice to this point, he's not going to do it while Youkilis is suspended.

Either way, the suspension of Youkilis is going to cost the Red Sox runs both through diminished defensive range at third base and through subpar offensive production at either first base or catcher.

On the other hand, if Lowell plays lousy defense but keeps crushing the ball at third base, he might just convince Francona he needs to be in the lineup every day as the team's designated hitter.

"I don't know why you wouldn't want good bats in your lineup," Lowell said after the game, his tone that of a veteran who doesn't want to rock the boat but who also wants to answer questions honestly and get a point across. "When you're swinging the bat well, you want to play every day. I stand by that."

That, my friends, is what you call a silver lining.

Tazawa settles down after wild first inning

(Thanks again to brooksbaseball.net for the PitchFX charts.)

Junichi Tazawa's first inning -- Nick Green error or no Nick Green error -- looked quite a bit different than his final four innings. He repeatedly let Detroit hitters off the hook in the first inning, going to a two-strike count six times and an 0-2 count four times and striking out exactly no one. Even when he got outs, he repeatedly let hitters extend at-bats far beyond what he needed to do.

"We somewhat self-destructed defensively a little bit to extend that inning," pitching coach John Farrell said. "That was completely out of his control. The thing he did that was most impressive was continue to execute pitches despite a couple of ground balls that could have shortened up the first inning."

Said Tazawa through a team interpreter, "I was wondering, 'What will happen? Will I be OK?' It was an unsteady time for me."

By the fifth inning, though, it appeared that he'd figured things out. He jumped ahead of Clete Thomas by an 0-2 count -- the same Clete Thomas who had singled up the middle on a 1-2 pitch in the first inning -- and put him away with a fastball up and out of the strike zone.

"I think, in the first two innings, my control was not as good as it should have been," Tazawa said. "But by the third inning, I was getting more used to it, and I think the pitches responded to that."

Check out these two charts. The key to the approach plot is to imagine it from the catcher's point of view, meaning everything off to the right side of the chart is outside and everything to the left side is inside, be it again lefties or righties.

Tazawa's first inning

Tazawa's final four innings

The biggest thing to notice: The Tigers put two pitches in play (blue dots) that were up and over the middle in the first inning alone: Curtis Granderson's pop-up to short and Brandon Inge's run-scoring double to left field.

In the final four innings, though, Tazawa effectively kept the ball out of the middle of the plate -- and, more importantly, kept the Tigers from putting any of those pitches in play. The only ball the Tigers hit that could be considered up and over the plate was Ryan Raburn's bunt attempt in the fifth inning.

"His fastball command, particularly down in the strike zone, and his split got better as the game went along," Farrell said. "He was very impressive for the five innings he pitched tonight."

Tazawa also didn't waste pitches well off the plate the way he did in the first inning. His waste pitches instead were curveballs and changeups in the dirt, pitches that are going to induce more swings and misses than fastballs well outside.

His chart from the first inning looks like a dartboard in which his misses seem evenly spaced out on all sides. His chart from the final four innings looks like that of a pitcher who has a game plan -- keep the ball down and away, particularly to the Tigers' righthanded hitters, taking the Green Monster away as an ally. (He attacked the zone more against lefties, venturing up and out of the zone in his strikeouts of Clete Thomas and Alex Avila.)

"The action and the consistency to his secondary pitches, particularly his split, became a little more sharp (after the first inning) and a little bit more consistent down in the strike zone to get some swings and misses," Farrell said.

You can't take too much out of one start. John Smoltz, after all, settled down after a rough first inning in Washington back in June but never again recaptured the promise he'd shown in the final four innings of that outing.

But seeing Tazawa execute his game plan through the final four innings against the Tigers on Tuesday night still had to bring a smile to the face of everyone in the Red Sox organization.

Papelbon revamped mechanics after meltdown

Jonathan Papelbon has not allowed a run and has allowed just one hit in his last 5 2/3 innings, striking out six and walking no one in the process. He hasn't allowed a base-runner in his last four outings -- the first time all season he's gone four outings without allowing a hit and just the third time all season he's gone four outings without walking anyone.

It's not just a hot streak, either. Papelbon clearly got to work on his mechanics in the aftermath of his July 28 meltdown against the Oakland Athletics, and it's paying off.

Among the areas of emphasis:

1. His set position
For most of his career, Papelbon has come to a set position with his hands at his belt -- but he made a significant change going into this season. It's pretty easy to see when you look at them side-by-side.

Here's the final out of the 2007 World Series:

Here's the final out of a game in early May:

Here's the double Papelbon surrendered to rookie Tommy Everidge, the biggest hit of that three-run inning:

Here's the Papelbon's four-out save against Detroit on Monday night. He brings his glove once again to his chest, just above the letters, but when he comes to a set position, his glove is almost resting on his belt buckle. It's a difference of almost a foot.

Papelbon and Farrell revamped his set position in the offseason and clearly have spent this season making tweaks as the closer's effectiveness has diminished. (His ERA hasn't been terrible, but he's allowing baserunners at a far higher clip this season than in seasons past.)

"There were a couple of benefits that came from it, and there were a couple of things that were drawbacks as well," Farrell said. "The benefit is that he’s used his legs more, and his bounce-back and his recovery time has been much shorter this year -- but he was sacrificing some fastball command and consistent location."

It was Papelbon who brought up the idea of making the adjustment, of returning to the mechanics that worked so well for him last season.

"The biggest thing was, it allowed his arms to relax," Farrell said. "In the previous set position, if you can recall and visualize, his back elbow was rigid and pointed outward, and it didn’t give him the natural fluidity that he’s showing now."

2. His release point
Every pitcher in the world knows the importance of consistency, the importance of throwing the ball from the same spot with the same delivery every time. Without a consistent delivery and a consistent point of release, a pitcher can't depend on his fastball go where he wants and his offspeed pitches to break the way he wants.

Papelbon's release points on July 28



Papelbon's release points on Aug. 10


Look at his release point on July 28 and and how much it varied. Look at his release point from Monday night and how tightly all the points are grouped. It's subtle, but it's there. That's a sign that he's made it an emphasis to find some consistency with where the ball comes out of his hand.

His release point actually comes back to his set position, too. With his hands set stiffly at his chest, he tended to let his motion take him "east-west," as Farrell said, rather than directly toward home plate. That almost certainly contributed to a lack of consistency in his release point.

"With the adjustment, it's allowed him to stay more on line and more true through the spot," Farrell said.

(Thanks to Dan Brooks and brooksbaseball.net for the Pitch f/x charts. All of the information is gleaned from MLB.com's Gameday data.)

Red Sox just keep grinding

"The biggest thing to do is just to keep grinding."
-- Red Sox manager Terry Francona before Monday's game

Dustin Pedroia came to the plate with Jacoby Ellsbury on first base -- soon to be on second base -- during the first inning of Friday's game against the Yankees. Pedroia worked a four-pitch walk, perfectly happy to get on base in front of Victor Martinez and Kevin Youkilis.

It was only because Martinez grounded into a double play and, after a Youkilis walk, David Ortiz grounded out to second base that the inning became the first of the 31 consecutive innings in which the Red Sox did not score a run.

Pedroia came to the plate again with Ellsbury on second base during the first inning of Monday's game against the Tigers. Edwin Jackson didn't give him a chance to work his walk, though. A missed bunt attempt -- anything to get the runner over, right? -- and a tough fastball in on the hands put the second baseman in an 0-2 hole.

"Once I get two strikes me, I'm not just trying to hit the ball to right field to get Ells over," Pedroia said. "I'm trying to just put a good at-bat together."

Pedroia set about doing what he does so well -- he laid off a fastball high and a slider in the dirt and a fastball off the plate away to run the count to 3-2. He then fouled off a full-count slider at the knees to force Jackson to throw one more pitch.

The next pitch Jackson threw actually wasn't that bad of a pitch. He threw a 93-mile-an-hour fastball down and in and didn't really give Pedroia a chance to get his arms extended. But the reigning American League MVP seemed to sense a fastball was coming and was out in front of it, taking a big swing and depositing it in the Green Monster seats for a two-run home run.

