Jerry Remy

NESN Red Sox analyst Jerry Remy joined the Dennis & Callahan show Wednesday morning and talked about the resurgence of the Red Sox and David Ortiz. Remy said he isn’t convinced the team will keep Ortiz around next season despite his huge production this month.

“Probably not,” Remy said. “I think they’re hoping to get the best they can out of him this year and let next year play itself out. The nice thing about this is now that he comes to the plate, you have confidence in him again and more importantly, he has confidence in himself.”

A transcript follows. Visit the Dennis & Callahan audio on demand page to hear the interview.

If those critics who called the Red Sox a flawed team that neither pitches nor plays defense could be considered premature in their judgments, wouldn’t those critics who are now jumping on the bandwagon and calling them the team to beat also be considered premature?

Well, they’re certainly playing a lot better. They’re playing more to their capability right now, there’s no question about that. Finally the pitching is starting to show up. The biggest surprise at the beginning of the year was that these pitchers, who were supposed to be one of the best in the American League, weren’t doing it and now they’re doing it. [Clay] Buchholz has been unbelievable. [Jon] Lester, as you can see, over the last four or five starts has been incredible. We’ve got to get Lackey straightened out tonight, but now they’re pitching the way they’re capable of pitching. It makes everybody else look a lot better. It makes the bullpen look better, the offense doesn’t have to score 10 runs a night, so it’s been good baseball over the past couple of weeks.

Was there a launching point for this team for when they started to turn things around? There wasn’t a benches-clearing brawl in any games and Terry Francona hasn’t been thrown out in any huge tirades, so would you chalk this up to the starting pitchers getting their acts together?

I think it was strictly the starting pitching because when the season started, these guys were not pitching the way they were capable of pitching and it was the biggest surprise to everybody. I think that’s what turned things around. When you get into games like last night and you get it lined up where you hope to get one more out of Lester, but he had a high pitch count, and you can go to guys like [Manny] Delcarmen, [Daniel] Bard and [Jonathan] Papelbon, it makes the game easy. The game wasn’t easy the first month of the season. They were getting four innings, five innings, you get into middle relief — which is always a problem for any team — but I think they [the way they have] turned the whole thing around is the way they’ve been pitching. No meetings, nothing like that, it was strictly the fact that they were pitching better.

Why do pitchers, like Lester and Daisuke Matzusaka, see their talents come and go?

Well, let’s wait and see what Daisuke does next time [before] we jump on that bandwagon. As far as Lester is concerned, everything for him early in the season was up in the zone, not high, but thigh-high, and he doesn’t operate there. He operates around the knees and below the knees with his cut fastball and that’s exactly what happened to him. Everything now is down and the only time he goes up in the zone is when it’s designed to go up in the zone. I don’t know if it’s a mechanical thing that they had to work out, or whatever it is, but he got it worked out. When he stays down in the zone like he has been, he’s almost unhittable. He’s one of the top left-handers in baseball.

I think it’s small things like that that have made the difference. Daisuke’s outing the other night — we didn’t get do the game, I got to watch it on TV — he had a good fastball. He’s been throwing his fastball more. I think he’s relying on it more than he ever has in the past. Instead of nibbling around them, he’s trying to get ahead of hitters, and then he’s using his breaking ball to put them away. That’s nice to watch, instead of the other stuff that we’ve had to watch over the years where he just nibbles into a 3-2 [count] and walks guys, loads the bases …

And works slowly.

He probably thought that if he had a great game with [Jason] Varitek, then they would let him stay with Tek.

Terry’s been very reluctant to say we’re going to have a personal catcher. I would be surprised if he didn’t catch Daisuke his next outing, but right now [Victor] Martinez is hurt anyway so who knows when he’ll be able to come back and play. [Francona] is reluctant to say that because he doesn’t want to get trapped into having a catcher catch a certain pitcher because it messes up the rest of the lineups; you’ve got to have Martinez in there. As he says, right now, it’s going to stay, “Well, we’ll give him time off when he needs it, Martinez will catch Varitek as a backup,” but I assume to think that they are going to lean toward [Varitek] catching a guy like Daisuke because he seems to get the best out of him.

What would you say at the beginning of the season if you were told that 30 percent of the way through the season, Josh Beckett was your sixth best starter on the team?

Yeah, it’s too bad. He’s got the injury thing. He’s bouncing back from that, but I totally expect him to bounce back and be what he normally is. He goes through stretches like this, he hasn’t been totally healthy, which has hurt him. I wouldn’t be at all surprised at some point this season, and I think very soon, we’re going to see the real Josh Beckett. Once that happens, you’re talking about a very strong top five and possibly six with [Tim] Wakefield waiting in the wings.

If David Ortiz were to hit 40 home runs and drives in 135, do you think the Red Sox would then consider picking up his $12 million option for next season?

