begin a daily look at each position on the club, from the projected
starters to their backups. Our latest installment continues to examine
the starting rotation.
A Yankee Killer: Much has been made of John Lackey screaming “This is mine!” to Angels manager Mike Scioscia when the latter came to take Lackey out of Game 5 of the 2009 American League Championship Series.
Much of the baseball world loved the scene: It showed a pitcher who wanted to finish what he had started, a gamer with all his emotions invested in the moment. Try taking the ball from me, skip!
When you look through Red (Sox)-colored glasses, you can see something else. There is Lackey, confident as can be in the face of a New York Yankees juggernaut, a force he has taken on before, and beaten. When it comes to Boston, there can never be too many players with that sort of history.
Over the past five years, Lackey is 4-2 with a 3.38 ERA in 10 regular season starts against the Yankees, success his fellow aces Josh Beckett and Jon Lester cannot claim; those two have a collective 4.87 ERA vs. New York.
And Lackey’s reaction to Scioscia’s hook came amid one of Lackey’s four playoff starts against New York. He owns a 3.04 mark in such affairs.
Throw in the fact that the Yanks were eyeing the big right-hander this offseason before Boston was able to sign him and you have a potential power shift between the two rivals.
But before we pin Lackey as a guy that can only get fired up for a matchup with the big boys, take note of an incredibly consistent resume.
In the same five-year span mentioned earlier, the 31-year-old has had ERAs between 3.01 and 3.83. He has almost identical career marks at home and on the road. His lifetime ERA before the All-Star break is 3.83. After the break it is 3.79.
In fact, if you remove the Red Sox from the mix, there are virtually no other issues for Lackey. Among the 12 teams he has faced at least 10 times in his career, he has a higher ERA against only one: Texas.
It never hurts, even at the cost of $82 million, to put a rock like that in the middle of your rotation. And if Lackey’s budding friendship with Beckett, a fellow Texan, helps Beckett agree to a contract extension, then the Sox got more than they bargained for. In a good way, of course.
Other options: With a five-year deal in his pocket, Lackey is not going anywhere. The only way a “replacement” would come is in a possible playoff series if Lackey is struggling. With depth in the starting rotation and two other No. 1 types atop it, such a move might not sting as it would on other teams.
If all else fails: It would likely take a serious injury for Lackey’s deal to be a wash. He’s simply too competitive, talented and consistent to see his production fall off anytime soon. However, the Sox are prepared for a setback. They put a provision in Lackey’s five-year deal which would force him to pitch a sixth year at the major league minimum if he has Tommy John surgery.