Just like that, the Red Sox had scored as many runs as they'd scored on Friday, Saturday and Sunday combined.

But Pedroia wasn't the only one to get a big hit, and he wasn't the only one to grind out an at-bat. Nine of the first 12 hitters of the game saw at least four pitches, and the only ones who didn't saw their at-bats end with hits. Eight straight batters in the first inning worked the count -- except J.D. Drew, who singled up the middle on the first pitch -- and eight straight batters either hit the ball hard or drew a walk.

The second inning was much the same story. Nick Green worked his way back from a 1-2 count, refusing to chase a couple of pitches down and out of the strike zone, and jumped on a fastball up and over the middle and launched it over the Green Monster. Even though Pedroia and Martinez both struck out, they both did so after lengthy battles that only served to drive Jackson's pitch count up.

By the end of the fourth inning, Jackson was done.

"We had long at-bats, and that's huge," Pedroia said. "To get their starter out of the game after four innings, especially playing them four times, that's pretty good."

The result -- the Red Sox survived a late rally to earn a 6-5 win -- in some ways served as a validation for the grind-it-out approach the Red Sox took with them to New York. They just hadn't gotten anything for their efforts. The Red Sox already ranked third in the major leagues in pitches seen per plate appearance (3.92), well above the league average of 3.83, and they actually maintained that approach pretty well in New York in the face of a total lack of results:

Thursday: 4.11 pitches per at-bat
Friday: 4.63
Saturday: 4.13
Sunday: 4.21

As a team, overall, the Red Sox saw 4.24 pitches per at-bat against the Yankees over the weekend -- a pretty impressive feat the way the home team's hurlers were pounding the strike zone.

"Those guys, they're pounding the strike zone, and they didn't walk a lot of guys," said left fielder Jason Bay, who watched most of the series from the bench with an injured hamstring. "It's about throwing quality strikes. I don't care if it's Single-A or the big leagues: ... If they're putting it where they want it, it's going to be hard to put a good swing on it."

Next up: Detroit rookie Rick Porcello, who threw 84 pitches but didn't get out of the fifth inning (4.0 pitches per at-bat) when he faced the Red Sox in early June.

Just keep grinding. Just keep grinding.

Wakefield's simulated game

If you, like many, have never seen a simulated game, here's a taste:

Tim Wakefield stepped to the mound at Fenway Park around 3 this afternoon with George Kottaras behind the plate and Josh Reddick and Chris Woodward holding bats. Manager Terry Francona and pitching coach John Farrell watched from behind a screen set up in the middle of the field, and general manager Theo Epstein and two of his assistants watched from outside the foul lines.

Woodward hit first, working the count to 2-2 before hitting a bloop to shallow center field that likely would have been caught. (If not: Ghostrunner on first!) Reddick stepped in next. Woodward followed. And so on.

Wakefield threw 51 pitches to those two hitters, the equivalent of three innings. He then was asked to cover first base with bullpen coach Gary Tuck hitting ground balls and Farrell making throws as the first baseman.

The final exercise came when Woodward laid down a couple of bunts, and Wakefield had to scramble off the mound to field them. All went well until the final bunt -- on which the 42-year-old knuckleballer tumbled to the turf with a grimace and a loud grunt and had to throw to first base while seated on the grass. He came up with a grin, though, so all appeared to be well.

"I think he showed you the athleticism he possesses," Francona said with a smirk.

The Red Sox will wait to see how Wakefield feels in the morning before making any decisions. Pitching hasn't been the issue all along; the problem has been a balky calf that hasn't let him scramble off the mound to field bunts and ground balls. If that feels OK when he reports to the ballpark on Tuesday, he and the Red Sox will take the next step in his road back to the mound.

"His calf is not 100 percent," Francona said. "It doesn’t affect him when he pitches. But it’s going to be important to see how he bounces back after running around out there. … We don’t want to make a mistake and pitch him too quickly."

Wilhite making his move in Patriots' secondary

(This so far has been almost exclusively a Red Sox blog since the end of football season in December, but look for more Patriots coverage in this space as training camp continues and the regular season begins.)

Last Thurday's Union Leader story about the Patriots' two second-year cornerbacks focused primarily on former second-round pick Terrence Wheatley -- mostly because Wheatley was the only one of the two who happened to be on the field on Wednesday. If you don't practice, you're not available to the media, and Wheatley therefore was the only guy available to tell the story of his offseason.

But Jonathan Wilhite has been back on the field since Thursday, and he appears to be rising up the depth chart ahead of Wheatley as well as, possibly, free-agent signee Leigh Bodden.

"He’s got a good variety of skills, and that’s always valuable when you can do different things with the same player," Patriots coach Bill Belichick said. "That helps him match up against different receivers, some fast receivers, some quick receivers, different guys that can run after the catch."

With Springs out, in fact, Wilhite has received extra reps with the first-team unit and had more of a chance to show what he can do.

"It's an opportunity for all our cornerbacks," he said. "It's a chance to go out and get some physical reps and play against some good receivers."

Springs actually has taken Wilhite under his wing a little bit, not treating the second-year corner as competition as much as a younger brother with a desire to learn the game.

"Shawn helped me out a lot," Wilhite said. "The guy has been in the game a long time, so he gives me pointers and things in the meetings and even out on the field that's going to help me down the road. I'm blessed to be in that situation."

The best piece of advice he's gotten?

"Be patient," Wilhite said. "This is a fast game, and he told me just to trust my ability and be patient."

But Wilhite might not have to be patient much longer. He played his way into the starting lineup by December of his rookie season, starting the team's final four games and even intercepting a pass against the Oakland Raiders. He finished the season with 28 tackles -- just six behind Adalius Thomas and ahead of Jarvis Green and Mike Wright.

"It was a dream," he said. "I got a chance to go out and compete and show what I could do. The guys around me -- especially my safeties, James (Sanders) and Brandon (Meriweather) -- helped me out, got me lined up, and I just tried to play ball."

Eight months later, does he see himself as a starter?

"Not at all," he said. "I see myself wherever they put me. Right now, I'm with the (first team), but that doesn't mean anything. It's training camp. Depths charts change every week, so we'll see what happens."

Asked and answered: Ben Cherington

To go along with today's Union Leader story about Kendal Volz and the approach of the Red Sox to signing draft picks, here's a full "Asked and Answered" with Red Sox assistant general manager Ben Cherington.

The deadline to sign draft picks -- Volz was a ninth-round pick of the Red Sox in June and is the lone college player drafted by the Red Sox in the top 15 rounds who has not yet signed -- is Aug. 17.

With the negotiations with Volz, because he wanted to work on his mechanics and also because he wasn't drafted as highly as he expected, did you expect all along that it would take until August until he signed (if at all)?
We knew when we drafted him that he was coming off a year that was probably a little less than what his expectations were. He was a high-profile guy coming off last summer and his first two years at Baylor, and, in the spring, he was one of the higher-profile college pitchers. He didn’t have the spring I’m sure he wanted to have. When we drafted him, we knew he wanted to go out and pitch this summer and regain his form if he could and show people what he could do. It wasn’t about knowing that negotiations would take a certain amount of time. We knew he wanted to pitch, and we knew we’d get a chance to get to see him more.

How common is it for teams and players to do that, to just shelve negotiations until the last couple of weeks before the deadline?
I don’t think it’s uncommon. There are college players every year that use the summer leagues as a forum to show what they can do or to try to get back to form. The two months or however long it is from the draft to Aug. 16 is valuable time. Sometimes teams use it to gather more information and evaluation and to keep talking, and sometimes the player wants to use it to show what he can do and to work on things. Sometimes both the team and player want to use it.

What are the factors that determine whether a player signs quickly and easily or a player either doesn't sign or takes all summer to sign? Is it mostly a matter of money, or is it usually similar to what Volz is doing now?
It can be all of the above. There are times in the draft when, on the day of the draft, you feel like your evaluation of the player is complete and you’ve got all the information you need to make that evaluation and the player is very clear about what he’ll sign for and you value him at a spot in the draft that’s consistent with that kind of signing bonus. Those are the ones that are taken and sign quickly. With the other scenario, there’s a variety of other types of cases. Generally, they all lead toward needing more time for the team to continue the evaluation – maybe they didn’t see enough of the player in the spring or have information missing or the player was hurt a little bit and needs to get healthy. Sometimes the player isn’t sure whether he wants to sign or go to college and needs more time to consider that option.

