Terry Francona

Red Sox manager Terry Francona joined The Big Show Wednesday afternoon for his weekly interview to discuss the team’s recent performance and the slow and steady improvement of John Lackey and Carl Crawford.

When Lackey hit the disabled list after allowing nine runs to the Blue Jays back on May 11, he was 2-5 with an 8.01 ERA. Since he returned to the roster, the right-hander has managed to turn around the worst season of his career, winning seven out of his lasteight decisions and whittling his ERA below 6.00 for the first time since April. Francona said he’s confident Lackey can fill the role Boston signed him for as the pennant race heats up.

“Even an inning like [Tuesday] night where he gave up the three runs, that might have had a chance to be six or seven earlier in the season,” Francona said. “But he kind of buckled down, he regained not just his composure, but he regained the strike zone, got out of the inning without more damage, and then settled down and put up some zeroes and let our offense go to work. This guy’s been on a pretty good roll. Yeah, his ERA is higher, and it’s going to be that way because of his struggles early in the year. That doesn’t mean he can’t be the pitcher we need.”

Following are more highlights from the conversation. To hear the interview, go to The Big Show audio on demand page.

On playing in the Texas summer heat:

“I’m not going to complain about the heat, I love it. I went out yesterday for a walk, kept my shirt on, but I got a little sun on my head, walked around, swam this morning. I love it. I’ll never complain about it. I think you do have to be mindful of it, and I think they are here now. If you hit outdoors every day, you’re going to kill these guys because it is hot. But man, it is great baseball weather. I think any player, they’d rather sweat than be cold.

“We don’t hit outside while we’re here. We keep our time reserved on the field, we take our ground balls, we hit in the cage. They have a great facility here, so we can hit almost right out in the back of the clubhouse. And again, we’re 130 games into the season, so it really works out well. We try to conserve our energy for the game because we don’t play here every day so we don’t want to run out there four days in a row and just have guys wilt. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

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Dave Magadan

Red Sox hitting coach Dave Magadan joined Mut & Merloni Wednesday to break down the performance of Boston’s big bats, including Adrian Gonzalez, Jacoby Ellsbury and David Ortiz. To hear the conversation, visit the Mut & Merloni audio on demand page.

Carl Crawford was expected to be a key contributor for the Red Sox when he signed a $142 million contract in the offseason, but his .252 batting average and .288 on-base percentage have disappointed Boston fans to this point in the season. Still, Magadan has seen significant progress during the last few games, and he said Crawford is ready to return to his Tampa Bay form.

“I think he is starting to get more comfortable at the plate,” Magadan said. “I know watching him throughout the year he’s had a lot of swings where he’s very late and he’s kind of using his upper body to flick the ball the other way and flick the ball on the ground. It doesn’t matter who you are, you’ve got to be on time and you’ve got to be in a position where you can get your legs into your swing a little bit.

“I think what we’ve seen since Kansas City, I know he’s not lighting the world on fire, but he’s really starting to drive the ball, especially from the pull side. He hit the home run in Kansas City, he’s gotten a couple hits here in Texas to the pull side. He’s really hit some balls hard that have gotten caught. So I’ve seen some positive signs and he feels really good about what he’s doing and he’s really positive about it and he’s showing a little more confidence. … We’re going to see him start to break out of it, and I think we’re starting to see that over the last four or five games.”

Gonzalez has been a viable MVP candidate for his performance in Boston, although his home run numbers have declined since the All-Star break. While Gonzalez denied that his participation in the Home Run Derby led to the late-season power outage, Magadan said the contest did a number on the slugger’s swing.

“I know [Gonzalez] said that it didn’t have anything to do with it,” Magadan said. “Watching him take batting practice every day and the whole first half of the season, he would hit probably 80 percent of his balls, he’d hit them center, all the way down the left-field line and he would drive the ball to that side of the field and then all of a sudden you go to the Home Run Derby and every swing that he takes is to the pull side.

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Josh Beckett

The Red Sox and Rangers will play the third game of a four-game set Wednesday night in Arlington as Boston tries overtake the Yankees atop the AL East and turn around the season series with Texas. The Red Sox will send ace Josh Beckett to the mound, while the Rangers answer with Matt Harrison.

Thanks to another solid outing last Thursday, Beckett (10-5, 2.46 ERA) has now recorded quality starts in six of his last seven appearances. The right-hander held the Royals to three runs on seven hits over seven innings, and kept his ERA among the top four in the major leagues. It was an encouraging bounce-back performance after a five-run, eight-hit loss against Seattle on August 13.

Beckett hasn’t faced the Rangers in over a year, dating back to a wild, 11-inning loss on Aug. 23, 2010, in Arlington. Beckett allowed six runs on 10 hits, including three home runs, and was pulled after five innings. The Red Sox clawed back thanks to a seven-run fourth inning, but Texas had the last laugh on a Nelson Cruz walk-off home run.

