Claymation... Josh Beckett On DL

The Boston Red Sox defeated the Minnesota Twins by a score of 3-2 Wednesday night at good old Fenway Park behind classic pitching from Clay Buchholz, who right now has the best ERA of any Red Sox starter, and the bat of none other than Big Papi David Ortiz. Papi clubbed a two run tater that proved to be the difference in this tight and close game. By the way, the resurgence of Papi's bat has made a bench warmer of Mikey Lowell but Ortiz has just been way too hot to sit in the dugout cheering on his team.

Back to Buchholz. He pounded the strike zone and kept the baseball down while mixing his fastball with his unbelievable curve. Here's Minnesota Twins player Justin Morneau on Clay...

"Buchholz hit his spots. He had the fastball getting up around 94, 95 mph and was throwing that slider on the outer part but you always have that curveball in the back of your mind."

Quite simply, he was a joy to watch. Red Sox manager Terry Francona took him out of the game after a leadoff ninth inning cheap hit, a broken bat single. Daniel Bard came in because Papelbon had worked two days in a row and sealed the deal. That's the good news, here's the bad. Josh Beckett has been placed on the disabled list because of a lower back back strain that has been bothering him for some time. Mr. Tim Wakefield will take his place in the rotation, proving that it's necessary to have 6 starters on a team's staff. Here's the skipper, Tito Francona...

“We talked through it, realized that was probably the safest thing to do. “You don’t have a crystal ball, and since we don’t, if you’re going to make a mistake or you’re going to err, we better err on the side of caution. The last thing we want to have happen is have him pitch with a bad back and turn it into something else, where he feels like he’s not using his legs or something and he hurts his shoulder. We really wanted to make sure he’s OK.”

Amen, Tito. There's a whole lot of season left to go and Wakes has proven he can do the job...better than Beckett has lately. I think Josh has been trying to pitch while his back has been hurting. Let's just get this nagging injury out of the future and into the past. He'll miss a minimum of 2 starts. I think it might be a couple more than that. But he will heal and return to form. He's too good a pitcher NOT to.

That's it for this Thursday morning. Temperatures here in north central Connecticut will top out in the mid-80s, a good 20 degrees higher than yesterday. I can't wait. Right now at 5:40am EDT it is already 53 degrees F. NICE! Click on this post's title for more on the Red Sox courtesy of SI dot com and as always, BE WELL. See ya.