From our perspective, certainly, there are players that we feel like are good candidates to sign right away because our evaluation is done, it’s clear what the asking price is, and it matches up with the evaluation. Those are the guys who are out playing now. But there also are times when using the rest of the summer makes sense.

Is it easier or harder to place a specific value on a draft pick than on a major-league free agent?
It’s really a very similar exercise as in the major leagues. The big difference is that it’s not a free-agent market – there’s only one team negotiating with the player. You evaluate the talent and you evaluate and identify what you think is the upside and what the potential is down the road, and then you compare that to the rest of the draft class and where that player’s talent matches up relative to his draft class. You can go back in time and look at other players in similar situations in the last two or three years and build a case for why a player fits into a certain category in terms of his signing bonus by comparing a player to a similar pick in years past or a player with a similar profile or ability in years past. That process is fairly similar to what we do with big-league free agents except, again, there’s only one team involved in the negotiation.

How do you deal with the temptation to go a little bit further with a guy so you don't let him go and get burned later the way, say, not signing someone like Matt LaPorta probably hurts a little bit now?
That temptation can be there, and that’s similar with any personnel decision we make whether it’s a trade or a major-league free agent. Anytime you’re evaluating a player, you have to place a value on that player and an evaluation of what you’re willing to pay. Sometimes it’s in the form of players that you’re paying in a trade, and sometimes it’s in the form of a contract or a signing bonus. You’ve got to evaluate what that is and place a value on it. Sometimes you do go a little bit past what is the point of pain to get a deal done, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to be true to your evaluation, and you’ve got to be true to how you evaluated the player at that time. If not, we inevitably will start to become inefficient with our money.

You can always look back in hindsight – you bring up LaPorta, and I don’t know what it would have taken because we never got that close – but had we gone further, depending how much further, one might say that would have been a good decision. But we have hundreds of players that we negotiate with every year – be it in the draft or international free agency or whatever the market is – and if we live by that principle that, with every single one, we’re always tempted to go further and get a deal done, we’re going to be spending a lot of money and not getting much for it. It’s hard to evaluate in retrospect. We do look back, and we look back at cases that we didn’t get right. But we have to try to stay disciplined to what the evaluation is at the time. ...

When you’re trying to buy a house, you start with a number that you feel really good getting a house for. We all know how often you usually get to that number. You generally have to compromise in some way, and you bump up at a point where it starts to feel painful.

Do you have any fun stories or anecdotes about negotiations with some of the players who have come up through the system in recent years, what those negotiations were like?
No, nothing that comes to mind right away. Looking back, it’s always very easy to see the truth more clearly. Pedroia signed for whatever he signed for – I wasn’t involved personally, but, at the time, I’m sure he was asking for more money. I’m sure we said, at the time, ‘This is our offer, and we believe it’s fair because of X, Y and Z. We compare you to this player and that player.’ Well, fast-forward five years, and he was probably right. He was probably worth more money. But there are just as many examples of the opposite where, in retrospect, it wasn’t worth it. That kind of thing happens all the time.

It's time to let the steroid thing go

We now have two choices in the aftermath of David Ortiz's "I'm innocent, but I'm not 100 percent sure why" press conference at Yankee Stadium:

1. We can pay close attention as more and more lawyers illegally leak names and as the union pursues every legal remedy to prove that no players actually did anything wrong.
2. We can let the whole thing go.

Look, everyone did something, and we're learning more and more that not everyone who did something injected themselves with a needle. Bronson Arroyo told the Boston Herald's Michael Silverman that he used androstenedione from 1998 until testing began in 2003 -- but he didn't really even stop then until he heard a rumor that it might be laced with steroids and thus turn an otherwise clean sample into a positive test.

By 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had banned the sale of androstenedione and lumped it in with anabolic steroids, and that meant a positive test for Andro meant a positive test for performance-enhancing drugs.

"Before 2004, none of us paid any attention to anything we took," he told the Herald. "Now they don't want us to take anything unless it's approved. But back then, who knows what was in stuff? The FDA wasn't regulating stuff, not unless it was killing people or people were dying from it."

Andro, though, isn't an anabolic steroid. (To be an anabolic steroid, something must directly promote cell growth; the very definition of anabolism describes "the constructive part of metabolism.") Andro is what's called a "prohormone," a substance that has little hormonal affect itself but is intended to be a percursor to -- and have similar but not identical effects to -- anabolic steroids.

The possession and use of anabolic steroids has been illegal in the United States since Congress enacted the Controlled Substances Act in 1970. The possession and use of Andro has been illegal in the United States since the FDA deemed it illegal in 2004.

To sum up:
1. If you use anabolic steroids, you were always cheating.
2. If you use Andro, you weren't cheating until 2004 but would be cheating now.
3. If you use human growth hormone, an amino acid with so few negative side effects it's used as a therapy by both children and adults, you're sort of cheating, but no one has a good test to discover if you're cheating or not, anyway.
4. If you use creatine -- such as in EAS strength-building products, supplements that build muscle mass and enhance recovery time with only slight health risks, supplements endorsed by the Phillies' Chase Utley and football players Matt Hasselbeck and Brady Quinn -- you're not cheating.

If you're not confused, well, you're smarter than I am.

In theory, the health risks are what determine what's illegal and what isn't -- but Hank Aaron isn't saying steroid use is wrong because he's worried about the adverse health affects of Barry Bonds or David Ortiz. He's worried about his legacy and his records. Baseball officials are worried about the legacy of the game itself -- or, at least, the public perception of that legacy.

Look at it this way: Use of androstenedione and other steroid precursors wasn't outlawed until 2004, and even the ban on anabolic steroids wasn't enforced until 104 -- or 96 or 83 or whatever number you'd like to believe -- players tested positive for a performance enhancer of some kind.

There were rules. There was just no enforcement.

Imagine if there were speed limits posted all over the roads but zero police officers out there enforcing them, and you could get a tangible benefit -- I don't know, a raise -- from getting to work faster every day. Driving too fast much put your health at risk a little bit, but there were no legal ramifications to driving 80 instead of 70 on I-93 or I-95.

Would you do it? Would you speed?

Silly question, of course. You already do, anyway.

Baseball players are like anyone else: They're going to do whatever they can to maximize their production and get that edge over their competition so they can make the most money they can before their time runs out. Some players probably chose not to use performance enhancers, and those players probably didn't get to the major leagues.

Here's another one:
1. Amphetamines have been banned in baseball, and their removal from clubhouses has been seen as a way of purifying the game. Amphetamines have limited negative side effects, however, unless they're abused.
2. Every player on every team these days drinks Full Throttle or Amp or Red Bull or Five-Hour Energy before every game. Dustin Pedroia usually drinks two.
3. Every human being in the world drinks coffee before work.

Heck, players still take cortisone shots all the time to get themselves back on the field faster. Not only is cortisone a steroid hormone, but it has adverse health effects: It masks pain, and pain is the natural sensation of the body announcing that you should stop doing something because you're doing damage to your muscles or ligaments or bones.

That certainly enhances performance. But if you wanted to get really radical and ban cortisone shots, where would you draw the line? Advil?

Mark McGwire mostly is villified because he used Andro back in 1998 -- six years before it was illegal to use Andro. David Ortiz had to stand up at a press conference and announce that he didn't use "steroids" -- but, then again, he wasn't sure what he did use.

We can try to wrap our heads around it if we feel ambitious.

The easier choice might just be to let the whole thing go.

How Rios-to-Chicago could affect the Red Sox

With the Red Sox lineup old and getting older, there's a general wariness about giving a big-money contract to Jason Bay that would take the left fielder through his 35th or 36th or 37th birthday. The Yankees have shown a willingess to extend players into their late 30s, and it might take a similar type of gamble for the Red Sox to sign Bay.

