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Red Sox Spring Training 2010: Beckett and the Future

When Sam sent me the above the other day at random, I remarked on how deranged his face looks. "I always draw him like that," she said.

Beckett earned his reputation for fiery vulgarity around here, but the 2010 Beckett so far seems to have mellowed quite a bit from the ornery, dip-spittin', cuss-spewin' bastid the Sox acquired four years ago. After throwing 94 pitches today, the man who became known for dropping on-air F-bombs gave a downright angelic press conference, seeming to actually consider each question before answering it in detail, rather than hucking back a quick bark, as we've seen him do. 

And so just as the strange behavior that's had me caught in a love-hate roller coaster with Beckett for years seems to have resolved itself, the suggestion has been creeping in lately that this might be the last Spring Training we'll see him in a Sox uniform. 

Gordon Edes cited league sources this week in reporting that the Sox have already decided not to offer Beckett more than four years in his ongoing contract negotiations. 

At first, I was bewildered by this, since Beckett is only 29, and the Sox just signed a 31-year-old John Lackey for 5 years. But as Edes points out:

Early in his minor league career, Beckett had evidence of some fraying in his rotator cuff, which led his former team, the Florida Marlins, to limit how much he threw, according to a major league source. And when the Red Sox acquired Beckett from the Marlins in 2005, Sox officials who inspected his medical records were concerned about his shoulder, but not enough to walk away from the deal, according to a baseball source with direct knowledge of those trade negotiations.

We've been conditioned to this around here by now, starting with Pedro and Johnny Damon, right up to this past offseason with Jason Bay -- this ownership does not make emotional decisions, particularly when it comes to potential health issues. In the long run, of course that's good. 

Then again, Edes goes on to say:

Lackey has missed six weeks at the start of each of the last two seasons, once with tricep tendinitis, the other with elbow inflammation, and counting time spent in the minor leagues, has pitched nearly 500 innings more than Beckett. But Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein, determining that the market value for Lackey had been established the year before when the Yankees signed A.J. Burnett, gave Lackey the same deal.

Wait. I thought we weren't trying to keep up with the Yankees dollar for dollar...and I had been prepared to accept the potential health issues with Beckett's shoulder as a consequence of his having been in the league longer than most 29-year-olds. And then that paragraph about Lackey made me start scratching my head again. 

This week, in baseball withdrawal, I've been watching my 2007 DVDs a lot. And it bears repeating: on the mound in those 2007 playoffs, Beckett was an absolute monster. He commanded his fastball with a sniper's accuracy, and dropped curveballs so devastating they made several opposing hitters go quite literally weak in the knees.

Then, in the footage of the post-World Series celebrations, it is Beckett they hand the World Series trophy to, to stand up on a table with and present to his champagne-soaked teammates. It is Beckett from whom several players call for a speech -- and for all of his balkiness when otherwise asked to speak in public, he obliges.

In this moment it's clear that Beckett didn't just statistically lead the pitching staff that year -- he became a team leader, too.

But then there was 2008, when Beckett, hobbled by an oblique strain, answered the bell when called upon, but didn't dominate in the same way he had the previous year. 

He also had a chance to repeat the 2007 performance at the end of last season, and though it pains me to remember, this was the result:

(I always feel like there should be some dramatic, very sad music to go along with this image...)

So if I'm being realistic, I'd say this is probably just another case of my ever-present Sox-fan emotions taking their time catching up with the current reality. After all, when the team first acquired Beckett, I was more concerned with lamenting the loss of Hanley Ramirez than I was looking forward to what we'd see from our new acquisition, whom I was convinced at the time was an injury-prone head case.

Which means that if I'm inwardly kicking and screaming about Beckett's Boston career coming to an end while looking askance at the mouth-breathing John Lackey, whose junk-talking about the Sox will overshadow his pitching potential for me at least until his first official delivery of the season, I can only expect to be writing a similar post about Big John come five years, right?