Probably not. I think they’re hoping to get the best they can out of him this year and let next year play itself out. The nice thing about this is now that he comes to the plate, you have confidence in him again and more importantly, he has confidence in himself. You can tell a difference in his personality, just the way he pimps around the clubhouse and the way he’s been acting. He feels good about himself again and that’s a good thing.

That’s part of being a player. When you’re not playing well, you’re down, you’re not yourself — the normal, good natured guy he has been — and when you are playing well, you feel good about yourself. That’s what he’s feeling now. When he comes to the plate now in big situations, I have confidence that he’s going to get the job done where a month ago, you went, “Oh God. He’s got to get pinch hit for now.” He’s back to being his old self.

Is that 30.59 seconds around the bases part of that renewed self-confidence?

I can think back at my seven [career home runs], and I don’t think my seven added up to 30.

Do other teams take not of that?

He’s Big Papi. He’s been doing this for a long time. They’re accustomed to seeing that. There are worse things you can do to show up a pitcher than take 30 seconds to get around the bases. I think any team that faces the Red Sox that faces Ortiz and he hits a home run, I think they expect that. I don’t think it’s something that they get overly upset about.

When it hits the wall and it takes him 30 seconds to get to second …

That’s a problem.

Is Theo [Epstein] looking forward to unloading a bunch of guys and kind of reloading, restocking next year or is it a case to case basis?

I think a lot of that depends on where they are around the All-Star break and around the trading deadline. If there still in the thick of things — the wild card or whatever it may be, I don’t see a big dump. It’s quite possible if they’re 10 games out of second place and it looks like there’s no chance to go to a playoff, you could possibly see something like that.

My gut feeling tells me come that time they’re going to be in the mix and this is probably the team you’re going to see for the rest of the year. What happens after that, I have no clue. That’s the job of Theo and the front office. But I think a lot of it depends on their standing and where they are when you get close to that trading deadline, in July.

Does a hitter like Prince Fielder scare you in terms of long-term contract?

I don’t know that much about the guy, except that he’s way out of shape, and that would concern me a little bit. Also, the ballpark that we play in would concern me a little bit. He’s a left-handed hitter. Of course, left field is a big field where we are. I don’t know him well enough, how much he goes to the opposite field. I don’t have a good answer for you because I just don’t get to see him play enough. Would they be interested in him? They’d know better than me because they’ve scouted him. I can’t give you a good answer on somebody I don’t know that much about.

Jacoby’s most recent injury or setback aside, talk to us about the significance of them saying Ellsbury’s going back to center field and [Mike] Cameron’s now going to left.

I just think that at this stage of Cameron’s career, I don’t think he’s moving as well as he did in his younger days. We saw before he went on the disabled list a couple of balls out there that probably Ellsbury would have caught easily and Cameron didn’t. Then you throw the injury on top of it, and my guess is that that’s the thinking behind making that move. They’ve got some scrambling to do. Ellsbury came up hurt again yesterday. I don’t know how long he’s going to be out again. For the time being, I guess you’ll see a lot of Cameron in center field. Then when he gets healthy, I think Ellsbury will probably go back there.

My guess for a long-term solution would be probably a platoon between [Jeremy] Hermida and Cameron, and Ellsbury staying in center field, because Hermida’s played some good baseball.

Do you think J.D. Drew has changed his approach to hitting at all. Is he going the other way?

I think he’s using the opposite field more. … He’s still not one to swing at any bad pitches. He’s amazing, how he can stay off a ball that’s an inch off the plate, where other guys would be swinging at it, he just won’t swing at it. He has been swinging a little bit earlier in the count. He’s been using the whole field, driving the ball the other way. He’s looking pretty good at the plate right now. And I’m very comfortable with him in that third spot. Even with Martinez in the lineup, I like J.D. up at the 3 spot. And I think he likes it, too, because it gives him a chance to drive in some runs.

You always looked at him and said he’s capable of [driving in runs].

He’s one of the best players that gets so little attention and the numbers never add up at the end of the season to how good he is. He’s really, really a good player. But he’s one of those laid-back guys, he doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t get any attention, he’ll come out of the lineup hurt occasionally and he needs a couple of days, everybody knows that. But when he plays, he can really play. He can hit, he’s a terrific outfielder, he gets greats jumps on the ball, he’s a good baserunner, he does everything well.

Did you have [an umpire] that you hated, and he hated you?

Oh, yeah, a guy named Barnett. Larry Barnett. … He was terrible. He absolutely hated me. He’s the only guy who ever called me out for drag bunting and being out of the box.

They were trying to get you.

There was no doubt. They told me prior to the game they were going to get me, and they got me.

So, they hold grudges.

Oh, yeah, they do. They do.

Carl Crawford, do you see him as a potential Boston Red Sox left fielder next year? He’s a free agent, and among the best on the market. Do you hear any whispers?

The whispers I hear are the Yankees. They’re supposed to go heavy after him. And it seems like Crawford has some interest in New York. He’s made a couple of comments down here already about New York. So, maybe he’s got New York on his mind. We’ll have to see. He’s a good player, though.