(Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
After Brad Penny got trounced last night in a 20-11 romp by the New York Yankees, the Red Sox rotation has just been delivered the best news heard since before the All-Star break: Tim Wakefield will be back on Wednesday.
Given the consistently bad outings by Brad Penny, someone needed to take over this rotation spot. While it's not official that Penny will be removed from action, Penny was scheduled to start on Wednesday where instead Wakefield will make his first start since July 8.
After being on the shelf for ages, Wakefield still has the second highest amount of wins on the Red Sox staff with a solid 11-3 mark. Sporting a 4.31 ERA, if Wakefield continues to pitch to that average then he would be allowing approximately 1.3 runs less than Penny.
While Penny continues to put in all his effort for the Red Sox, it's clear that he's fading away from his solid start with the team, and could possibly soon find himself the odd man out of this rotation.
As all expected, Josh Beckett and Jon Lester have been one of the most dominant 1-2 punches in all of baseball, and will continue to carry the staff down the stretch.
Quietly emerging from the dust and rubble of his disastrous 2008 season is the young Clay Buchholz, who dropped his ERA to 3.99 on the season after great performances while dueling the best of the best: CC Sabathia, Justin Verlander, and Roy Halladay.
It's hard to take a guy's spot away when he shows he does have the mental toughness to make it in the league and hang in there with the big guys in a pitcher's duel. At this rate, Buchholz looks to have his spot as protected as Beckett or Lester's.
Even the young Junichi Tazawa has been impressive in his short stint with the big team. While his two losses and 5.40 ERA may not look all too good on paper, he has had a tendency to not be flustered by runners in scoring position and has generally performed well.
The one blemish on Tazawa's record would be his five inning, four run start against Texas last weekend, but as I write currently Tazawa is putting on a nice showing against the Yankees, easing through six shutout innings.
With Daisuke Matsuzaka to rehab in the Gulf Coast League on August 24, for Double-A Portland on August 29, and for Triple-A Pawtucket on September 3, everyone in this rotation is going to have to be on top of their game.
If all goes well for Dice K, he will probably be eased back into the rotation depending on how the rest of the rotation shapes up. The ultimate factor is how everything else shapes up.
It currently looks like Wakefield will take Penny's spot, and a slip up from Tazawa or Buchholz in the near future could easily have them sent back to Pawtucket in exchange for Matsuzaka.
If Penny gets taken out of the picture, another deep, talented rotation like the one envisioned this winter would be the picture painted for the Red Sox for the stretch run.
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