Red Sox set starters for first slate of spring games

by Randy Booth on Feb 21, 2009 5:08 PM EST in News

Terry Francona announced the first slate of starting pitchers for the upcoming Spring Training games today:

Wednesday vs. Boston College: Josh Beckett
Wednesday at Minnesota: Tim Wakefield
Thursday vs. Pittsburgh: Jon Lester
Friday at Tampa Bay: Michael Bowden
Saturday vs. Northeastern: Kris Johnson
Saturday vs. Cincinnati: Clay Buchholz

It's not much, but it's something, right? Michael bowden, Kris Johnson and Clay Buchholz will get an early shot to prove their worth to Terry Francona and others in the Sox organization. For Josh Beckett, Tim Wakefield and Jon Lester, they are just going through the normal motions.

My favorite part of the spring is to watch guys like Bowden, Johnson and Buchholz to see how they do against (kinda) major league hitting. I'll keep an eye on guys like Beckett, but for the most part their performances don't mean much unless coming off major injury problems. And rememeber, we'll probably only see two or three innings out of these pitchers at this point. Don't expect a huge sample size to judge their performances.

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Starters

Kris Johnson interests me more than any of the others, if only because I have a fairly low opinion of him as a prospect. That being said, he’s going against Northeastern. I’d have preferred the Sox switch him and Bowden or Buchholz so he at least goes up against pro competition.

"Are you a real doctor, or a doctor like Dr. Pepper is a doctor?"

by Allen Chace on Feb 21, 2009 5:28 PM EST reply actions

Or, go up against “pro” competition.

OverTheMonster.com

by Randy Booth on Feb 21, 2009 5:33 PM EST up reply actions

Why is Beckett going up against BC?

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by bdalebs on Feb 21, 2009 11:46 PM EST reply actions

You always want to use your ace in big games. Duh.

OverTheMonster.com

by Randy Booth on Feb 22, 2009 12:44 AM EST up reply actions

Question-

Are you guys at all worried about Lester’s innings jump from 07? According to b-ref he threw 153 innings in 07 and 210 in 08. If yall addressed this in a previous post just show me the way but I come here pretty often and haven’t seen one. Anyways I think Lester is absolutely filthy and picture him raising hell against my yanks for years to come, but usually teams only like their young guys to make 30 inning jumps from year to year. I’ve heard rumors that the sox have their own set of strength tests that they administer throughout the season to determine in-season fitness levels, just wondering what some of the more literate/knowledgeable fans think.

Strikeouts are boring- Besides that, they're fascist. Throw some ground balls - it's more democratic.

by CasanovaWong on Feb 22, 2009 3:05 AM EST reply actions

The workload increase isn't as big as it looks on paper

Innings pitched doesn’t tell you anything about efficiency—and that has changed quite a bit for Lester. I believe he knocked something like two pitches per inning off his numbers between 2007 and 2008, which allowed him to put in a full inning per outing in the process. So that’s half the difference in workload—so in reality, his increase in terms of “real” workload is only about 30 innings.

by lone1c on Feb 22, 2009 10:10 AM EST up reply actions

I'm expecting a little regression from Lester.

Just because he was so much better last year. Hadn’t thought of the innings workload. Generally our team / medical staff are pretty good about not overworking a player, but it is a slight concern.

"It's just a tiny little nick, but it hurts when I get champagne in there."
- Jason Bay, on getting spiked scoring the winning run in ALDS Game Four.

by 0157H7 on Feb 22, 2009 10:53 AM EST up reply actions