For a guy who already has subpar defensive range and who hasn't exactly torn the world apart in June and July, a four- or five-year contract is a risky prosposition. Particularly in the post-amphetamine culture of baseball, the best teams are the ones who tie their fortunes to more 27-year-olds than 37-year-olds.

At the same time, though, someone has to play left field next season for the Red Sox.

Josh Reddick has made a name for himself in his two weeks in the major leagues but still probably is someone who has a better chance to play every day in Boston in 2011 than in 2010. Going from Bay (a cleanup hitter at this stage in his career) to Reddick (a No. 8 hitter at this stage in his career) would be a huge short-term downgrade.

Matt Holliday, on the other hand, will command the same type of long-term deal as Bay -- particularly in light of the hot streak he's enjoyed since getting out of the hitters' wasteland that is Oakland.

(The bet here is that Holliday signs with the Yankees and that Bay signs with the Seattle Mariners.)

What the Red Sox will need to find is a stop-gap solution in left field for a year or two until Reddick is ready to take over the job on a full-time basis -- or, at least, until Reddick is ready to play right field while J.D. Drew moves over to left.

That's where yesterday's Alex Rios news comes in.

The Toronto Blue Jays placed Rios on waivers, a routine exercise for most teams at this time of year, but likely didn't expect him to be claimed. Rios signed a seven-year, $70 million contract extension a little more than a year ago that will take him through the 2014 season. More than $65 million of that money still is due him -- including $12 million in 2011 and 2012 and $12.5 million in 2013 and 2014.

A player with that type of contract usually passes easily through waivers -- particularly given the disappointing way in which Rios' career has progressed over the last two seasons. Rios hit .302 and slugged .516 as a 25-year-old in 2006 but has seen his numbers tumble in the three years since. So far this season, he's hitting .261 and slugging .420 with fewer home runs (13) than David Ortiz.

Various teams have denied making a claim on Rios, and reports have speculated that the Chicago White Sox were the team that made the claim. ESPN's Buster Olney speculated that the White Sox could use Rios to give them a little extra flexibility this season and to take over in center field or left field for the next few seasons. The idea does make sense: The White Sox, after all, already showed a willingness to take on salary with their trade for Jake Peavy shortly before the July 31 trade deadline.

With the Blue Jays eager to dump salary, there will be a strong temptation just to let the White Sox have Rios in order to clear $12 million a year off the books for the next five seasons.

Here's where it starts to affect the Red Sox.

The second tier of free-agent outfielders already looks to include names like Bobby Abreu and Mike Cameron. But the White Sox hold an option of outfielder Jermaine Dye for $12 million -- and they can buy him out for $1 million if, say, they have a younger outfielder on the books for big money.

Dye hit 44 home runs and OPS'ed 1.006 as recently as 2006 and hit 34 home runs and OPS'ed .885 just last season. He has 24 home runs and an OPS of .866 so far this season, his fifth with the White Sox. He consistently sees between 3.98 and 4.15 pitches per at-bat, a number that slots him right in with the best pitch-grinders the Red Sox have.

Should the White Sox claim Rios and let Dye go after this season, he might be a perfect one-year stopgap to play left field for the Red Sox for $10 million. Yes, he'd be 36 years old at the start of the season, but it's far more palatable to give a one-year deal to a 36-year-old than to extend him for two or three years. (The Red Sox will learn that the hard way when they either go into next season with or absorb quite a bit money to ship out Mike Lowell and David Ortiz.)

The only issue for Dye is that he's a California native who consistently has put teams in the Northeast, including Boston, on his no-trade lists. If he has other options available, he might prefer not to play on the opposite coast from his family.

Either way, though, his presence on the market would help the Red Sox. If Dye signed with the Los Angeles Angels, for example, it might bring down the price on Abreu -- and as long as Abreu and Cameron and Dye all are on the open market, the Red Sox will have leverage in their negotations with Bay.

It's going to be a fascinating offseason for the Red Sox. Should the White Sox add Rios and buy out Dye, it'll only get more fascinating.

Welcome back, Red Sox bullpen

Well, you can't pin that one on the pitching.

Not only did Josh Beckett pitch seven sensational innings -- he now has an ERA+ of 151, fifth-best in the American League -- but a Red Sox bullpen that has seen its ups and downs over the last couple of months pitched 7 2/3 more sensational innings to push Friday night's epic to 15 innings.

The impressive outing from the group of pirate impersonators -- they wear shirts with a skull and crossbones that say, "The beatings will continue until morale improves" -- is all part of the reversal of a downward trend over the first three months of the season:

April: 2.88 ERA
May: 3.04
June: 3.82

A bullpen that had been so untouchable had begun to show some cracks in the foundation. The June 30 meltdown in Baltimore was most notable, but Takashi Saito (3.72 ERA in June), Manny Delcarmen (4.00), Justin Masterson (4.38), Hideki Okajima (5.25) and Daniel Bard (5.40) all had started to see their ERAs tick upward.

But things have begun to trend back to the other way in July and August -- particularly since the All-Star break:

Hideki Okajima: 1.04 ERA
Daniel Bard: 1.12
Takashi Saito: 1.93
Ramon Ramirez: 1.93
Jonathan Papelbon: 2.16
Manny Delcarmen: 4.63

And Friday night only exemplified the way the unit has bounced back from some of the potholes it hit in June and early July:

Okajima: 1 1/3 IP, 1 K
With such a short porch in right field and the Yankees' lineup stacked with switch-hitters, Francona first turned to Okajima to turn those switch-hitters around and make them hit from the right side of the plate. Okajima struck out Melky Cabrera and got Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon to hit relatively harmless fly balls.

Bard: 2/3 IP, 1 BB, 2 K
By the time Mark Teixeira came to the plate, though, Okajima had thrown 25 pitches and it was time for Daniel Bard. The rookie threw a couple of sliders for called strikes on the outside part of the plate and then blew a 98-mile-an-hour fastball past Teixeira for the third strike. Bard pitched himself into a little trouble, walking Hideki Matsui and then balking his baserunners to second and third. But he came up with the biggest pitch of his outing against Jorge Posada, a slider down and in that a fishing Posada couldn't catch.

Ramirez: 2/3 IP, BB
With one out in the 10th, Ramirez walked Eric Hinske and moved him to second with a wild pitch. But he made the pitch he needed to make, a sinker-slider-changeup-whatever-it-is up and away that Melky Cabrera grounded to second for the second out of the inning. But it did advance Hinske to third.

Papelbon: 1 1/3 IP, 2 K
The Red Sox closer always has been at his best this season in high-pressure situations. With the bases empty this season, opponents are OPS'ing .712 against him -- and with runners in scoring position, opponents are OPS'ing .443. With a single runner on third base, the situation Papelbon faced in the 10th inning, opponents are 2 for 24 and have plated the run just three times.

Papelbon went right after Jeter, throwing six straight fastballs, and he blew a 97-mile-an-hour heater right past him to retire the side.

The all-fastball theme didn't abate in the 11th inning, either. Papelbon has mixed sliders and splitfingered fastballs to his repertoire all season, but he threw a four-seam fastball on 15 of his 16 pitches and just one splitter. (That was a ball to Damon on his second pitch of the inning.) His 15th fastball of the inning was up and over the plate and right past the flailing bat of Alex Rodriguez.

Delcarmen: 1 IP, 2 BB
He didn't make it easy for himself, walking Posada and Hinske, but Delcarmen also induced three weak fly balls -- the last of which a pop fly to second base on a changeup on the outside corner to Melky Cabrera.

Saito: 1 IP, 1 BB
Rodriguez had a chance to be a hero about half an hour before he ended up being a hero, but Saito wiggled out of a tough spot with two outs in the 13th. Home-plate umpire Chad Fairchild had shown some inconsistency with his zone all night, but two of the first three pitches Saito threw to Rodriguez really appeared to be strikes but were called balls.