And yet that knowledge didn't stop me from hoping Josh would come out today loaded for bear, fanning Rays left and right and making all this speculation look foolish.

He didn't -- though he also wasn't bad, he surrendered two home runs in 6 innings while the Sox bats flailed on the other side of the ball and left down 3-0.

Sigh.

After the game, in that surprisingly calm press conference, Beckett's own analysis was that he'd been happy he managed to get into a jam in the sixth, and then get out of it without surrendering any more runs before his outing was finished. His real goal had been to throw more pitches than his last spring start, and make sure he'd recovered enough from his flu earlier this month to be on track for the season.

And so here comes that maddening Spring Training refrain again: it's early yet. Too soon to tell.

Though I know the futility of clinging to any one player, I always seem to do it; Beckett is a prime example. I want that 2007 version of him to come roaring back this season, and I want him in a Boston uniform next year, and that's really all there is to it right now, as far as my heart is concerned, no matter what my brain says.

Which is why it's a good thing I'm not in charge, obviously. We'd be fielding an old-timer's team by 2015.

In Search of the Elusive Josh Beckett Highlight Video

I keep hoping against hope that one of Josh Beckett's Spring Training starts will be televised, or at least condensed into a highlight video online, and I keep either being extremely slow on the uptake (and a piss-poor Googler to boot), or there just...haven't been any.

Is the Commander working on a new pitch or something else top secret he doesn't want anyone in the league to know about until Opening Day? Is the suspicion he may have tipped his pitches in the second half of last season playing into it? Does he have a clause in his contract limiting the amount of cameras stuck in his face on and off the field during Spring Training?

Does he just hate me personally and want me to be unhappy?!

For whatever reason, my baseball withdrawal this particular spring has focused itself squarely on Beckett. The more elusive he is, the more I'm DYING to watch him pitch, and the more curious I become about why it seems like there's so little footage of him pitching available. I've seen Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz and John Lackey. I've seen Jonathan Papelbon and Manny Del Carmen. I've seen video clips of an injured Daisuke Matsuzaka pitching, for Chrissakes.

But our ace remains, largely, shrouded in mystery. Even the one start of his that was supposed to be televised, he was out sick.

Today, breathless reports have been released on his start against Pittsburgh -- words like "dominance" and "overpowering" are being used -- and I have yet to find any footage.

Wallow in the pathos of my life (or lack thereof) with me this afternoon -- I clicked on an article, "Beckett buckles down as season nears" and there was a video clip fronted with a screencap that very much suggested highlight video within:

 

But then when I clicked, it was the ol' bait-and-switch again.

 

Which I'm not totally complaining about -- an interview is good, too, in its own way. I'm especially amused by his unwavering DEATH GRIP on the microphone throughout the segment, as well as Al Leiter's commentary on Beckett's ever-fascinating sunglasses at the end.

But that promising screencap? Turned out to be from a split second of a warm-up toss in the bullpen. That's it.

So far, that I know of, there has been a single Beckett highlight video available from one of his spring starts, from March 8. It is 30 seconds long and shows exactly...three...pitches. 

This will not do at all. 

As a pitching junkie, it is driving me nucking futz that there's been so little opportunity to get a look at our ace in action so far. Especially when he last walked off the field looking so frighteningly mortal, to hear reports of dominance and not be able to actually watch even the highlights is just...argh.

If you know something I don't, help my sorry ass out, wouldja? In the meantime, I'll be resorting to my old fallback, the DVD of Game 5 of the 2007 ALCS. And sighing heavily.

Red Sox Spring Training 2010: Get Well Soon

First it was my cable that was ailing. From Wednesday through the late afternoon on Saturday, it suddenly decided to stop receiving several channels, including NESN. This, as you can imagine, was unacceptable, but by the time I got the cable back on Saturday, the game was already over. Without receiving the channel, the TiVo obviously couldn't record...and I missed another game.

