Right-hander Kevin Millwood opted out of his minor league deal with the Red Sox last August. (AP)

Finally, Kevin Millwood is in Boston. But the veteran right-hander is at Fenway Park not as a member of the Red Sox, but instead as a member of the Seattle Mariners rotation.

And with his presence, it is easy to look back and wonder “what if. . .”

A year ago, the Sox signed Millwood to a minor league free agent deal after he’d been released from a similar contract by the Yankees. He represented a potential rotation depth option, his wealth of experience (over 14 big league seasons at the time that the Sox signed him, Millwood had amassed 159 victories and over 2,500 innings of mileage) permitting him to serve as a potential option despite the fact that, at 36, his formula for success was predicated more on guile than stuff.

In 13 starts in Pawtucket, Millwood pitched credibly, going 5-1 with a 4.28 ERA, striking out 66 and walking 25 in 73 2/3 innings. Yet when the Red Sox endured their September rotation meltdown, Millwood was nowhere to be found. Or, more precisely, he was pitching in Colorado, going 4-3 with a 3.98 ERA in his nine starts, numbers that made it easy to surmise that, at a time when pitchers such as Erik Bedard or Kyle Weiland or Andrew Miller were either injured or ineffective, he could have been the difference between the Red Sox winning and losing the wild card.

But Millwood had left the organization in August, after the Sox acquired Bedard at the trade deadline. While some concluded that the Sox messed up in letting him go, that outlook represents a form of revisionist history.

First, the Sox would have been happy to keep the right-hander. But once the deal was made for Bedard at the trade deadline, Millwood decided that he did not want to spend the entire season languishing in Triple-A, and so he opted out, mindful that his career might be done. As he drove home, his playing days potentially in the rearview mirror, he was rerouted.

“It finally came to a point where I didn’t see myself in their plans. They were calling guys up here and there, and I wasn’t getting an opportunity — and that’s OK. It just finally got to the point where I was ready to go home. On the way home, I got a job on the way home,” he recounted on Monday. “I just went in and told them that I was leaving. I hung around for the weekend, and then I left and was going to drive all the way home, see some friends and family along the way. About two hours into my drive, my agent called and said Colorado wanted me to come play. I was like, ‘That’s fine as long as it’s in the big leagues. I’m not going back to Triple-A.’ He said, ‘No, they want you to be in Cincinnati and pitch on Wednesday.’ ‘OK. Fine with me.’ I found an airport and flew to Cincinnati. That was it.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox selected slugger Bryce Brentz out of Middle Tennessee State in 2010. (Middle Tennessee State)

It was one of the most impressive lines in the career of Bryce Brentz, the outfielder with as much middle-of-the-order power potential as virtually any prospect in the Red Sox system. The 23-year-old had his first professional five-hit game, going 5-for-5 with four singles, a double and an RBI.

Perhaps as impressive as the volume of the hits was their location. All of Brentz’s singles were up the middle. His double was to the opposite-field in right. It is evidence that, after struggling early in the year with a pull-happy approach, the 2010 supplemental first-round pick is once again doing a better job of staying back and reacting to pitches with an all-fields approach, confident that his tremendous bat speed and raw power can permit him to drive the ball wherever it’s pitched.

While his numbers (and even his results) did not show it, that is an approach that Brentz has maintained for almost all of the season with Double-A Portland, something that contributed to the impression in the Sox organization that his performance had been better than his numbers suggested.

“Very early on, he was probably a little pull-happy, but that was a quick adjustment from fairly early in the season,” said farm director Ben Crockett. “You’d see him fouling fastballs off to the right side that were well hit. He was just caught a little in between. But now he’s staying back, and even weeks ago, if you saw the at-bats, you saw him attempting to work on staying back, letting the ball get deep and driving it to the right side.”

