Beckett Smooth, Wakefield Bumpy

The Boston Red Sox played two games yesterday in Florida, winning the first game over Boston College 7-1 and losing to a "real" team, the Twinkies, 5-2 in the nightcap. In the latter game against Minnesota, Tim Wakefield was his typically mediocre self, giving up three runs in only two innings. The other two runs were given up late in the game by Traber. The Boston pitching summary is right here, with the pitchers who gave up the five runs starred...

T Wakefield (L,0-1) 2 5 3 2 2 0 0 **
J Masterson 2 1 0 0 1 0 0
M Delcarmen 1 0 0 0 0 1 0
J Lopez 1 2 0 0 0 1 0
R Ramirez 1 0 0 0 0 2 0
B Traber 1 3 2 2 1 1 0 **

That was the night game. I don't have a boxscore for the first game against Boston College, but I can tell you this. Josh Beckett looked fine. He threw just 22 pitches to record six outs. Newcomer Ramon Rodriguez also looked great, showing tremendous "pop" on his fastball. Beckett said this after his impressive first outing...

“You can’t go out there and not think about the back problem in my first outing,” Beckett said after the Sox had dispatched BC with a 7-1 win. “I definitely thought about it coming in. It was like, ‘Is this going to happen again?’ It was nice to get out there and feel good. It’s nice to go through a spring training,” Beckett said, “and just know what you’re going to do every day and not have to deal with sitting in the training room for three or four extra hours.”

Hey Josh, it's so nice to have a healthy you. Win 20 this year. I also want to reiterate something I said in a previous post, and I'd like to read your comments about this one. The Red Sox will have six bona fide starters when John Smoltz joins the rotation in late May or early June. Boston will take Timmy Wakefield out of the rotation mix when that happens, maybe for the last time. That is just my "right now" opinion. Doesn't Beckett, Lester, Daisuke, a healthy Brad Penny and a healthy John Smoltz sound good? It sure does to me! So much better than last year, a year filled with injuries and the Sox coming so close to their third World Series appearance this century.

The Red Sox will play the Pirates today at 1pm eastern time, but it won't be televised. Just scroll down three or four posts for the NESN spring training television schedule. I've got you covered, or at least I try my best to do exactly that. You can click on this post's title to be zapped to the Boston Herald homepage. They'll give you more details on BOTH games. As always, BE WELL. Cheers. L'chaim. To life. See ya. Don't forget those comments, if you can. I'll read and respond to every one. That's a promise.