John Smoltz

MLB Network analyst John Smoltz weighed in on the Josh Beckett golf controversy during a Wednesday appearance on the Mut & Merloni show. To hear the interview, go to the Mut & Merloni audio on demand page.

Smoltz acknowledged that Beckett “could have handled it a little bit better,” but he said Beckett’s golf excursion is being overblown in Red Sox Nation.

“We make way too much of things that have absolutely nothing to do with execution on the field,” Smoltz said, adding: “A golf swing and throwing a baseball is not even remotely close. I will give you this: A back or a lat can come into play, but unless you’re a violent golfer or a terrible golfer, it really has nothing to do with Josh’s inability to throw strikes or where he wants to. He proved it the next start. He made the changes.”

Smoltz, who pitched 21 major league seasons, mostly with the Braves, spent a chunk of the 2009 season with the Red Sox. He said he knows first-hand from that experience that the Sox starters are putting in the effort.

“To be honest with you, I talked to [Beckett] and [Jon] Lester about toning it down a little bit. Those guys worked like animals,” he said. “I’d never seen guys work as hard as they did in between starts. I played a long time, and I was always priding myself on the way that I worked, but those guys put me to shame.

“I know they were younger, and certainly that trend can not continue. But I think from what goes on in a clubhouse and what goes on on a field, sometimes we translate it into, ‘What could it be? Why is his head not right? Why is it this?’ There’s a lot of things that I think each player, if they had a chance to do it all over again, might answer questions differently or not have a certain attitude of disdain. I think taking better ownership and taking more direct hits sometimes is not fun, but you’ve just got to deal with it.

“From a standpoint of these guys and going to spring training, look, I went 21 years with the Atlanta Braves. I never did half of the stuff I did when I was with the Boston Red Sox in spring training, and the way they went after it. I mean, it was incredibly tough.”

Smoltz said he has confidence the Red Sox will turn things around, but he cautions that it will take patience.

“Time is not on Boston’s side, for obvious reasons,” he said. “People want that team to rebound from last year and be the team everyone thinks they’re capable of being, and I think they will. But time, it’s just not something that people are very patient with. And you’re seeing this very streaky team. And now the rotation is coming around. It’s going to be OK. I just know people don’t feel that way given the fact that it happened in September and it’s really carried over to this year.”

Brad Penny is officially a Cardinal after passing a physical. The biggest question remaining is what this means for fellow Red Sox bust John Smoltz, who had a 4.26 ERA in seven starts for St. Louis after losing his job in Boston.

It would be a slight exaggeration of fact to suggest that John Smoltz is certain to become a free agent. According to a major-league source, the right-hander was placed on unconditional release waivers on Monday. Between now and Wednesday, any team can claim him and secure his services simply by picking up the remainder of his contract.

There is precedent for a team claiming a player on release waivers. For instance, prior to the 2004 season, the Sox claimed Reynaldo Garcia off of release waivers from the Rangers after he had been designated for assignment. But the cost of claiming Garcia — who required elbow surgery during spring training, and spent the entire year rehabbing in Fort Myers — was virtually nothing. It seems unlikely, by contrast, that a team would claim Smoltz at this point, since he would cost them more than $3 million in base salary and active roster incentives.

So, presuming that Smoltz clears waivers — a near certainty — he would become a free-agent, able to sign with any club for a prorated portion of the major-league minimum (roughly $100,000).

While the Sox will be off the hook for the amount Smoltz receives in a major-league contract that he signs with another club, the team will be responsible for the remainder of his $5.5 million salary. All told, between that salary, his $125,000 activation bonus, and the $35,000 a day that the team paid Smoltz during his time on the active roster in Boston (which ran from June 26-Aug. 7), the Sox will have paid Smoltz just over $7 million for his tenure in Boston, even when factoring in the off-set the team will receive from whatever team signs the pitcher.

Smoltz went 2-5 with an 8.32 ERA in eight starts for the Red Sox. He was designated for assignment on Friday, Aug. 7. The Sox had hoped that he might consider accepting a minor-league assignment so that he could prepare to work out of the bullpen down the stretch, but Smoltz declined, leading to his imminent status as a free agent.

