Tim Wakefield

The Red Sox and Mariners will wrap up the season series Sunday night at Safeco Field in a pitching matchup of a Boston veteran and a Seattle rookie. Tim Wakefield will take the mound for the Red Sox, boasting 18 more years of major league experience than his 25-year-old counterpart, Charlie Furbush.

After an 8-6 win over the Twins on August 8, the Red Sox are now 11-4 in games that Wakefield (6-4, 4.92 ERA) starts. The veteran logged his third-straight quality start against Minnesota in his last game, lasting seven innings while allowing three earned runs. Aside from a rough seven-run outing on July 24, Wakefield hasn’t allowed more than three earned runs in a start since July 1 against Houston.

However, that one rough outing came against the Mariners, who amassed 10 hits, including two home runs, against Wakefield at Fenway Park. Still, the Red Sox and Wakefield managed to record a win, as Boston’s offense exploded for 10 runs in the first five innings on its way to a 12-8 victory. Sunday’s outing will be the knuckleballer’s third of the season against the Mariners. In his first start of the year back on May 1, Wakefield allowed one earned run while striking out three hitters and walking one over 5 2/3 innings. The Boston starter hasn’t lost to Seattle since August of 2010.

Wakefield has handled the Mariners well, holding contact hitters like Ichiro Suzuki and Adam Kennedy well below .300 batting averages. Ichiro has managed just 10 hits in 41 plate appearances, while Kennedy is hitting .219 with a double and a home run in 33 plate appearances. Miguel Olivo has posted respectable power numbers against Wakefield, hitting .278 with two home runs and five RBI in 20 career matchups. As a team, the Mariners are hitting .240 in 138 combined plate appearances vs. the right-hander.

Furbush (2-4, 4.46 ERA) spent the first half of the season in the Tigers’ bullpen before being traded to the Mariners on July 30 with Casper Wells for Doug Fister and David Pauley. Furbush has started two games in Seattle with mixed results. On August 3, he pitched five innings of one-run, two-hit ball but was pulled after just 62 pitches. In his last start, the Rangers touched him up for seven runs on eight hits while drawing four walks in four innings.

The southpaw has performed reasonably well in 55 matchups against left-handed hitting, allowing just one home run while striking out 15 and holding opponents to a .273 average. In two appearances at Safeco Field, Furbush is 1-0 with three strikeouts and a 3.00 ERA. The 25-year-old started just two games with Detroit but pitched five shutout innings against the Red Sox on May 27 as a Tiger at Fenway Park. Furbush allowed just two hits while striking out six batters and walking two. The Red Sox had a four-run lead when he came in, and Boston eventually held on for a 6-3 win.

Josh Reddick and Adrian Gonzalez were the only two Red Sox hitters to solve Furbush in that game, as both hitters went 1-for-2 against the left-hander. However, both Reddick and Gonzalez struck out in their other plate appearances. Jacoby Ellsbury, David Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis and Jarrod Saltalamacchia all went o-for-2 against Furbush.

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The Red Sox barely beat the 4 p.m. deadline to acquire left-hander Erik Bedard from Seattle. (AP)

CHICAGO — So, how close did it come?

The Red Sox have a history of pushing the boundaries of the trade deadline. In eight previous years under Theo Epstein, the Sox had consummated 10 different trades on July 31, including a couple of complex deals — a four-team swap to move Nomar Garciaparra and acquire Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewicz in 2004 and a three-team deal to send Manny Ramirez packing in favor of Jason Bay — that barely squeezed under the 4 p.m. deadline.

This year, the clock was once again winding down toward the deadline.

“It wasn’t clear we were going to be able to get anything done until the last minute again,” said Epstein. “I don’t know why that always happens to us. … It was a little stressful.”