Down 3-0 with a runner already on second and Hideki Matsui on deck, Saito had to make his pitches. Possibly suspecting that Rodriguez would have the green light on 3-0, Saito threw a 93-mile-an-hour fastball up and in that Rodriguez chased and missed. Saito then threw a curveball down and away that Rodriguez hit weakly to left field for the third out.

Junichi Tazawa just one of the guys

PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- Everyone wants to hear what Junichi Tazawa has to say.

About an hour before Thursday night's game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Norfolk Tides, the 23-year-old righty and translator Masaki Kubota were involved in a conversation with a reporter in the middle of the McCoy Stadium clubhouse. But a handful of PawSox teammates -- among them pitcher Rocky Cherry, catcher Mark Wagner and infielders Chris Carter, Jeff Natale and Ivan Ochoa -- began to edge closer and closer to try to hear what the highly touted prospect was saying.

The first question was about the difference between Double-A and Triple-A. The answer was about the way he's had to adjust the way he sequences his pitches and the way he can't just use his stuff to overpower hitters anymore.

"At Double-A, at the beginning of the season, the coach said, 'You can pitch fastball and curveball,'" Tazawa said through Kubota. "It is part of growing up, part of the process. But here is more like preparing for the big leagues."

Kubota tried to continue the answer, to relay what Tazawa had said about the process of learning to pitch one step below the major leagues, but he couldn't hold back the giggles as the group edged closer and closer, their expressions of eager attention growing more and more exaggerated.

The translator finally gave up when Natale casually dropped the towel he'd been wearing around his waist. Tazawa, too, started laughing uncontrollably as Kubota shoved the completely naked Natale away and toward his locker.

If the episode demonstrated nothing else, it was that Tazawa, language barrier and all, really has become one of the guys.

He hasn't had much of a chance to become assimilated to American culture. He spends most of his time at the ballpark and thus "did nothing like shopping or anything," Kubota said. "But he needs to learn English and communicate with his teammates, and this is challenging right now."

(Most of the English he's learned from the other players in the clubhouse, as you can imagine, is not fit for print.)

The promotion from Double-A Portland to Triple-A Pawtucket actually helped with that process because he had a chance to reunite with some of the players who he'd first met at major-league camp during spring training in Fort Myers. Wagner spent most of the first half of the season at Portland, too, but players like Carter and Ochoa and pitchers Michael Bowden, Francisco Cabrera, Hunter Jones, Marcus McBeth and Billy Traber have spent most, if not all, of their season with Pawtucket.

"He knows the big-league guys and the Triple-A guys, but when he's going to Double-A, nobody knows (him)," Kubota said. "But most of the Triple-A guys know him from big-league camp in the spring, so this is good for him."

Said Wagner, "That's a testament to how relaxed he's getting and how comfortable everybody is making him feel. Before, he was just quiet, sitting next to the translator, and now, he'll joke around and (chat) with the guys, and it's fun because we all have a good time with it."

(Wagner and Tazawa challenge each other on the Nintendo DS during long bus rides. Tazawa dominates when they play the Japanese baseball game he brought with him, but Wagner will "whip up on him a little bit" when it comes to Mario Kart.)

It helps that the righty can really, really pitch.

He had a 2.57 ERA in 18 starts at Portland earlier this year before the Red Sox promoted him, and he allowed three earned runs in 11 1/3 innings (good for a 2.38 ERA) in his first two starts at Pawtucket. So far this season, he has 94 strikeouts and just 27 walks in 109 1/3 innings pitched.

That comes on the heels of a spring training in which he allowed just one earned run in nine innings with the big-league club, striking out 10 and walking just one in the process.

Though he throws righthanded, he was particularly devastating against lefties (.213 batting average against) while he was at Portland. He did have a better strikeout-to-walk ratio (almost 6-to-1) against righties than against lefties, and he's seen his splits turn the way you might expect -- lefties are hitting .300 off him while righties are hitting .056 -- since his promotion to Pawtucket.

But he's everything changes at Fenway Park next week if and when he takes over for the DFA'ed John Smoltz in the Red Sox rotation. That will give him his first chance to showcase his repertoire -- like Clay Buchholz, his changeup and his curveball are his best pitches -- against major-league hitters.

"He's really learning how to control those pitches and when to use them in what spots," Wagner said. "Before, it was just kind of like, 'OK, we're going to throw this because we haven't really done it,' and it was good enough that he could get away with it. But at this level, he's really refining. Now there's a purpose behind why we're doing this. Before, his stuff was good enough just to overmatch batters, but now that we're here, he's starting to sequence it."

John Smoltz and pitching on consecutive days

Like most of the rest of us, ESPN.com's Buster Olney has floated the theory that John Smoltz might be better served pitching out of the bullpen than as part of the starting rotation:

"The Red Sox could talk to him about shifting to the bullpen, perhaps, but he is not well-suited to pitch on consecutive days, and there's no guarantee that he would be any better than he's been so far."

The Red Sox may or may not yank Smoltz from the starting rotation and place him in the bullpen. Terry Francona has demonstrated time and time again that he's willing to have far more patience with his players -- he often points to Dustin Pedroia's woeful April two years ago as an example -- than anyone else. But with little margin for error at this point in the season, it seems like an exercise in stubbornness and futility to let Smoltz make his next start.

(It's an exercise in stubbornness and futility, too, to keep playing Mike Lowell in the field and to keep sending David Ortiz up to the plate. But we digress.)

Olney makes two points about the viability of Smoltz as a reliever:
1. Smoltz might not be effective pitching on back-to-back days.
2. There's no guarantee he'll be any better in the bullpen.

Let's go in reverse order and start with the second point.

No, there's no guarantee Smoltz would be any better as a reliever than he has been as a starter. But while Smoltz's splits look terrible in virtually every way -- check out this checklist of disaster -- there is some cause for optimism:

Opposing hitters by inning
1st inning: .267/.405/.300
2nd inning: .185/.241/.222
3rd inning: .385/.385/.692
4th inning: .474/.500/.737

Opposing hitter by times through the order
First time through: .250/.342/.313
Second time through: .388/.397/.657
Third time through: .400/.429/.900

Smoltz has done OK in the first and second innings of the games he's pitched, and he's done OK the first time he's seen opposing hitters. It's the second time through the order and the third or fourth inning that has done him in.

If the Red Sox made him a one- or two-inning reliever -- something, remember, he does have experience doing -- they might be able to get the most out of him.

The problem is the grind of relieving. Olney points out, correctly, that a 42-year-old coming off a long recovery from shoulder surgery might not be well-suited to pitching out of the bullpen on back-to-back days.

But Francona doesn't use his relievers on back-to-back days.

Check out the numbers for Red Sox relievers:

* No days of rest: 48 appearances (5.77 ERA)
* One day of rest: 102 (3.96 ERA)
* Two days of rest: 65 (2.55 ERA)
* Three days of rest: 14 (1.59 ERA)

Of those 48 instances in which Francona has called upon his relievers on back-to-back days, Ramon Ramirez (11) and Hideki Okajima (11) have almost half by themselves. Daniel Bard still only has done it once, and even Jonathan Papelbon only has pitched on back-to-back times just eight times this season.

There's reason for that: Red Sox pitchers' effectiveness has tended to go up drastically when they've had a day or two to rest their arms.

Smoltz might still have an issue pitching every two days or every three days rather than the every-fifth-day routine to which he's grown accustomed. But if the biggest concern is his ability to pitch on back-to-back days, well, that shouldn't stand in the way.

Michael Bowden's ill-timed tough start

Snippets from the aftermath of John Smoltz's stinker on Thursday:

"Michael Bowden is doing well enough in Triple-A Pawtucket, with a 3.40 ERA after a poor outing on Tuesday, and he could be an option if Smoltz continues to struggle." -- Providence Journal

"Michael Bowden could always take his spot in the rotation, though a National League scout who watched him pitch Wednesday in Pawtucket said he 'didn’t look very good at all.'" -- Boston Globe

"Though the alternatives are not good (Michael Bowden?), it’s hard to imagine the Sox sending Smoltz back to the mound Monday at Fenway against Detroit." -- Boston Globe

"Paul Byrd? He hasn’t thrown since last October. Michael Bowden? Far from sharp in his latest Pawtucket start." -- Boston Herald

"So what is Plan B? With his effectiveness the first time facing hitters, it would appear the value that can be derived from Smoltz the rest of the way might be as a member of the bullpen. But then there is that tricky matter of who starts. Michael Bowden had his roughest outing of the season on Wednesday in Pawtucket, giving up six runs over just three innings." -- WEEI.com

Daisuke Matsuzaka and Tim Wakefield remain on the disabled list for the forseeable future, and Paul Byrd has to be at least a couple of weeks away given that he hasn't pitched in a game since last season's ALCS.