He’s doing that — and, indeed, driving the ball to all fields — with impressive frequency right now. With the 5-for-5 Sunday, in his last 11 games since April 27, Brentz leads the Eastern League with a .439 average, ranks fourth with a .477 OBP, second with a .707 slugging mark and second with a 1.185 OPS. While he is not launching homers with the same frequency as he did a year ago (en route to a 30-homer year in Greenville and Salem), he’s now showing an ability to hold his own against more advanced competition in Double-A.

There are still raw components of his game. He’s walked just seven times in 130 plate appearances. He has three errors in 22 games in the outfield, after committing nine a year ago. On Sunday, he was caught stealing and picked off.

Nonetheless, his recent scorching stretch has served as a reminder that few in the Sox system can match his offensive ceiling, and the Sox believe that he has the defensive tools to become an impact corner outfielder at the major league level.

TRIPLE-A PAWTUCKET RED SOX: 5-4 WIN VS. COLUMBUS (INDIANS)

(BOX)

– Alex Hassan entered Sunday having gone 0-for-12 over his previous four games, though the quality of his at-bats had remained fine, as he walked twice and struck out once. He snapped out of that hitless spell in dramatic fashion, going 3-for-3 with a homer, double and sac fly while driving in a pair. On the year, he’s hitting .258 with a .386 OBP, .409 slugging mark and .795 OPS. Since April 13, Hassan has ranked among the best hitters in the International League, hitting .316 with a .411 OBP, .500 slugging mark and .911 OPS. Read the rest of this entry »

Center fielder Jackie Bradley was selected by the Red Sox with the No. 40 pick of the 2011 draft. (John Corneau / Lowell Spinners)

It had been a while since the Red Sox had taken a top college position player from a major program when they selected Jackie Bradley Jr. out of the University of South Carolina in the supplemental first round last summer. While Kolbrin Vitek had been selected out of Ball State with the team’s first-round pick in 2010, the level of competition he faced in college wasn’t necessarily the type to allow him to hit the ground sprinting, and so he spent all of last year in Salem.

The last time the team had taken a college position player with something approximating the competitive pedigree and resume of Bradley — the 2010 College World Series MVP and two-time College World Series champion at Omaha — was when the Sox selected Jacoby Ellsbury in the first round of the 2005 draft. Ellsbury made his pro debut in Lowell and then, assigned to High-A Wilmington (then the Sox’ Carolina League affiliate), Ellsbury got off to a strong start, hitting .304 with a .368 OBP, .449 slugging mark and .818 OPS through late-April, before an injury sidelined him for about four weeks. He came back and played roughly a month and a half in Wilmington before a mid-July promotion to Double-A Portland, at a time when he was hitting .299/.379/.418/.797 with four homers and 25 steals in 61 games.

Ellsbury took little time to show that he was ready to move. But he never dominated in the same sustained fashion as Bradley.

Bradley added another page to what has become an incredibly impressive chapter in his pro debut at Salem. On Saturday, he went 5-for-5 with a double, and 31 games into his season, he is hitting .389 with a .507 OBP, .575 slugging mark and 1.082 OPS along with 11 steals. Though he’s made four errors in center, his defense has been described by farm director Ben Crockett as “incredible.”

From a performance standpoint, he’s done just about everything imaginable at this level. So what does the team want to see from him before sending Bradley to Portland?

“Jackie’s performed very well. It’s still a small sample,” said Crockett. “We’re very happy with what we’ve seen so far, though, and want to continue to see consistency in the way he plays, get him used to the rigors of playing everyday and playing more often than he has in the past.”

Bradley has played 31 games in Salem, about half the number that Ellsbury had before his promotion. But he hasn’t missed time due to injury while playing everyday, and at some point, if Bradley keeps dominating his competition, he’ll force his way up to the next level. The last Red Sox college position player to start his first full pro season with this kind of performance was Dustin Pedroia, whom the Sox pushed all the way up to Double-A at the start of 2005, with the second baseman responding by hitting .347/.434/.521/.954 in his first 31 games en route to a promotion to Triple-A by late-June.