The Sox and Mariners could not match up precisely based on the prospects in the Red Sox system — there were players whom the Sox didn’t want to sacrifice — and so Boston had to find another party to give the Mariners the return that they needed to move Bedard. Read the rest of this entry »

Tim Wakefield

After Clay Buchholz was scratched from his start Sunday with a stomach illness, it will be Tim Wakefield who toes the rubber against Seattle for his first start of the season. Wakefield has made seven appearances out of the bullpen so far, notching a 5.56 ERA, 0.97 WHIP and no record in 11 1/3 innings.

Wakefield has struggled with the Mariners in his career. He is 4-10 with a 4.18 ERA and 1.41 WHIP in 27 career outings, including 17 starts. Wakefield lost his only start against Seattle last season, giving up four runs (three earned) on eight hits over 5 2/3 innings.

Current Mariners are hitting .272 against Wakefield. Jack Cust has done the most damage, as he is hitting .440 with four extra-base hits and five RBIs in 25 at-bats. Adam Kennedy, Miguel Olivo and Milton Bradley all have a home run and three RBIs off Wakefield.

If Wakefield’s poor record against Seattle wasn’t enough of a reason for Sox fans to be concerned, there’s also the fact that Felix Hernandez will be on the mound for the Mariners. The reigning American League Cy Young winner is 3-2 with a 3.32 ERA this season. He has won each of his last two starts against Oakland and Detroit, respectively, allowing just two earned runs on eight hits and five walks over 13 2/3 innings.

Moreover, Hernandez is 4-1 with a 2.91 ERA in eight career starts against Boston. He won his only start against the Sox last season, allowing just one earned run on four hits and a walk while striking out nine over 7 1/3 innings.

Current Red Sox are hitting .259 against Hernandez. J.D. Drew leads the way with a .391 average and two home runs in 23 at-bats. Adrian Gonzalez, David Ortiz and Mike Cameron all have a homer off Hernandez, too. Read the rest of this entry »

Daisuke Matsuzaka

After a nine-game road trip, the Red Sox kick off an 11-game homestand Friday night when they take on the Mariners and Jason Vargas. The 28-year-old lefty is 0-1 in two career starts against the Red Sox, but he has pitched well in both outings. He gave up one earned run over 5 1/3 innings in his first start (a no decision) against the Sox back in 2009. In his only start against them last season, he allowed two earned runs over seven innings in a loss.

Current Sox are hitting just .233 against Vargas. Carl Crawford and Marco Scutaro have struggled with him the most, as they are 0-for-9 and 0-for-4, respectively. J.D. Drew has had the most success against Vargas. He is 2-for-4 with a home run and a pair of walks, giving him a 1.917 OPS.

Vargas has yet to break into the win column this season, as he is 0-2 with a 5.53 ERA in five starts thus far. The Mariners have lost each of his last four starts, most recently dropping a 9-1 contest to the Athletics on Saturday. Vargas gave up six runs on six hits and three walks over five innings in that game. His previous two outings were both quality starts, though.

Daisuke Matsuzaka will take the mound for Boston with his eye on a third straight win. He has been virtually untouchable in his last two starts, allowing just two hits and four walks while striking out 12 in 15 innings.

Matsuzaka is 2-1 with a 4.11 ERA in eight career starts against Seattle. Current Mariners are hitting an eye-opening .310 against him, though. Chone Figgins has done the most damage, as he is 7-for-13 (.538) with five walks and a 1.359 OPS against Matsuzaka. Jack Cust, who is hitting .286 in 14 at-bats, is the only Mariner with a home run off Matsuzaka, although he also has eight strikeouts in those 14 ABs.

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Manny Delcarmen is still young. He will turn 29 next week. And yet, after being traded last August by the only team for whom he’d ever played and then being released by the club that dealt for him in December, his career reached something of a crossroads this offseason.

After the Rockies elected not to tender a contract for 2011 to reliever Manny Delcarmen in early December, a number of teams expressed interest in the right-hander. Nine teams requested medicals from his agent, Jim Masteralexis, at the winter meetings in Orlando, and Delcarmen received multiple offers, including one offer of a major league deal with a National League club. One NL team even considered signing Delcarmen with an eye on using him as a starter, believing his three-pitch arsenal (a fastball, curve and changeup, all of which have been swing-and-miss offerings at times in his career) could serve him well in the rotation.

