Trumping the ace

Posted by Dave at Tuesday, November 03, 2009 11:15 AM
Categories: Red Sox
Tags: Red Sox Josh Beckett

As the Yankees close in on their 27th title, it’s become clear they are the best team in baseball. They have a genuine ace at the head of an effective starting staff, a sturdy bullpen anchored by an untouchable closer, and a relentless lineup that never leaves them hopeless.

Along the course to their rival's 3-2 World Series lead it’s also become clear that the Red Sox have some work to do in order to narrow the gap between themselves and New York’s gold standard. They must add a slugger to the middle of the order. They must add reliability to a rotation that this September counted on Paul Byrd in a pennant race. They must add to a relief corps that became unsteady as summer turned to fall.

And they can make all those additions with one simple – if foundation-shaking – subtraction.

By trading Josh Beckett.

It isn’t something the Sox need to do. In fact, it isn’t something they should do if not presented with the proper, hole-plugging package. But in baseball’s realm of player evaluation there are perceptions, and there are realities – and Boston could be in position to capitalize on the fact that when it comes to Beckett those tend to be two different things.

The perception of Beckett is that he’s a bona fide ace. A guy who has earned a mention among the game’s elite, and is in the midst of his prime. A guy who grabs the ball and gets it done, whether it takes guts or guile or his own good stuff.  A guy who delivers every five days through the summer, then can single-handedly wins playoff series in the fall. And, at times, he has been all that.

But, by and large, the reality has been something else altogether.

He was downright brilliant a couple years back, and Duck Boats rolled through Boston’s crowded streets because of it. He posted a 3.27 earned run average. He ranked second in the American League’s Cy Young voting. He won 20 games during the regular season. Then he won four more – while allowing only four runs over 30 innings – in the playoffs.

In reality, however, Beckett’s 2007 stands as the exception among his seasons since 2003. And essentially among his career on the whole.

Most probably don’t think it’s possible for a pitcher of his repute, but that season remains the only time in his eight big-league seasons that Beckett has finished among his league’s top 10 in terms of ERA. It’s also the only season in which he’s received even a single vote for the Cy (or the Most Valuable Player award, for that matter). And it’s the only year he’s won more than 17 games.

His total of 20 victories that year was tops in the AL, making it the only time Beckett has ever led the league in any remotely conventional pitching category — a classification that doesn’t simply cover wins, ERA, strikeouts and innings, but also includes WHIP, adjusted ERA, whiff-to-walk ratio and pretty much anything else conceivable — and that helps explain why he's only twice even been an All-Star.

With a 4.05 ERA as an American Leaguer, and 3.79 overall, he’s certainly had a decent career. But there’s a reason that, according to the comparison tool at baseball-reference.com, Beckett’s most comparable pitcher at age 27 and 28 was the remarkably mediocre Kevin Millwood. The year before that it was Ben McDonald.

By now we thought those names would be more like Roger Clemens. John Smoltz. Roy Halladay. Maybe even Curt Schilling or Kevin Brown. But because he’s been just merely good far more often than he’s been truly great, Beckett instead finds himself grouped with a troupe of middle-of-the-road types – and appropriately so.

He’s never struck out 200 in a season, he’s only once made it through a year without missing a start, and recently he’s even begun to relinquish his reputation as the best big-game pitcher of his generation. In his last four playoff starts the Sox have exactly one win, thanks to their starter’s 7.71 ERA and the opponents’ 1.014 on-base plus slugging average in 21 innings against him.

Clearly Boston's brass has lost some faith in him, evidenced by their choice of Jon Lester to open this year’s Division Series against the Angels; and the guess here is that you, too, as a Red Sox fan, have lost some faith in Beckett as well.

But there are plenty of people across baseball who haven’t yet.  They see a 29-year-old who'll be a free agent next winter and perceive a pitcher in his prime. They see a sturdily built 6-foot, 4-inch right-hander and perceive a workhorse. They see the clutch performances of 2003, and 2007, and perceive him to be an automatic in the postseason. They see Josh Beckett and perceive him to be an ace worth paying a hefty price to acquire.

The reality, however, is something different. Cliff Lee is an ace. CC Sabathia is an ace. Beckett is not an ace.

But by boldly preying on perception, the Sox can this winter use the trade market to turn him into something even better: The trump card that helps them close the gap on those damn Yankees.

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