Naturally, I was geared up to watch Josh Beckett -- finally! -- pitch in a televised game yesterday afternoon. And then it was Beckett's turn to get sick, scratching due to an illness that has been reported as mild. I caught some of AA prospect Ryne Miller's spot start, which was...as you'd expect for a kid making a surprise start against major leaguers, Spring Training or no Spring Training.

The Sox would overcome Miller's struggles with booming bats from Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis, among others. But that's almost neither here nor there, except that it improves the Sox' standings in the Mayor's Cup to 3-1 so far.

Meanwhile, in other news of health and wellness (or lack thereof), Daisuke Matsuzaka was scratched from pitching live BP because of stiffness in his neck. I wonder if they're being extra, extra, extra, EXTRA careful with Dice after last year, or if it's going to turn out he's made of glass.

Even Jed Lowrie has been away from camp with a mysterious illness, this one a seemingly more serious case than Beckett's or Matsuzaka's, as he was sent for tests over the weekend after trainers detected an elevated heart rate in the young infielder. 

But the most worrisome news out of camp in the last few days has been the announcement that Sox prospect Ryan Westmoreland will need brain surgery. And not just any brain surgery (as if there is such a thing) -- but surgery near his brain stem for a cavernous malformation, which according to a Globe report "could leave severe neurological damage. The serious medical implications transcend concerns about Westmoreland’s playing career."

Naturally, like any other person with a beating heart, my thoughts are with Westmoreland and his family at this difficult time, with every wish for the best possible outcome, whether that includes Westmoreland in Sox home whites someday or not.

Finally, there has also been at least some news of convalescence today as well -- Mike Lowell played in an 8-4 loss to the Baltimore Orioles, his first game this year. Let's hope this trend continues. 

Red Sox Spring Training 2010: Spring Chickens

I've noticed a bit of a pattern to the Sox news this Spring Training; it seems like each player either does one day of press meetings during camp, or something similar, because each day the focus of news stories, videos and other commentary seems to be on one particular player or another.

Take the day that the news was all about Mike Lowell and what a good, non-whining guy he is. Or the day that was all about Beckett's contract. 

Yesterday, apparently, was Jacoby Ellsbury day. Two videos have made the rounds, one from Nike and one on RedSox.com, both of which showed Ellsbury performing feats of athletic prowess in fetching UnderArmour.

That he has so many different "tools", as they say -- speed, agility, strength -- is impressive in itself, but the effect of Jacoby running will always be the most startling -- even after a couple of seasons watching him speed around the basepaths, he moves faster than my eyes anticipate. There's another story that's made the rounds this spring of Ellsbury outrunning a deer. Sounds like a tall tale to me, but he's fast enough that I'm sure the story will persist.

Then there was another video of a trip around the bases with Jacoby. NESN showed an edited version on Red Sox Spring Break on Saturday, but the full version is worth watching. Ellsbury goes through and demonstrates everything from the "muscle memory" that helps him take the same precise lead off first base, the crucial 'crossover' step as he takes that lead, to the way he senses and watches the fielders around him at each base.

Yesterday I couldn't find it, but now it appears there's video of the other player featured as a sidebar in yesterday's buzz about Jacoby: Josh Beckett, throwing three hitless innings in his start vs. St. Louis.

Well. Hardly the same gratuitous eye-candy treatment Ellsbury got -- these highlights show precisely one pitch from Beckett. It's a good one, but I need more. There's been a surprising dearth of Beckett video so far, sadly.

In fact, much more of the video is dedicated to David Ortiz rumbling around the bases on a Josh Reddick triple to right center. As usual whenever Papi runs the bases, even in Spring Training, you hold your breath -- especially when he slides into home in the end.

Speaking of Reddick, CSNNE's Joe Haggerty has Tweeted some high praise for the youngster from camp:

Today, even Old Man Wakefield was looking like a spring chicken -- two hits, 22 of 30 pitches for strikes.

