In this, the second installment of my brand new Red Sox column, you’ll find the latest on John Smoltz’s expected Sox debut as well as my take on the dicey Dice-K situation, how the Sox upped their AL East lead over New York, and the low down on infielder Nick Green’s unexpected overnight success.
Red Sox record for the Week of June 15: 4-2.
Picking up where I left off last week, it’s now official that John Smoltz will indeed make his Red Sox debut on the road against an NL East foe, the Washington Nationals on Thursday. Who will be bumped off the roster to make room has yet to be decided, but the just called up Triple-A catcher Dusty Brown is the likely candidate to head back down to the minors since he just took Dice-K’s spot on the 25-man roster. More on that later.
Although the Nats have terrible pitching, they’re a decent hitting team, so Smoltz, who hasn’t exactly been lights out in his minor league rehab starts, shouldn’t be expected to pitch much beyond five innings, let alone a shutout, just yet.
Speaking of shutouts, Josh Beckett, believe it or not, pitched only his third career shutout and first as a Red Sock Saturday night in a 3-0 pitching duel against Atlanta and former Sox playoff hero Derek Lowe, who got a standing-O from the classy Fenway faithful for his performance of three runs over 6+ innings.
On the past week as a whole, the Sox, behind continued solid starting pitching and timely offense (especially from Nick Green on Sunday), won both series they played in, going 2-1 against both Florida and Atlanta. Meanwhile, a “tired” A-Rod and the New York Yankees went 1-2 against mediocre Washington and Florida each in mostly close and relatively low-scoring games. The Sox thus picked up two games on their arch-rivals and now hold a season-high four-game lead over them going into Tuesday.
But not all is well in Red Sox land, as Daisuke Matsuzaka continued to struggle last Friday night vs. the Braves, showing poor location of his fastball and giving up six runs in just four innings of work. Terry Francona can blame the WBC all he wants for his struggles, but Dice-K has insisted as recently as two weekends ago in Philly he is healthy. An MRI over this past weekend revealed no “structural damage” to his right pitching arm. And now he’s on the 15-day DL and not expected back for at least a few weeks? What’s going on here?
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Article comments
1 - Matthew T. Sussman
It should be noted that Nick Green's walkoff HR against the Braves was his second career walkoff HR, the first being five years against the Red Sox ... when he was with the Braves.
I love stats like that.
2 - Tony
The "fatigue" issue with Dice K is the same thing that landed him on DL last season.