Since the beginning of May, Josh Beckett had been delivering the types of performances that could only be examined through the perspective of history. On Sunday, that remained the case, but for entirely different reasons.
The Red Sox ace, who enjoyed a period of unrelenting dominance from early May through the middle of August, turned in an outing unlike any other in his career, and indeed, in the last half century.
The Yankees went deep five times off of Beckett, leading New York to an 8-4 triumph in the rubber match of a three-game set against the Red Sox. (Recap.)
It was the most homers that Beckett had ever allowed in his career, and marked just the second time since 1954 that a Sox pitcher had yielded five round-trippers in a game. (The previous one came when Dennis Eckersley endured the beating on July 1, 1979.)
“It was a pretty good ass-whupping, to sum it up,” Beckett said. “You can’t give up seven and eight runs every damn time you go out there. You’re not going to be here very long if you do that.
“Obviously, you tend to remember these. These are humbling deals.”
The odd thing was that no single pitch was responsible for Beckett’s woes. Both Derek Jeter and Hideki Matsui blasted solo homers on mid-90s fastballs on the first pitches of the first and second innings.
Beckett left both pitches up in the zone, and the Yankees assaulted the offerings.
“He’s been struggling to get that good two-seam movement. This team doesn’t need help elevating the ball,” explained Sox manager Terry Francona. “(Beckett’s) fastball, especially early, was a little bit flat. Early, they were hunting first pitch fastball. They got a couple of them.”
Robinson Cano and Alex Rodriguez added to the slugfest with homers on curveballs. Matsui finished the damage on another type of fastball – either a two-seamer or cutter – that drifted over the plate.
In short, the Yankees did damage against just about everything in Beckett’s arsenal. Even so, New York – now enjoying a comfortable 7.5 game lead in the division – were hardly reveling in their performance.
“When we got pitches to hit, we hit them. It’s really not more complicated than that,” said Jeter. “He’s always tough to face. Even though we got some hits today off him, it’s not like guys are running up there to hit off of him. He’s tough. Today, we just got some pitches to hit and we hit them hard. I’m pretty sure he’ll be fine.”
The pitcher said twice that he does not have any physical problems. But in some ways, his clean bill of healthy makes his recent struggles all the more puzzling.
In his first 22 starts this year, spanning 150 innings, Beckett allowed 10 homers. In his last three starts, covering 20.1 innings, he has allowed 10 longballs.
He gave up a pair of solo shots against the Tigers on Aug. 12, was taken deep three times by the Jays on Aug. 18, and then endured his five-blast beating on Sunday. The 10 homers over a three-outing span shattered the pitcher’s previous career-high mark of eight, set in 2006.
If there is a silver lining for Beckett, it is that just two of those longballs came with a runner on base. Even so, given that pitching coach John Farrell has said repeatedly that Beckett’s success has been premised upon his command down in the strike zone, it would appear that he has been struggling of late to employ that effective formula.
Beckett’s vulnerability was of a peculiar sort. He was charged with all eight runs, but because the Yankees took an aggressive approach against him, he had an opportunity to pitch deep into the game. Beckett delivered eight innings, thus turning in just the fourth outing since 1954 in which a pitcher stayed in the game for at least eight innings while giving up five homers.
The others to do so were Hall of Famer Jim Palmer (who was taken deep five times by the Red Sox on June 22, 1977) and former Cy Young winner Pat Hentgen, who endured two such outings (one against the Sox on June 25, 1997, the other against the Indians on May 26, 1995).
That Beckett delivered such a clunker – one start
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