The Boston starter has been effective regardless of where he pitches this year, although his home ERA is nearly a full point better than his road ERA. The right-hander has performed well against lefties, holding them to a .185 average and .253 on-base percentage. However, nine of the 15 home runs Beckett’s allowed have come against left-handed hitting.

Texas is hitting a combined .286 with six home runs in 129 plate appearances against Beckett. Reigning 2010 AL MVP Josh Hamilton (who was at the heart of a fascinating debate about whether he or Beckett should be drafted with the No. 1 overall pick in the 1999 draft) leads the team with two home runs, six RBIs and a .500 average in 13 plate appearances against the Boston starter. Endy Chavez is hitting .360 with two doubles in his team-high 25 matchups with Beckett, while Michael Young has struggled with just three hits in 23 plate appearances.

The Rangers seem to love when Harrison (10-8, 3.28 ERA) takes the mound, at least over the past two months. Dating back to July 5, Texas has won eight out of Harrison’s last nine starts. Last month, the left-hander went 3-0 with a 2.04 ERA. In four August starts, however, Harrison has struggled to a 5.16 ERA. Still, the Rangers have turned up the offensive firepower as of late, averaging 7.66 runs in their last three games.

Despite the team’s success, Harrison was unable to get through the sixth inning in either of his last two starts. Against the White Sox on August 19, he was pulled in the fifth after giving up three runs on four hits while walking three. On August 14 in Oakland, Harrison allowed six runs on four hits and walked three more. Granted, both of those starts came on the road, and Harrison has been a better pitcher at home. In 12 starts at the Ballpark in Arlington, he’s posted a 3.15 ERA, compared to 3.42 on the road.

The 25-year-old has allowed just one home run this month, which is a major improvement from earlier in the season, when he allowed six home runs in seven starts in April and May. Harrison is a southpaw, but he’s actually performed better against right-handed hitting this year. Lefties are hitting .289 off Harrison, while righties are at .242. Still, the Red Sox’ lefty-heavy lineup wasn’t able to do much against the Texas starter back on April 3, when Harrison allowed just one run over seven innings in a 5-1 win.

As a team, the Red Sox are hitting .175 against Harrison in 64 combined plate appearances. Darnell McDonald has the lone Boston home run to go along with two walks in five plate appearances. Mike Aviles has a team-high 12 matchups with Harrison, but he’s just 1-for-12 with two strikeouts. David Ortiz has the best numbers against the Texas starter, hitting .429 in eight plate appearances.

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Buster Olney

ESPN baseball insider Buster Olney joined the Mut & Merloni Show on Tuesday to discuss the Red Sox’ potential playoff scenarios and some possible waiver wire acquisitions as the regular season winds down. To hear the full interview, check out the Mut & Merloni audio on demand page.

If the MLB playoffs started tomorrow, the Red Sox would play the Rangers in the ALDS, while the Yankees would face the Tigers. If Monday night’s 4-0 loss in Texas was a sign of things to come, the Red Sox might want to avoid that first-round matchup. Still, Olney said both the Rangers and Tigers would present a challenge in a five-game series.

“I think it’s a flip of the coin between the two teams,” said Olney. “Because Texas, they’ve shown that they’ve got the firepower to go offensively against the Yankees or the Red Sox, and they’ve got C.J. Wilson, who’s going to be the most coveted free agent pitcher on the market this fall. I don’t think that they have as much depth necessarily as the Tigers do with their pitching. But on a given day, when a Wilson pitches or Derek Holland has a day where he’s actually throwing strikes, they can match up. On the other hand, Detroit has [Justin] Verlander and he’s the best pitcher in baseball right now. I don’t really think there’s an advantage for the Red Sox or the Yankees to try to position themselves to face one of these two teams. It’s going to be difficult either way.

“I think that right now, [Tigers pitcher] Max Scherzer on a given day can be dominant. If you catch him on the right day, he can be the guy who can hold a good team to a couple hits. He can also be a guy that can give up 10 runs, and Texas has a similar rotation. Holland has had days where he’s been absolutely lights out and he’s had days where he’s having a tough time getting through the second inning. [Rangers pitcher] Colby Lewis can be a guy that I think a good offensive team can get to but we saw in the postseason last year he was pretty good. I think Detroit with [Jose] Valverde at the back of their bullpen, they’ve gotten better and so that’s why I think they have a little more depth than Texas does.”

The Red Sox were shut out by Wilson and the Rangers bullpen Monday, while Erik Bedard took the loss after giving up four runs on seven hits through six innings. The newly acquired pitcher hasn’t quite hit his stride yet, but Olney said Sox GM Theo Epstein made the right move at the trade deadline, especially because he passed on Ubaldo Jimenez.