But in the end, Delcarmen’s decision came down to the Mariners and Rays. Both teams feature bullpens in some flux, with Tampa Bay looking to reassemble a relief corps after seeing four pitchers leave via free agency and Seattle closer David Aardsma recovering from surgery to repair his hip labrum. Both clubs offered opportunities for Delcarmen, if healthy and effective, to carve out a meaningful role in the bullpen.

In the end, Delcarmen decided to sign an incentive-laden minor league deal with an invitation to big league spring training with the Mariners. The possibility of pitching at critical junctures of the game appealed to him.

“The main factor was opportunity,” said Masteralexis. “There’s opportunity there for him.”

Delcarmen was a tremendously effective reliever for the Sox in 2007 and 2008, forging a 2.81 ERA with 8.6 punchouts per nine innings. The last two years have seen disappointing results, with effective starts to the season giving way to disappointing ends. He had a 4.74 ERA in the last two years, with his strikeouts per nine dropping to 6.6, and his walks totals spiking.

The Mariners present a good opportunity for Delcarmen to rebuild his value, just as was the case for Aardsma, who flourished as a closer after the Sox traded him to the M’s following the 2008 season. The Mariners’ park is one of the best in the game for pitchers and the AL West as a whole tends to see fewer stacked lineups than the AL East (where Delcarmen made his home with the Sox from the time the Hyde Park native was selected in the second round of the 2000 draft until being traded to the Rockies this past Aug. 31). So, if Delcarmen can regain his effectiveness, he has a chance to not only re-establish himself as a late-innings reliever, but also to position himself well for salary arbitration (for which Delcarmen would be eligible as a player with 5+ years of service time after the 2011 season), which is driven by traditional stats such as record, saves, ERA and strikeouts, and doesn’t account for park factors.

Seattle represents an opportunity for the longtime Red Sox pitcher to get his career back on the path that seemed so promising just a couple of seasons ago. Now, it will be up to Delcarmen to take advantage of the situation with his performance on the mound.

Delcarmen flies to join the Mariners in spring training this weekend for a new beginning that he hopes will bring back some familiar results.

Is Josh Beckett back now?

No, that wasn’t intended to be a silly or insulting pun. It is the question that Red Sox coaches, management and fans are asking themselves after watching the right-hander get into a groove under less-than-ideal conditions on Wednesday.

Beckett went 6 1/3 innings in a 5-3 win over the Mariners in the day portion of a day-night doubleheader at Fenway. He allowed four hits and three runs, walking one and fanning seven while allowing two home runs to get the win and move over .500 at 4-3 on the season.

While Beckett has not been his dominant self this season, in his last two starts he has shown signs that he might be coming around, and at just the right time.

But the next hurdle in that process is overcoming that one bad inning.

It’s that one hiccup that has caused him problems all season, and Wednesday was no different.

For six innings, Beckett allowed just a leadoff comeback single by Ichiro to open the game and a two-out walk to Josh Wilson in the sixth.

“Felt good for about six innings of it,” Beckett said. “Seventh inning was pretty tough. I think I was getting ahead in the count, not working behind. It makes things a lot easier when you’re working ahead.”

In between, he retired 19 straight batters – and 20 consecutive outs – and showed the kind of stuff that the Red Sox were expecting from him all season.

Then, after the Red Sox scored four in the sixth, Beckett had his burp in the seventh. Russell Branyan crushed a 93 MPH belt-high fastball over the Mariners bullpen in right to make it 4-1. Jose Lopez single to left and Casey Kotchman drilled a two-run homer to right. All of a sudden, it was 4-3 and skipper Terry Francona had to go to his bullpen as Daniel Bard came on in relief to stop the bleeding.

If that sounds familiar, there’s good reason. In his last start, with only a 1-0 lead, Beckett gave up four runs in a matter of 13 pitches and again it was the gopher ball that hurt him. He blanked the Angels for five innings before giving up a home run and four runs in the sixth. He gave up two more in the seventh before being pulled.