The right-hander insisted after every one of his starts that his stuff was sufficient to achieve the sort of results that have been commonplace throughout his Hall of Fame career. Come Wednesday, when any club will be free to negotiate with him, it will become apparent how many teams agree with that assessment.

BOSTON, MA — The Red Sox today claimed infielder Chris Woodward off waivers from the Seattle Mariners and recalled right-handed pitcher Junichi Tazawa from Triple-A Pawtucket. Both players will be available for tonight’s game against the Yankees. Woodward will wear No. 3 and Tazawa will wear No. 63. To make room on the active Major League roster, right-handed pitchers John Smoltz and Billy Traber were designated for assignment.

The announcement was made by Executive Vice President/General Manager Theo Epstein.

Woodward, 33, hit .239 (16-for-67) with five RBI in 20 games for Seattle before being designated for assignment on August 4. He made 15 appearances (14 starts) at third base, five (four starts) at second base and one (one start) at shortstop and has played at least three different positions in seven of his 10 Major League seasons. Woodward began 2009 with Triple-A Tacoma where he batted .299 (52-for-174) with one home run and 15 RBI in 51 games.

In 2005, the right-handed hitter played at least five games at every defensive position except pitcher and catcher, joining Denny Hocking (2000-01) and Clay Bellinger (2000) as the only Major Leaguers ever to accomplish the feat. He has the most experience at shortstop, where he owns a .966 career fielding percentage in 316 games (279 starts).

Originally selected by Toronto in the 54th round of the 1994 First-Year Player Draft, Woodward has a career .243 batting average with 33 home runs and 191 RBI over 627 games with the Blue Jays (1999-2004), Mets (2005-06), Braves (2007) and Mariners (2009).

Tazawa, 23, is 9-7 with a 2.55 ERA in 20 starts this season split between Double-A Portland and Pawtucket. The right-hander was named an Eastern League All-Star after going 9-5 with a 2.57 ERA in 18 starts for the Sea Dogs. He also represented Team World in the 2009 All-Star Futures Game in St. Louis but did not play.

Promoted to Pawtucket on July 26, the native of Yokohama, Japan is 0-2 despite a 2.38 ERA in two International League starts, last allowing two runs in 5.1 innings in a loss to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre on Sunday. He is currently in his first professional season after signing with the Red Sox as an amateur free agent following a four-year career with the Nippon Oil ENEOS of the Japan Industrial League.

Smoltz, 42, went 2-5 with an 8.33 ERA in eight starts for the Red Sox this season. The 1996 N.L. Cy Young Award has a 212-152 career record with 154 saves and a 3.32 ERA in 716 games (474 starts) with the Braves (1988-2008) and Red Sox (2009). He ranks 16th in baseball history with 3,044 strikeouts and is the only pitcher ever to record at least 200 wins and 150 saves in his career.

Traber, 29, made season debut for the Red Sox last night, allowing five runs over 3.2 relief innings. He was selected to Boston’s active roster on August 5 after going 7-5 with a 3.32 ERA in 32 games (four starts) for Pawtucket.

— RED SOX —

In the past when the Red Sox hit a bump in the road I was always confident the pitching would come around, at least until the bats got going. That hasn’t the base here over the last three weeks. Here we are and all of a sudden three-fifths of the rotation is struggling just to get through five innings. 

You have to wonder: Where is the help going to come from?

Is Daisuke Matsuzaka going to re-emerge in September?

Can Paul Byrd help despite not having thrown a major league pitch since last season?

And how about Tim Wakefield, who can throw a bullpen session but can’t cover first base?

To me, you go young. You go with Michael Bowden.

Let’s face it, the John Smoltz experiment is at an end. He’s a Hall of Famer who has been through the wars and has been a great, great pitcher. He’s just not getting it done. It really makes you appreciate what Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez did, losing five mph on their fastballs and still getting big leaguers out.

Right now Smoltz has no confidence in his fastball, he can’t locate it, and when he doesn’t locate he is getting burned. He’s giving up home runs left and right and just simply not getting it done, a fact backed up by the fact that in six of his eight starts he has allowed five or more runs. I think last might have been it for Smoltz in the starting rotation.

But that’s not the Red Sox’ only problem.