TRIPLE-A PAWTUCKET RED SOX: 7-6 WIN VS. COLUMBUS (INDIANS)

(BOX)

– There was progress for Daisuke Matsuzaka, who managed to pitch into the sixth inning for the first time in his rehab assignment and who showed more power on his fastball (topping out at 93 mph on his fastball on the McCoy Stadium gun, according to reports), showed improved command with the pitch and who knocked down his walks total to one. Still, after allowing five runs on seven hits, including a pair of homers, Matsuzaka seemed skeptical of the idea that he’s major league ready. Read the rest of this entry »

Right-hander Matt Barnes is averaging 14.4 strikeouts per nine innings this year (Darrell Snow / Greenville Drive)

At this point, they are becoming events as much as they are starts. When Matt Barnes takes the mound, the eyes of the organization are on him.

Thus far, he has yet to disappoint. The right-hander made his seventh pro start (and second in High-A Salem) on Friday night, and he just kept overpowering hitters. Though he did permit two runs (one earned) — the largest runs total he’s permitted this year — and he was taken deep for the first time as a professional, the 2011 first-rounder (No. 19 overall) struck out eight and walked none in his six innings of work, while filling up the strike zone with an outrageous 75 percent of his pitches (59 of 79).

Barnes leads all of pro baseball — majors and minors — with 62 strikeouts. He’s walked only five. He’s shown a plus fastball (topping out at 98 mph, still reaching 96-97 mph in the later innings of his outings, capable of getting numerous swings and misses) and a plus curveball with a changeup that has a chance to grade as an above-average third offering. In his two starts since being promoted to Salem, he has a 1.50 ERA with 20 strikeouts in 12 innings. Overall this year, between his seven starts in Greenville and Salem, he is 3-0 with a 0.70 ERA, a ton of groundballs and strikeouts and a .153 batting average against.

Chaz Scoggins of the Lowell Sun recently noted the parallels between the professional debuts of Barnes and Roger Clemens. In the intervening almost three decades, it would be difficult to identify another Red Sox prospect who has been so dominant out of the gate in his pro career. That is not to say that Barnes should start clearing spots on his mantle for Cy Young awards, but for an organization that has had several lessons in the limitations of free agency and the trade market in order to acquire quality starting pitching, the fact that Barnes has hit the ground running represents one of the most promising signs that the farm system can offer.

TRIPLE-A PAWTUCKET RED SOX: 5-1 WIN VS. COLUMBUS (INDIANS)

(BOX)

– Jose Iglesias went 2-for-4 with a bloop single and a bunt as his season continues its reversal since a slow April. He now has multiple hits in seven of his last nine games, hitting .429 in that stretch to improve his numbers to .259 with a .326 OBP, .293 slugging mark and .619 OPS. He also swiped a base, and is now 5-for-6 in stolen base attempts this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Clay Buchholz turned in his first quality start of 2012. (AP)

The Red Sox have been desperate for quality starts, and no one has inspired more desperation than Clay Buchholz.

The right-hander allowed five or more earned runs in each of his first six starts of the year, posting a major league-worst 9.09 ERA and 2.02 WHIP. He’d been a mess, seemingly reluctant to use a changeup that had long been his most dominant weapon and unable to locate his fastball consistently. In six starts, he was averaging about 5 1/3 innings, and most recently, he was shelled by the Orioles last Sunday for five runs on seven hits in just 3 2/3 innings.

And so, Friday’s outing represented something of a landmark in the team’s season. For the first time all year, Buchholz managed to control the damage done by an opposing lineup, allowing the Indians four runs (three earned) on eight hits in 6 1/3 innings. At the time he left the game (with the bases loaded and one out), the Sox were up, 7-1, in an eventual 7-5 victory.

Still, while he recorded his first quality start of the season, Buchholz was not dominant. Far from.