“In the times when I’ve seen [Bedard] pitch, I thought that he could be a guy that on the right day, he can give you something,” Olney said. “I tweeted out the night that you saw his stuff because inning-to-inning, he’s got good stuff. He can actually be a little bit the way Bartolo Colon can be for the Yankees. When he’s right, he can actually help them, and I thought it was the right move for them because they had the same questions the Yankees did about [Jimenez], which was: OK, you’ve got a guy who was dominant in the first half of 2010, he still shows flashes where he’s throwing 95 miles per hour, he’s got a great contract, the exact kind of contract that if you’re the Rockies, you would want to acquire. Why are they looking to move him? And you know that’s why the Yankees in the end, in their conversation on Thursday of trade deadline week, they told the Rockies, ‘Look, we are not going to trade for him unless we can do a complete physical.’ They were told, ‘No,’ and that’s why they were very limited in what they were willing to talk about at the trade deadline. The Red Sox were the same way, and I think both teams made the right decision. Cleveland, in the end, we’ll see if they ended up giving too much.”

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Carl Crawford ranks 77th in the American League in on-base percentage . (AP)

Carl Crawford has now played 100 games with the Red Sox.

Spoiler Alert: It hasn’t gone well.

Maybe you recall Crawford’s debut with the Sox. He batted third in the lineup in that Opening Day 9-5 loss to C.J. Wilson and the Rangers, striking out three times in four hitless at-bats. Two days later Crawford was batting seventh (remember when that was actually shocking?) and a very strange season was already starting to be defined.

Now let’s be fair about this: One hundred games is not nearly enough evidence to render judgment on a seven-year, $142 million contract. And if Crawford hits .400 in the postseason and the Sox win the World Series guess what happens? His season will be deemed a success, and I think that’s probably fair. Athletes are defined by what they do in the playoffs, aren’t they? I mean, there’s a reason the nicknames Mr. October and Mr. November are taken but Mr. June is available (though it seems that Josh Reddick really wants it — I kid, I kid.)

But a look at what Crawford has done — or failed to do — in his first 100 games with the Sox is pretty remarkable. It is too early to call this contract a disaster, but not too soon to wonder if this is a disastrous season. And as we take a look at some of these numbers remember that we are talking about a guy who has played in four All-Star Games, led the league in triples and steals four times and has hit .300 five times (he entered the year as a career .296 hitter.)

There are 82 players with enough plate appearances to qualify for the American League batting title. Carl Crawford ranks 62nd (.251, 42 points below his career average). If you combine his AL finishes in batting average from 2005-10 (he wasn’t eligible in 2008) the total number is 64.

Among the same 82 players, Crawford ranks 59th in slugging percentage (.385, 45 points lower than his career total). Has anyone confused Marco Scutaro (16 homers in 897 at-bats) with Nomar Garciaparra circa 2000 in his nearly two seasons with the Sox? Scutaro’s slugging percentage with the Sox is also .385.

On-base percentage? Crawford is 77th, right behind Kurt Suzuki (batting .230 with 27 walks) and just ahead of  Alcides Escobar (a 24-year-old shortstop making $428,000 this season). I didn’t like the Crawford deal when he signed in December, and one key reason I thought Crawford was simply not worth the money was his hideous B/KK numbers in Tampa — he walked 293 times against 768 strikeouts in his nine seasons with the Rays.

But we had seen some progress from Crawford — he set a career high with 51 walks in 2009 and his 46 walks in 2010 were the second-highest total of his career. But his 2011 numbers are atrocious — 17 walks against 77 strikeouts — and he’s on pace to walk just 22 times (which would be a career low) against 98 strikeouts (Crawford is striking out once every 5.3 plate appearances this season vs once every 7.1 plate appearances in Tampa). He’s had three seasons with at least 100 strikeouts, but in those years he hit .281, .307 and .315.

All that leads to a .287 on-base percentage. How bad is that, exactly? Well, in the last 100 years exactly one Red Sox outfielder (minimum 100 games played) had an OBP lower than .287 — Tony Armas in 1983. That’s it. And Armas — who had some of the worst K/BB seasons in history — at least hit 36 homers (second in the AL) and slugged .453 in 1983.

What Crawford’s done this season is almost incomprehensible: He’s having one of the least productive seasons by an outfielder in club history in the first year of the third-highest contract in club history (and did I mention that .180 batting average against left-handed pitching?)

Look, things can change. Crawford has had some moments. He had nine hits in the Yankees series a couple of weeks ago. He currently owns a five-game hit streak. He hit .304 with an OPS of .810 (almost matching his 2009 numbers) in May. So there have been sightings of the Carl Crawford the Sox thought they were getting for $142 million.