You have Jason Bay with the hamstring problem, J.D. Drew’s groin, and now Rocco Baldelli has this bruised ankle. Kevin Youkilis was playing left field for goodness sake. Then there is Jed Lowrie’s arm injury. It makes you think what has happed to this team we felt soo good about a month ago. Is Theo’s phone burning right now? That’s the question. Does he go out and look for a Jon Garland, or somehow manage to pry away Marco Scutaro from Toronto? (A tough feat with Scutaro presenting value to the Jays as a potential Type A free agent.)

I have another question — what does Casey Kotchman do for this team? Nothing against Casey Kotchman, he’s a very good player, but basically we’re saying he’s a defensive replacement. Not sure the Red Sox have the luxury of using a roster spot for that right now. You need an extra guy in the bullpen, as well as a fifth outfielder. It makes you wonder if Mark Kotsay wouldn’t be a better fit for this club since he fills two rolls, first baseman and outfielder. I understand Adam LaRoche and Kotchman are better hitters, but for the chemistry of this team Kotsay might be a better fit.

What is going to be out there? Can Theo pull something off? Is this team good enough right now? I don’t think so. And their biggest question remains the most important one. Once so deep with starting pitching, now they can’t find five guys to fill out a rotation. 

Something has to be done, and done quick.

You couldn’t find two more different teams than the Red Sox and Yankees at this juncture in the season.

In 18 games since the All-Star break, Boston forgot their winning ways and forfeited first place in the AL East en route to an unimpressive 8-10 record. New York, on the other hand, could hardly be stopped as they went 14-5 and reassured Mr. Steinbrenner that he was getting plenty of bang for his buck(s).

Now the Yankees (65-42) sit atop the AL East standings with Boston (62-44) trailing by 2.5 games as the two teams prepare to begin a four-game series in the Bronx this weekend.

Although Boston leads the season series 8-0 in 2009, it might be wishful thinking to assume the Red Sox will continue their dominance over the Yankees during this rough stretch. If anything, the odds are stacked against the Sox. The two biggest concerns seem to be that slugger Jason Bay is set to miss the first two games of the series, and the bullpen is fatigued after pitching 8.2 innings in just two games against Tampa Bay this week.

Not to mention the series opens tonight with John Smoltz facing the 23-year-old Joba Chamberlain, who is 3-0 with a 0.83 ERA in his last three starts. Smoltz, in contrast, is 2-4 with a 7.12 ERA in seven starts this season. But what’s perhaps most notable about Smoltz’s poor pitching performance this season is that it’s almost unprecedented. As WEEI.com’s DJ Bean writes in today’s LEEInks:

“Smoltz has now given up at least five earned runs in three consecutive starts dating back to July 20 (1-2). The last time Smoltz had such a stretch, the Braves were in the NL West in September of 1993… For what it’s worth, Smoltz has never seen one of these streaks reach four games.”

But that could all change tonight as Smoltz faces a Yankees lineup that’s first in the American League in OPS, OBP, and slugging percentage. New York has been outscored 55-31 in their eight losses to Boston this season, but don’t expect that discrepancy to stay so lopsided this weekend.

Still, there might be hope after all: Chamberlain is 0-1 with a 4.09 ERA in two starts against Boston this year, and recently acquired All-Star Victor Martinez has gone 10 for 21 with two doubles, a homer, and six RBIs in four games since being traded from Cleveland.

Say this for the young and talented, and recently scuffling, Baltimore Orioles. They respect the game.

And that lesson has been passed down from their manager Dave Trembley and their veteran players like Gregg Zaun.

That came in handy on Sunday when they showed respect, but not fear, when facing one of the best pitchers of the generation.

Red Sox righty John Smoltz came into the game with a 1-3 record and a 6.31 ERA in five starts.

Nick Markakis led the way with two hits, a sacrifice fly, three RBIs and a rope of a home run to right field as the Orioles beat the Red Sox, 6-2, and beat up on Smoltz.

“Just making him get the ball over the plate,” Markakis said of the approach to the 42-year-old veteran. “He doesn’t leave much over the plate. He hits his spots well. He’s one of the better pitchers out there in the game of all time. To come out here and to get on him early and get his pitch count up, we got some big hits.

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