It's a wonderful time of year. The more seasons I watch, the more I've come to appreciate Spring Training -- bright and hopeful, full of every possibility, before the bumps and pulls and strains and grind of the season, before the division standings and the pennant race, when you start to fantasize about Lackey, Beckett, Lester, Buchholz, Wakefield, and hell, Matsuzaka too, putting in monster years, when you can picture Reddick lacing hits off the wall in right like he did today consistently, against major league pitching, when you picture Jacoby Ellsbury flying, a white streak, toward a steal of home again, as if that happens every week instead of just once in a lifetime.

Red Sox Spring Training 2010: Spoiled f&$%!#@ kids

Photo by Sam

The highlight of the last few days for me has been the sudden glut of Beckett content. And perhaps the highlight within the highlight was the year's first inappropriate f-bomb from the Commander, as pointed out by Surviving Grady.

I'll overlook the fact that the article was written by that villain of Patriots Nation, John Tomase, so amusing do I find this particular quote:

The thing about me that I won’t say is different, but the thing about me that I know is that I can live off of this for the rest of my life. It’s not going to be a problem. I’ll have some left over. I’m going to be buried with it, because I’m not going to leave my kids with a whole lot where they can be spoiled (bleeping) kids.

The only thing that would've been better is if he'd said this during a live press conference.

There was also this:

“My way of thinking is there really isn’t a big difference between $60 million and $70 million,” he said. “If you can spend $60 million, then chances are you’re probably going to spend $70 million, too."

We'll see if this tune changes when that contract comes due for renegotiation, but for now, it's refreshing to see a ballplayer even profess such an attitude after so many who've acted like the number of zeroes on their paycheck directly correlates to penile size. So often we've heard about "lowball" offers, still in the millions of dollars, as a sign of "disrespect." This was at least some assurance that regardless of what happens with his contract, Beckett probably isn't going to be trying to hold fan affection hostage for a few extra bucks with that "I really want to finish my career here"-press-conference-the-week-before-he-signs-elsewhere crap. At least, I hope.

In the meantime, this past Sunday we were also treated to a Beckett interview with Peter Gammons, something I looked forward to all week like a kid to Christmas. Unfortunately it came at the very tail end of the show, and required sitting through some commentary by the CHB first. But I'll take what I can get.

NESN showed him striding up onto the stage, a bull in a china shop, first heading in the wrong direction, then struggling with the clip-on mic as he tried to get settled in a chair next to Gammons. At the same time, there was that stern, deadpan presence about him that there always is, a kind of stillness even to his casual movements that suggests someone in charge.

When he spoke, he was light years away from the snarling creature with flared nostrils and bared teeth we've grown used to seeing in postgame interviews -- there was still that air of coiled power about him, but as soon as he stopped moving and started talking, it was diminished. He overuses the word "deal" and "ya know". He gestures with his hands as if searching for a word in the air. He could almost be described as soft-spoken.

Throughout the interview, Josh barely cracked a smile, except when he said Tim Wakefield is the best golfer among the veteran Red Sox pitchers. "It's experience," he said, and shrugged, only a tiny smirk betraying the joke.

Gammons also interviewed Jonathan Papelbon during the same show, and the closer drawled his way affably through the segment, eyes squinting in the Florida sun. "Threw a few too many heaters", was his assessment of last season. Ya think?

But seriously. The best thing about these interviews wasn't anything the players said -- it was just laying eyes on them and hearing them again. Coming off football season into baseball season is always weird; the two sports are like pickles and ice cream. Football players have all the personality of chess pieces under their helmets and shoulder pads -- they leap into the air with their whole bodies to celebrate, pound their chests, and you can barely see a grin behind their facemasks. Baseball players, meanwhile, you come face to face with. You become much more intimately acquainted with their expressions, their individual speech patterns, their body language and hand gestures.

These first days of Spring Training have been all about that face-to-face re-acquaintance. And when it comes to that, in Boston, we're spoiled beyond rotten.

Red Sox Spring Training 2010: Wake me up when February ends.

Photo via Surviving Grady, who also get credit for the "Beckgut" coinage.

I'll admit I've been relieved when others have expressed their boredom with this offseason; it's good to know I'm not alone.