Michael Bowden, now the team's pitching prospect closest to major-league ready, picked the wrong time to have his worst start of the season: 3 IP, 6 H 6 ER, 3 BB, 4 K. He allowed three runs in the second inning and opened the fourth inning by walking the first two hitters he faced, eventually giving way to a bullpen that allowed all of its inherited runners to score.

The only worse start came on June 19 at Durham, when he allowed six earned runs in just one inning of work.

"We come out and, boom, we put runs on the board and have our guy on the mound," Pawtucket manager Ron Johnson said. "If I'm looking at our offensive production (on Wednesday) night and I know I'm going to get that with Michael Bowden pitching, I'm betting the ranch I'm shaking hands after the game. But it's humid as hell, and Mikey struggles with command. ... When the guys do those things, you can't be like, 'Oh, man, the pitching, you let us down tonight," when they've done such a good job all year."

That's the thing about Bowden: He has done it all year. In his last three starts before Wednesday's clunker, he'd thrown a combined 19 innings and allowed just three earned runs. (That works out to an ERA of 1.42.) Going into Wednesday's start, he'd pitched 14 straight innings without walking anyone.

He has a 3.40 ERA in 20 starts this season, and opponents are hitting .226 against him. While he has 38 walks in those 20 starts, he has 74 strikeouts, too.

He just picked a bad time for a bad start.

"It was tough to swallow that one," he said. "My team did everything they could. They were putting up runs, and I was letting the (Norfolk) Tides back into the ballgame right after that. It was tough, nothing a pitcher wants to do. It feels like I let my team down, and I feel like I let the bullpen down because they had to pick me up for six innings. It was just, all around, kind of a bummer.

"But my arm felt great, and my stuff was good. Besides a couple of bad pitches in the second inning and a spurt where I couldn't throw a strike in the fourth, it wasn't as bad as it looked. I took a lot of positives out of it even though it doesn't look like it. Like I said, it was a bummer, but today's a new day."

Bowden had begun to scuffle in June, allowing four or more earned runs in two of his last three starts of the month and walking five hitters in his first start in July. It was then, though, that he and the team took advantage of the International League's All-Star break to skip him in the rotation and give him a chance to look back at what he'd been doing and how he'd been throwing.
He spent a little extra time watching video during that two-week stretch, and he even found something he thinks has helped get him back on track.

"I wasn't getting over the rubber -- I was falling forward, and my arm was trailing," he said. "It was leading to a lot of inconsistency. I looked at some video footage of me in the past, checked it out, pinpointed what I needed to work on, and that's what we did. I worked on that during my rest, and I've been a lot more consistent."

Since that layoff:
* July 19: 5 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 5 K, 4 BB
* July 24: 7 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 5 K, 0 BB
* July 30: 7 IP, 6 H, 1 ER, 6 K, 0 BB
* Aug. 5: 3 IP, 6 H, 6 ER, 4 K, 3 BB

One of those starts sticks out as being aberrational. It just happens to be the most recent one.

"I've been commanding the ball a lot better," he said. "All of my pitches, I've been commanding better, my secondary stuff. I've been repeating my delivery more consistently, and it's shown. I've had a lot of good ballgames recently."

He's now just biding his time at Triple-A the way Clay Buchholz did until his callup in July. (Buchholz, by the way, still has a locker at McCoy Stadium with his name on it, his stall right next to Bowden's.)

"When I went up there for my two-inning stint against the Yankees, when I was in the office with Tito (Francona) and Theo (Epstein), they said they won't hesitate to call on me again," he said. "They're full up there. It's just a matter of timing when another opportunity arises."

With the way Smoltz has pitched lately -- not to mention Buchholz and Brad Penny -- it might not be long until the timing works out for Bowden.

The Felix List

Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times wrote an whiplash-inducing story on Monday, reporting that the Mariners had received a list of eight prospects from the Red Sox, a list from which they could choose five players they could receive in a trade for Felix Hernandez.

The Mariners turned down the offer, in part because, as Baker wrote, "the Mariners didn't think any of the packages they were being offered would go down much in substance over the next 12 months, when they'd only have another year-plus of Hernandez under control. Why give up the extra year, their reasoning went, if they could still get a similar offer at the 2010 deadline?"

The list, according to Baker:
1. RHP Daniel Bard
2. RHP Michael Bowden
3. RHP Clay Buchholz
4. LHP Felix Doubront
5. LHP Nick Hagadone (since traded to Cleveland)
6. RHP Justin Masterson (likewise)
7. SS Yamaico Navarro
8. OF Josh Reddick

The players on the list are intruiging. (If I were the Mariners and decided to make the deal, I'd have taken Bard, Buchholz, Hagadone, Masterson and Reddick -- just in case you were wondering.)

But what's more intriguing -- particularly as the concept of "untouchable" becomes more and more commonplace in the trade market -- is the list of players who weren't on the list, the list of players who the Red Sox apparently wouldn't even include in a deal for a pitcher who's almost as good as Roy Halladay but 10 years younger and not eligible for free agency until after the 2011 season. Those -- and not, say, Bard -- are the true untouchables of the Red Sox system.

Among those players (SoxProspects.com rank in parentheses):

1. Casey Kelly, P (1)
If there's been a more spectacular pro debut than that of Kelly with Single-A Greenville this spring, well, it would have to be some debut. Kelly allowed six earned runs in 48 1/3 innings in his first nine starts at Greenville -- a 1.12 ERA -- and had a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 4.33. He then was promoted to a higher Single-A league and actually saw his strikeout-to-walk ratio get even better (5.0) while his ERA remained more than respectable (3.09.)

Oh, and he's 19 years old.

The only reason he's not pitching at Double-A Portland right now, in all likelihood, is because he wanted to try his hand at shortstop and because the Red Sox want to limit his innings at such an early stage of his career. But don't be surprised if he's pitching in the major leagues before Hernandez hits the free-agent market.

2. Lars Anderson, 1B (3)
The star of Anderson, so bright before the season, appears to have lost a little bit of luster as he's struggled through his first full season in Double-A. He's hitting just .243 with almost twice as many strikeouts (99) as walks (51), and he's hit just eight home runs in 366 at-bats.

But if his stock had fallen that much in the eyes of Red Sox evaluators, he would have been included on the list given to Seattle, right?

Anderson, one must deduce, remains a future cornerstone of the Red Sox organization. He did, after all, OPS over .900 in both of his stops a year ago. (He OPS'ed .921 at Single-A Lancaster and .962 in fewer than 150 at-bats at Double-A Portland.) One first-half slump -- a slump that has threatened to turn into a seasonlong downturn -- hasn't changed the way the Red Sox look at him.

3. Junichi Tazawa, P (5)
The Red Sox made a bold statement this winter in signing Tazawa straight out of Japan's amateur ranks. He first turned heads in spring training -- he allowed just one run in nine innings pitched and had a 10-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio -- and hasn't let up so far this season.

He had a 2.57 ERA and a 3.38 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 18 starts at Double-A Portland and has a 2.38 ERA with six strikeouts and one walk in his first 11 1/3 innings since his promotion to Triple-A Pawtucket.

Tazawa would have been a spectacular trade chip to offer Seattle, the franchise that signed Ichiro Suzuki and Kazuhiro Sasaki. The fact that he wasn't included on the list tells you something: The Red Sox anticipate the 23-year-old Tazawa being a key part of their pitching staff in the not-too-distance future.