With each outing, Beckett looks more and more himself. He’s been painting the black on both sides of the plate with his fastball and keeping it low in the strike zone, setting up his killer curve and cutter nicely. When he’s been getting in trouble, Beckett believes he’s been leaving pitches over the middle third of the plate.

The challenge for Francona and pitching coach John Farrell has been to gauge when Beckett appears to be tiring since when he loses it, it comes very, very quickly. Last Thursday against the Angels, there was no one warming in the pen in the sixth. But in the seventh Wednesday, Francona had Bard ready and at the call. That extra inning means all the world to Francona.

Beckett, of course, has not been himself this season, in part because of bad luck and in part because of bad health. It was on a wet mound similar to the one he was on Wednesday at Fenway that led to all his problems this summer. On May 18 at Yankee Stadium, he slipped and tweaked his back.

So, Beckett was prepared for the less-than-idea conditions on Wednesday.

“I don’t know, I think everybody has to deal with the elements,” Beckett said. “I think the whole field is pretty [crappy] if you look at it. I think the mound is particularly [crappier] than the rest of the field. I think the whole field is in pretty bad shape. That’s part of playing up here whenever you get that weather.”

He missed two months as his lower back was – as they say – barking at him. If now he can only keep the dogs in the house for an entire game, Francona and the Red Sox would be very grateful.

Until signing with the Red Sox this offseason, John Lackey had spent his entire career as a member of the Angels in the American League West. Though he is now a member of the AL East, the right-hander still looks very much like a pitcher who is at home against opponents from his old division.

Lackey overpowered the Mariners in a 6-3 victory on Monday night. In the process, he improved to 5-0 with a 2.86 ERA against the AL West, as compared to a 5-6 record and 5.23 ERA against the rest of the American League.

WHAT WENT RIGHT FOR THE RED SOX

–John Lackey had some of his most impressive stuff of the season. He was getting swings and misses on his fastball, cutter, curve, changeup and slider, with predictably overpowering results for most of the night. He struck out a season-high 10 while allowing three runs (two earned) and matching a season-high by working eight innings.

–Lackey’s 10 punchouts marked the 10th time this month that the Red Sox have fanned at least 10 opponents a game. That, according to Gary Marbry, matches a club record previously achieved in June 2001.

–Marco Scutaro tied a career high with four runs batted in, the eighth time he has reached that mark and the second time this year. The shortstop delivered a two-run bases-loaded single in the fifth (improving him to 6-for-11 with 16 RBI in bases-loaded situations this year) and another two-run single in the seventh.

–J.D. Drew bounced back from a three-strikeout game on Sunday, going 2-for-4 and driving in his first run since Aug. 14.

–With umpiring crew chief Joe West looking on, the Red Sox and Mariners did not embarrass the game, navigating through nine innings in a tidy 2 hours, 21 minutes.

WHAT WENT WRONG FOR THE RED SOX

–The Sox were once again betrayed by their defense. Jed Lowrie kicked a two-out grounder to second after he was screened by Ichiro Suzuki, not only allowing Chone Figgins to reach base (on what was scored a single) but allowing Ryan Langerhans to score from second on the error. Then, in the sixth, Lackey failed to field a one-out comebacker. And so, a potential double-play ball that would have ended the inning instead resulted in a bases-loaded, one-out jam that immediately resulted in a game-tying, two-run single by Casey Kotchman.

–While Mike Lowell has managed to stay in the lineup everyday, his production has dipped in the process. He went 1-for-4 with three strikeouts, marking the first he’d fanned three times in a game since May 31, 2009. Lowell is now 5-for-31 (.161) over his last nine games. His frustration became apparent after the third strikeout, which ended the sixth inning. After warming up his fellow infielders prior to the top of the seventh, Lowell fired the ball over the roof box seats of Fenway Park. But, he did rebound to line a single down the left field line in his fourth and final plate appearance.