The Sox have made some nice moves (John Lackey; picking up Victor Martinez's option) as well as some potentially risky ones (letting Jason Bay go after a medical dispute; keeping a spot warm in the rotation for an aging Tim Wakefield recovering from surgery). Add in a flameout in the Adrian Gonzalez deal that never was, some academic discussions about lineup power vs. pitching / defensive strength during the autopsy of the 2009 season (a discussion which by now has been settled, as the team itself, by its offseason moves, has fallen firmly on the latter side), and it mostly adds up to...*yawn*

I thought the Soxaholix nailed it with the post "Tabula Rasa" last week. "And yet when you get right down to it, there really isn't much to say, is there?" "Exactly. It's all fillah."

So far as camp has opened, there have been a few storylines -- tops among them a mild back strain for Daisuke Matsuzaka and Josh Beckett's contract for 2011.  The New York Post tried to stir the pot with a piece predicting Papelbon in pinstripes, such a bald-faced attempt to get something, anything started that I found I couldn't even work up much of a response.

There's also the awkward situation with Mike Lowell to worry about at some point...but in the meantime, this offseason has been so relatively sedate that we're entering Spring Training beginning next season's contract arguments already. The Globe sports page today is headlined with a piece about Josh Beckett in which Beckett himself is not interviewed, and Jon Lester is liberally quoted advocating for a new contract for his mentor next year (also a squee-worthy, if tangential, moment where Casey Kelly describes his joy at Beckett saying 'hi' to him).

This has the potential to become an explosive situation, in the manner of all Sox melodramas, which until this point have remained a personality quirk of this team mostly unchanged by championship victories. But for now, there's a whole lot of baseball between us and anything that could be called a moment of reckoning. So unwilling has Beckett (a member of the Bill Belichick School of Media Relations) been to breathe a word to the press at this point that we've had to resort to what Surviving Grady dubbed "The Obligatory Josh Beckett Gut Shot" in order to have anything to talk about.

"Tabula Rasa" is a great way to describe things right now. It's too early for just about anything -- real game action, speculation based on much other than theoretical math, division standings, anything that infuses baseball with a shot of adrenaline to go with the "complexity and balance" described by Roger Angell in his Spring Training essay "The Old Folks Behind Home":

What cheered me as I tramped through the peanut shells and discarded programs and out into the hot late sunlight was not just the score and not just Casey's triumph but a freshly renewed appreciation of the marvelous complexity and balance of baseball...baseball requires a full season, hundreds and hundreds of separate games, before quality can emerge...

As a fan base that's known offseasons in recent years as fraught as the disastrous postseason runs that preceded them, that grew accustomed to media firestorms around the arrival of a certain dreadlocked slugger to camp, or circuses as Daisuke came ashore, maybe we should be content with the relative calm of this spring while it lasts. There's something to be said for a spring training that consists of slow emergence from hibernation, with time to appreciate sunshine and scenery.

Another passage from Angell comes to mind, from his essay "The Short Season", which captures this stopping-to-smell the roses feeling of the early spring:

My seat in the auxiliary press box offered a vista of a considerable section of nearby Tampa Bay, all ruffled and glittery and, on this day, cluttered with a heavy traffic of power yachts, water-skiers, and runabouts. A good distance out, the white sails of a gigantic Lightning-class regatta clustered thickly, and then, after the distant bump of the starting gun, the boats strung themselves out on their first reach like a line of drying wash. A series of racing hydroplanes appeared just inside a nearby seawall, threw themselves around a pylon in a snarl of noise and spray, and went bucking off to the west. I began to think I was watching teh afternoon show at the Florida Pavilion in some World's Fair.

That we're staring at a pitcher's navel rather than hydroplanes is irrelevant; in either case it's clear we haven't reached midseason focus just yet.

As long as we're working with color filler, however, it might be time for someone to point a camera at Dustin Pedroia again for a little while. Just an idea. Surely the Elf can at least find a way to bring us more compelling content than Josh Beckett's midriff.