4. Ryan Westmoreland, OF (6)
One might think that the Red Sox refused to trade Westmoreland simply because it would be kind of a lousy thing to sign a Rhode Island kid away from Vanderbilt -- capitalizing on his love for his hometown team -- and then trade him away.

But you can't imagine that kind of sentimentality would stand in the way of a trade for one of the major leagues' best young pitchers.

Westmoreland, then, remains one of the top position-player prospects in the organization. He missed the first half of the season after undergoing surgery to repair a torn labrum but is OBP'ing .394 and slugging .487 so far this season for Single-A Lowell, a short-season team consisting mostly of newly signed draft picks.

He has a long way to go -- like Kelly, he's just 19 years old, but unlike Kelly, he's a pretty raw product -- but is the type of five-tool talent around whom the Red Sox could build their team by 2013 or 2014.

Dustin Pedroia's home runs

Dustin Pedroia hit his longest home run of the season on Tuesday, a 384-foot blast eight or 10 rows deep in the Tropicana Field bleachers. It also was his first home run of the season that would have been out in any other ballpark.

HitTracker measures every home run hit in the major leagues not just by standard distance but by "true distance," taking into account wind, temperature and altitude conditions that often can affect the flight of the ball. With the Red Sox playing the Rays inside Tropicana Field at sea level, there weren't any extra atmospheric conditions in play. Pedroia's blast really traveled 384 feet.

As you can imagine, the diminutive second baseman doesn't hit the ball that far very often. A year ago, in fact, he only hit three home runs that traveled that far. (He has never hit a 400-foot home run in the major leagues, and Jason Bay has 14 home runs just this season longer than Pedroia's career best of 394 feet.)

But just like this seems to be his favorite time of the year for hitting in general -- his hot streak in August a year ago is likely what won him the MVP award -- this seems to be his favorite time of the year for hitting long home runs. Four of his seven longest home runs have come either in August or the first week of September.

Just for fun, here's a collection of Pedroia's longest home runs:

1. 394 feet: Aug. 27, 2008 into Monument Park at Yankee Stadium
2. 394 feet, May 23, 2008 at McAfee Coliseum in Oakland
3. 389 feet, May 18, 2008 against Milwaukee at Fenway Park
4. 388 feet, May 8, 2007 at Rogers Centre in Toronto
(This was his first career home run. Also, the link is broken.)
5. 384 feet, Aug. 4, 2009, at Tropicana Field
6. 382 feet, Sept. 2, 2008, at Fenway Park
(That one hit the Sports Authority sign.)
7. 381 feet, Aug. 1, 2009, at Camden Yards

If it's not coming up on Labor Day or Memorial Day, apparently, don't expect Dustin Pedroia to be going real deep.

(Speaking of real deep, Pedroia doesn't do this.)

Red Sox still negotiating with draft picks

BOURNE, Mass. -- Kendal Volz wasn't exactly disappointed with his four-inning effort for the Brewster Whitecaps on Monday. He wasn't thrilled, either.

He allowed six hits and one earned run in four innings, striking out two and walking one. He allowed a run on a broken-bat single in the first inning but did a nice job digging himself out of a quick 3-0 count with a runner on second against the league's best power hitter in the third inning, throwing a tough slider on a 3-1 count and inducing a routine fly ball on 3-2.

"I came back with the fastball, and then, 3-1, I'm sure he was sitting fastball again, and I threw him the slider," Volz said. "That's pretty big with no outs. He's a good hitter."

But the box score isn't what Volz is all that worried about. It's also not what Red Sox assistant general manager Jed Hoyer was there to see.

The Red Sox drafted Volz in the ninth round of June's draft, his summer as the closer for Team USA a big part of what caught the team's attention. (Baseball America named Volz the third-best prospect on the team -- ahead of first-round picks Kyle Gibson and Mike Leake. He then went back to Baylor and had an up-and-down season, a 4.50 ERA and a diminished strikeout-to-walk ratio hurting his stock a little bit.

Hoyer wasn't there to evaluate him as a pitcher -- and while he had a radar gun in his hand, he wasn't really there to gauge the speed of his fastball, either. For Volz, all summer long, it's been all about mechanics.

The 6-foot-4 righty shut down his throwing when the season ended, giving his arm a break and giving himself a chance to focus on the summer classes he was taking at Baylor. The only pitching work he did was a series of drills designed to improve the mechanics of his motion, something that might have cost him a chance to go in the top three rounds of the draft.

"They'd watched me every game, every time I pitched," Volz said. "Coming up here, they weren't going to see anything different the first month (of the Cape League season), and they knew I'd thrown a lot during the (college) season and prior to the season. It was big for me to take a little break and rest my arm a little bit just so I didn't get even more worn down coming right up here."

Volz is one of five players the Red Sox drafted in the top 10 rounds but have not yet signed. All four of the others are high school players -- including third-round pick David Renfroe, a shortstop out of South Panola (Miss.) High School. The other three college players the Red Sox have drafted, including second-round pick Alex Wilson, have signed and already are working their way up the minor-league ladder.

High school players often take longer to sign simply because they have more leverage --Renfroe, for example, has a scholarship offer in hand to play football at Ole Miss.

Volz is in something of a unique situation with the way he shut things down at the end of the season. He's only spent two weeks on Cape Cod, ramping things up again at the request of the Red Sox so they could see him throw a few more times. (He made four appearances out of the bullpen before making his first -- and possibly only -- start of the summer on Monday.)

Negotiations will begin in earnest once he returns home to Texas.

"They understood and we understood that there wouldn't be any negotiating going on until after the (Cape League) season got done -- and probably even a little bit after that," he said. "They might come down and watch me when I get back home. They might offer something first and then come watch me. But we knew they'd want to come see me at least four or five times, ... and nothing would be done until they saw me then."

The leverage for a college player drops substantially after his junior year -- he can go back to school for his senior year, but unless he's drafted in the first couple of rounds, he usually gets a take-it-or-leave-it offer at that point. It doesn't necessarily benefit Volz or the Red Sox for him to go back to Baylor next season.

"Obviously, you want to sign," Volz said. "My dream was always signing after junior year. But it's not a bad second choice to go back to school. I'm really kind of indifferent. If it works out, that's great. The Red Sox are a great organization, great people all up there. But going back to school won't be bad, either. ...

"During the draft, most of it is signability and what you would sign for, signing bonus-wise. That's kind of stayed the same, so, at the end of the day, it's if they meet that or if they don't. If they do, great. If they don't, I'll go through it again next year."

Big Papi in midst of big slide

It was 2 1/2 months ago that David Ortiz went a woeful 0-for-7 in a 12-inning loss to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, the worst game of his worst season as a professional baseball player. It was minutes after that game that he uttered the memorable line, "Just put down, 'Papi stinks.'" It was less than two weeks later that Terry Francona dropped him out of the No. 3 spot in the batting order for the first time in almost exactly four years. It was as bad as it could possibly get.

Well, it's that bad again. David Ortiz went 0-for-5 on Sunday against the Baltimore Orioles and left an astounding 10 runners on base:
* He popped to shallow left field with the bases loaded in the first;
* He drew a walk with the bases loaded in the second;
* He lined out to second with two on in the fourth;
* He rolled into a double play with the bases loaded in the sixth;
* He grounded out to first with a runner on second in the eighth.

He had a chance to drive home 13 runs in the game -- 18 if you include the possibility of home runs -- and he drove in just one. (The double play did plate a run, but if you're going to argue that the double play was a productive at-bat is grasping at straws.)

Now that Victor Martinez is in the fold and ready to rake, it's again time to wonder if David Ortiz might best serve the Red Sox by playing only against righthanded pitchers -- and, even then, maybe not against all righthanded pitchers. The only problem is that Martinez, too, has had to endure a pretty epic slump through the month of July.

Consider these numbers:

* Ortiz this July: .247/.306/.539
* Ortiz in July in his career: .314/.410/.617
(He has no month in which he has a higher batting average, on-base percentage or slugging percentage than in July.)
* Ortiz in August in his career: .264/.371/.531
* Ortiz in September in his career: .284/.381/.571

* Victor Martinez this July: .175/.280/.250
* Martinez in July in his career: .274/.350/.413
(Only May, historically, has been a worse month for Martinez.)
* Martinez in August in his career: .316/.390/.484
* Martinez in September in his career: .310/.392/.459

Ortiz just OBP'ed .306 in a month in which he normally OBP's over .400, and he normally sees his numbers fall across the board as the calendar turns to August and September.