But sightings aren’t enough. And if the next 100 games look like the first 100, it’s going to get very ugly very fast for Carl Crawford in Boston.

Adrian Gonzalez

KANSAS CITY — A day after telling WEEI.com that the neck injury suffered in late July wasn’t the cause of his recent slump, Adrian Gonzalez elaborated on the potential cause of his recent struggles.

Gonzalez explained that he had been forced to shorten his swing due to the neck problems — resulting in a continued stream of hits but few of the extra-base variety — but was comfortable enough to start the process of lengthening his stroke of late. The transformation, which he said was a viable option because of the improved health of his neck, is still a work in progress, as has been evidenced by the first baseman’s biggest slump of the season (no hits in his last four games).

“It’s gotten better every day,” said Gonzalez of the neck ailment. “I’m not really doing any treatment for it. My neck has been fine. It did, I guess, create some mechanical things that I’m working through, but other than that, it’s been pretty good. It just did things that I normally don’t want to do so I had to make some adjustments, so I did, be able to cover some pitches. Now that I’m feeling good, I’m just trying to get the swing that I did before that.

“My swing is fine. It’s just my timing right now. Just made a couple of things I went to making it more short and compact and just trying to put the ball in play and trying to get my hits and now that I’m feeling better. I’m trying to get a little more out of my swing and trying to drive the ball to left field again and I tried to get a little bigger, and I’m longer and late, and then I tried to get back to just being short and I’m out in front a little bit and hitting the ball on the ground to the right side. Just trying to find a happy medium.”

Gonzalez, who is hitting .250 with just a .632 OPS and no homers in August, chalked up the recent struggles to “timing,” and surmised that the only way things were going to get better was with more at-bats. His batting average after the All-Star break stands at .313 entering Friday night’s game at Kauffman Stadium, but his slugging dropped from .591 before the All-Star Game to .389 after.

“I’m in a mini slump? I mean, the numbers are what they are,” he said. “I don’t feel great at the plate. I’m just working through it.”

Josh Beckett

The Red Sox and Royals open a four-game series at Kauffman Stadium Thursday night at 8:10 p.m. ET. Boston will send ace Josh Beckett to the mound to matchup against Kansas City’s Luke Hochevar. While Beckett certainly has the advantage on paper, he was out-dueled by Hochevar in their last meeting, a 4-3 Royals victory on July 28 at Fenway.

Beckett (9-5, 2.40 ERA) broke a string of five-straight quality starts on Saturday against the Mariners, allowing five runs on eight hits in a 5-4 loss. The rough outing brought Beckett’s ERA above 2.30 for the first time since May 4, although his current rating is still third-best in the majors. The loss against Seattle marked just the third time in the last three months the Red Sox have lost one of Beckett’s starts. One of those losses came against Hochevar and the Royals, when Beckett allowed four runs (three earned) on five hits over seven innings.

August has been the right-hander’s worst month so far this season, as Beckett’s gone 0-1 with a 4.24 ERA. He’s given up five home runs in his three starts this month and has allowed eight runs on 20 hits in 17 innings. Beckett has excelled at home, but his ERA is 2.79 on the road, compared to 1.95 at Fenway Park. However, he’s holding opponents to a .188 batting average in away games, while Boston visitors are hitting .209 against him.

The Royals rank sixth in the league with a .267 batting average, but are hitting just .239 in 128 plate appearances vs. Beckett. Melky Cabrera has faced Beckett 44 times, mostly from his days in New York, and is hitting .308 with three doubles, three walks and a team-high four RBIs. Billy Butler has the only Royals home run off the right-hander, but he’s only managed two other hits in 17 matchups. Alex Gordon hasn’t performed much better, going just 2-for-10 with four strikeouts against Beckett.

Hochevar (8-9, 4.89 ERA) started August with two impressive outings, lasting seven innings and allowing just one run against the Orioles and Rays. However, he was knocked around a bit in his last appearance against the White Sox, who scored five runs on eight hits, including two home runs, through six innings.

Last month, the Royals won all five of Hochevar’s starts, despite the right-hander’s 5.93 ERA in July. Hochevar benefited from an offensive explosion, as the Royals averaged nine runs per game in those five outings. At Fenway Park on July 28, Hochevar held the Red Sox to two runs on six hits over seven innings while striking out six hitters and walking one.

The Red Sox have handled Hochevar well in his four-year career, hitting .333 in 92 combined plate appearances. David Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia and Jason Varitek each have home runs off the Royals starter, and Ortiz is tied with Jacoby Ellsbury with a team-high 4 RBIs. Ellsbury is hitting .313 vs. Hochevar in 17 plate appearances with two triples and a walk.

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