For just the second time in his career, he did not record a strikeout in a start. (The first came on Aug. 20, 2008, and immediately preceded a demotion to Double-A for Buchholz.) He allowed eight hits (six singles, two doubles), walked three, hit a man and was the beneficiary of multiple critical defensive plays by his outfielders that kept the game at bay.

Nonetheless, for Buchholz, the final line represented a potential life raft in a season where he has been adrift in unfamiliar waters. For the first time this year, he allowed fewer than five earned runs, thus snapping a string of six straight starts of such a yield (the longest by a Sox starter since Red Ruffing had eight straight starts in which he gave up at least five or more earned runs in 1925).

WHAT WENT RIGHT FOR THE RED SOX Read the rest of this entry »

Josh Beckett is trying to figure out if he's tipping pitches (AP)

Inside the Red Sox clubhouse and front office, Golf Gate appears to be a virtual non-issue when it comes to Josh Beckett. The team feels that he was healthy enough to make his start last Saturday, and scratched him merely as a precaution. That being the case, the fact that Beckett went golfing on an off-day was deemed functionally irrelevant from a practical standpoint even as the team understood how it might be perceived.

Of greater significance to the Sox and the pitcher was the fact that, in a game where he was healthy, the Indians battered Beckett. He allowed seven runs on seven hits (four doubles, two homers) while recording just seven outs in one of his worst performances as a member of the Red Sox. That it came against the Indians continued a pattern, as Beckett is 4-6 with a 5.65 ERA against Cleveland in his career. That ERA is his second worst against a club against whom Beckett has made at least five career starts.

Given that Beckett has had a number of poor outings against the Indians, the matter has raised a curiosity in the pitcher as to whether Cleveland has identified something in his delivery to indicate that he’s tipping pitches.

“I think mechanically, the information I’ve gotten back thus far, and it’s not a full-fledged investigation if you will, that his mechanics are right, but Josh seems to think this team is on him more than others and there might be something that he’s doing that is signaling their effectiveness. We’re investigating that. … Today, he was actively pursuing the answers to the problem,” said manager Bobby Valentine. “We’re looking at video to see why. When the cutter came in to the lefthander, they always were out in front of it. That’s suspicious.”

Valentine said that he’s faced challenges in managing his new pitching staff in part because the stuff that the pitchers feature now doesn’t align perfectly with the “hours on end of video” that he’s watched of his starters, in which their pitch mix was different than it is now. Indeed, the same can be said for Beckett, Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester. Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Melancon appeared in back-to-back games for the first time since he first arrived in Pawtucket on April 20-21, recording the final out of the game for his third save with the PawSox. Melancon inherited a two-on, two-out situation with the PawSox clinging to a one-run lead, and recorded a swinging strikeout to strand the tying run at third. At this point, it seems safe to say that there is little left for Melancon to prove in Triple-A. In 10 innings, he has 18 strikeouts and no walks with three saves. Opponents are hitting .231 against him, and of the nine hits he’s allowed, just one has been for extra bases (a double). He’s entered games in the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth innings, he’s inherited clean innings and situations with runners on base, he’s dominated while getting strikeouts and groundballs.

The Red Sox called up Daniel Nava in part because of the uniqueness of the Indians pitching staff. With a group of starters who are right-handed groundball pitchers, the Sox wanted a left-handed outfielder who was a) on a hot streak and b) has a swing path that suggests the ability to drive pitches down in the zone, something that Nava did on Thursday while going 1-for-2 with a double and two walks.

But given the tax being placed on the Red Sox bullpen, the idea of adding another pitcher to the roster in the near future seems likely, and if/when that happens, it will be interesting to see if the Red Sox make the move for Melancon, at a time when he will have a dominant stretch in the minors to serve as a foundation for renewed confidence in the majors.

TRIPLE-A PAWTUCKET RED SOX: 7-6 WIN VS. ROCHESTER (TWINS) Read the rest of this entry »