Martinez, on the other hand, scuffled through July the way he normally scuffled through July -- and his five-hit day on Sunday might just be an indication that he's ready to get hot in August the way he normally gets hot in August.

Here's one more set of numbers for you:

Mike Lowell's Ultimate Zone Rating: minus-9.7
Mike Lowell's Fielding Bible Plus-Minus: minus-21
Mike Lowell at the plate since his DL stint: .415/.500/.694

Lowell has been smoking the ball at the plate. He's also shown almost zero range at third base. One example: With one out and runners on first and second in Sunday's third inning, Clay Buchholz induced a slow ground ball between shortstop and third base. Lowell lunged for it but never got his glove on the ball. Had he made the plate, he might have turned an inning-ending double play -- and Buchholz would have escaped without allowing the six third-inning runs about which Red Sox fans will be talking on Monday morning.

But Lowell didn't reach it. The statistics above demonstrate why: His hip injury has robbed him of almost all of his range. Does that sound like a designated hitter to anyone else?

Daniel Bard starting to dominate

Trivia answer: Elvis Andrus, Billy Butler, Orlando Cabrera and Ryan Sweeney.

Trivia question: Who are the only hitters to have recorded hits against Daniel Bard since July 1?

With his scoreless inning on Saturday night against the Orioles, the Red Sox reliever now has not allowed an earned run in his last 14 innings -- a span that dates back more than a month. He has struck out 23 in those 14 innings. He has walked no one. He has allowed only those four hits. (One of those, even, was only an infield hit.)

He's done everything the Red Sox ever could have dreamed -- and more. He's become more exciting than Jonathan Papelbon. He's become more untouchable than Clay Buchholz. He's become perhaps the best relief pitcher the Red Sox have.

His game-ending strikeout of Melvin Mora epitomized the type of pitcher he's become. He actually missed with two of his first three pitches -- a 99-mile-an-hour fastball sailed inside, and he left a slider above the letters. But he threw a 2-1 fastball almost right down the middle, 98 miles an hour, and Mora swung right threw it. He then threw an 82-mile-an-hour slider, as nasty a breaking pitch as you'll ever be, that wound up in almost exactly the same spot. Mora swung right through that, too. Game over.

The big difference lately has been that breaking ball, a hard slider that pitching coach John Farrell tweaked for him in late May so he could throw it with a little more velocity. The evolution of that breaking ball, though, is a process that has taken years. In the spirit of celebrating the pitcher whose relief appearances have become the most exciting thing about watching Red Sox games, here's a look back at a story that appeared in the New Hampshire Union Leader in late May, right when he was starting to put it all together:

***

Plenty of baseball players have an out-of-body experience upon reaching the major leagues. Daniel Bard had his out-of-body experience two years ago at Single-A.

Just two weeks removed from his big-league debut, Bard has a 1.80 ERA in four appearances and is regularly hitting 97 miles an hour on stadium radar guns. If the wildest dreams of the Red Sox player development department come true, he could grow quickly into one of the league’s most dominant late-inning relief pitchers.

Two years ago, though, he couldn’t get outs at the lowest levels of the minor leagues.

“I was at 90 to 93 with a crappy curveball and a changeup I couldn’t locate,” said Bard, one of the most electric arms to emerge from the Red Sox system in years. “There were times I went out there and felt like I was pitching with someone else’s mechanics and someone else’s repertoire.”

The then-starting pitcher had performed well in three years of college baseball but never quite dominated the way many expected him to dominate. He had a 3.47 ERA as a junior and pitched North Carolina to the College World Series, but he still endured an occasional disaster. He allowed nine earned runs in 5 1/3 innings in one March start, in fact, and issued six walks in 3 2/3 innings a week after that.

But the raw stuff still was there. The results just weren’t. The Red Sox, then, drafted Bard in the first round and set about trying to turn all that potential into an elite big-league pitcher. They changed the arm slot in his delivery, shifting it from three-quarters to a pure over-the-top delivery. They shelved his slider and taught him a 12-to-6 curveball, a better fit for his new delivery.

It only made everything worse. He had a 10.12 ERA in five starts at Single-A Lancaster in 2007, and he had a 6.42 ERA in 17 starts at Single-A Greenville. He walked far more hitters (78) than he struck out (49). He even threw 27 wild pitches.

“There were two-month stretches there where I didn’t even look at my stats,” he said. “I didn’t care. I knew they were bad. How bad? It didn’t even matter.”

Everything about his delivery felt wrong, and it showed in the results.

“When you throw that hard, you can be off just a hair and it looks like you’re really off because you throw so hard,” Hall of Fame reliever Dennis Eckersley said. “It’s not easy to control that kind of gas.”

But Bard wasn’t even throwing gas anymore. He’d lost five miles per hour off his fastball.

That’s why, after that season, Bard threw out the changes he’d made to his delivery. He went back to his three-quarters arm slot to get more torque on his fastball. He started throwing his slider again. If it again led to disaster, well, at least it would be a disaster of his own making.

“If I was going to fail, if I was going to be done with pro ball, I was going to go out on my terms,” he said. “I’m not going to say, ‘Well, I tried to please people for two years and I was terrible, and I’m out of the game.’”

He also started pitching out of the bullpen for the first time in his life. It began with an offseason stint in the Hawaii Winter League in which he pitched exclusively out of the bullpen just to get more innings – and when he allowed just two earned runs and struck out 15 in 16 2/3 innings, the light bulb went off.

“I could just see the reactions of the hitters,” he said. “They didn’t want to be in the box. I was like, ‘All right, I’ve still got this. I can still dominate.’”

He went back to Single-A Greenville as a reliever and struck out 43 hitters in 28 innings; his ERA was 0.64. When he was promoted to Double-A Portland, he struck out 64 in 49 2/3 innings to go along with an ERA of 1.99.

When he got to spring training this spring, everyone there knew who he was and what he could do.

“You see 98, 99, and it’s always exciting to see guys who throw that hard,” fellow reliever Manny Delcarmen said. “I would get into a couple of (spring training) games before he threw, and I’d be inside and watching the TV just to see if I could see it, see the 97 or 99.”

And at Triple-A Pawtucket this season, Bard put together a 1.12 ERA and struck out 29 hitters in 16 innings before the Red Sox called him up.

The next step for Bard, of course, is dominating in the major leagues the way he did in the minors. He struck out Angels catcher Mike Napoli on a 97-mile-per-hour fastball in his big-league debut, but he hasn’t struck anyone out since.

He’s even allowing more than a hit an inning – including two line-drive singles on fastballs he left up on in the zone against the Blue Jays on Wednesday.

But Bard is well aware of how important it is for him to keep the ball down in the zone. When he warms up in the bullpen, in fact, he spots each of his first 10 or so pitches below the knees rather than in the strike zone just because it’s easier to climb the ladder in the strike zone than to go the other way.

“If he drives the ball down, with that delivery, that arm action and that velocity, he’s going to have a lot of success,” Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. “I know he can elevate on purpose. But when you leave some balls up, with that velocity, in this league, they’ll take some pretty good whacks at you.”

He’s still due to take some pretty good whacks now and then as he learns how to pitch in the major leagues. But if he can endure what he endured two years ago and still reach the big leagues, not much is going to faze him.

“I’ve failed as bad as I can fail in a given year,” he said. “I’ve had as bad of a year as a pro player can have – and I’ve bounced back from it. Who’s to say I can’t have a bad month now and still bounce back from it?

“It’s probably going to happen. I’m going to have a rough stretch, a week or two, a month, whatever, but I’ve done it before, and I can do it again.”

Welcome aboard, Victor Martinez

The idea was to write an introduction to Victor Martinez, a little guide to why he's such a good fit for the Red Sox lineup. But we already did that a month ago.

So, then, here you go.