Red Sox Diaries

Considering all of the star power in Boston's rotation at the start of the year, many expected it to be one of the team's primary strengths. Three of the five starters are in their 20s, with another slightly older but just two years removed from his best season. Four have finished among the top-4 vote-getters for a Cy Young Award, while the other has thrown a no-hitter. All but one makes upwards of $5 million per year.

So it's a pretty big surprise that the oldest, cheapest member of the rotation has an ERA that is 2.5 runs lower than the next-best starter. That says as much about Tim Wakefield as it does the state of the Red Sox starting pitching.

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Wakefield's career has been full of ups and downs--fitting for a pitcher who throws a knuckleball that flutters all over the place. He originally burst onto the scene in 1992 for the Pittsburgh Pirates. As a 25-year-old rookie, Wakefield went 8-1 with a 2.15 ERA over the final two months of the regular season, then won twice against Tom Glavine in the NLCS versus the Atlanta Braves. Both were complete games, the second of which forced a Game 7 (which the Braves won in dramatic come-from-behind fashion).

His sophomore season was a total trainwreck, with an ERA that more than doubled and almost twice as many losses as wins. Wakefield spent the whole next season in the minors, then was released in late April of the following year. The Sox picked him up right away and, perhaps against all odds, he has been a fixture on their staff ever since. He rewarded Boston with his best season during the rest of 1995: a 17-8 record, 2.95 ERA, 6 complete games and a third-place Cy Young finish.

The next five years were a struggle--his ERA climbed above 5.00 in three of them. Wakefield's role was also in flux, as he began to shuttle back and forth between the bullpen and the rotation. He even served as the closer for a few months in 1999. (Think about how bizarre it is to have a knuckleballer trying to protect leads in the ninth inning--I'm pretty sure he was the first closer since Hoyt Wilhelm back in the 1950s and 1960s to throw a knuckleball.)

He was moved back to the rotation for good in 2003 and has been a model of consistency ever since: his ERA has always fallen between 4.00 and 5.00, with 30 or more starts and at least 10 wins (except for 2006, when lower back problems cut his season short and threatened his career). He has also always come through when Boston has needed him to. Wakefield won two games in the 2003 ALCS and had a combined 9-2 record in August during the two World Series-winning years, helping to put the Sox in a good position to make the playoffs.

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And now, with Boston's starting pitching faltering, Wakefield is coming though again. He already has two complete games, which matches the combined total of his past three seasons. His near-shutout in the third game of the Oakland series back in the second week saved the bullpen and sparked the 11-game winning streak. Tonight was not his best effort, but Boston broke out of their hitting slump so it didn't end up mattering.

Here's the issue, though: it's never a good sign when your most reliable starter is soon to be 43 years old and relies on a pitch that's about to go the way of the Dodo. Josh Beckett has allowed more than a run per inning in four starts since Opening Day. Jon Lester's strikeout rate is up, but his location has been poor all season long. Daisuke Matsuzaka is on the Disabled List with some kind of recurring condition that prevents him from throwing strikes. And Brad Penny has just been plain awful.

The Sox can't continue at their current pace when their starters are having trouble getting out of the sixth inning--they average less than 5 2/3 innings per outing. There have been five occasions that someone has completed seven innings; Wakefield has done it three of those times. A third of Boston's wins have come after trailing or being tied at the halfway point--that trend cannot hold up all season long. In all, they've been trailing after four innings in more than half of their games. An incredible amount of pressure is being put on the bullpen already, and though it is holding up extremely well so far, at this rate it will be burnt out by August. Both Manny Delcarmen and Ramon Ramirez have yet to give up a run, but both are also on pace to pitch the most innings of their careers.

So yes, Wakefield is a great story. And yes, everything has been working out well to this point. But Boston's winning model is unsustainable in the long run. Their starters' ERA is 5.68, which ranks 28th out of 30 major league teams. Five of the last nine World Series winners have been in the top 8 in rotation ERA, with all but one team (the '06 Cardinals, who weren't really that good of a team anyway until the playoffs) in the top half of the league. Taking into account the World Series runner-ups from this decade as well, the average starters' ERA ranking of teams that win the pennant is eighth.

If Boston doesn't start getting better production out of its rotation, we could be looking at a repeat of 2006. The Sox got off to a hot start that year as well, but the rotation ultimately doomed their playoff chances--the starters had an ERA of 5.00, 24th-best (or 6th-worst) in the MLB.

Nobody wants to go through that again.

--Danny Daly (ddaly06)