Projo Sox Blog

With John Smoltz seemingly ticketed for a return to the big leagues this week, the Red Sox are facing a choice that many teams wouldn't mind having to make: How does the big-league team make room for yet another starting pitcher?

While there are indications that, as Kevin McNamara reported on Sunday, relief pitcher Daniel Bard will probably lose his spot on the Boston roster to make way for Smoltz, it doesn't answer the question of who loses his starting spot. In fact, there appears to be one candidate and one candidate alone to leave the rotation: Daisuke Matsuzaka. After failing to get a win on Saturday night despite being staked to a 5-0 first-inning lead in Philadelphia, the two-time World Baseball Classic MVP is 1-4 and has the fourth-worst E.R.A. among pitchers with at least 30 innings pitched (7.55), notes The Globe's Tony Massarotti. That makes him, for the Red Sox, whatever the opposite of an MVP would be called. Here's Massarotti's comment on the Dice-K to the 'pen option: "Matsuzaka won't like this, but the move allows the Sox to keep all of the pitchers in their roster while forcing Matsuzaka to work his way back to respectability. The bottom line here is that the other starters have been better than him."

While Massarotti does go over some other options for the Red Sox -- for example trading Brad Penny or going with a six-man rotation -- the Herald's Gerry Callahan sees no other option: "It is one definition of insanity," he writes today, "sending the same awful pitcher to the mound every fifth day and expecting different results. The Sox might be baffled by Daisuke Matsuzaka's struggles, but clearly opposing hitters are not."

Callahan is correct. The Red Sox really seem to have no other good option right now than to get Matsuzaka out of the rotation. Trading Penny to make way for Smoltz would subtract one of four reliable starters from the Boston rotation, and since we don't know how Smoltz will perform at the big-league level, that would be risky. Tim Wakefield does not deserve to be put in the bullpen. The team does not seem interested in putting Smoltz in the 'pen (despite the fact that he offered to pitch in relief), and a six-man rotation would satisfy no one.

Moving Matsuzaka to the bullpen, though, increases the risk that this becomes a totally lost season for Dice-K. Considering how unreliable he has been -- and his notorious struggles with control -- he does not seem like a good candidate to pitch in the key situations now being handled by the likes of Hideki Okajima, Ramon Ramirez, Manny Delcarmen and Takashi Saito. He's a guy you'd bring in during garbage time. That might be a good way to handle a struggling young pitcher -- a Phil Hughes -- but for a man like Matsuzaka, who is used to being treated like a star, it could produce unwanted results. It will also affect his pitching routine and perhaps make it more difficult for Matsuzaka to become a useful starter again this season, should the Red Sox need him to return to the rotation. He'd be a man filling a role he doesn't want, and worse yet, he probably would not be any good at it.

That doesn't change the fact that, in the here and now, it is the best option the Red Sox have.

 Tags  Daisuke Matsuzaka

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