Josh Beckett’s Excellence Continues to Be Overshadowed by Late-Game Drama From Red Sox

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Aug 8, 2011

Josh Beckett's Excellence Continues to Be Overshadowed by Late-Game Drama From Red Sox For a guy with some of the finest numbers in all of baseball, all while pitching in the best division in the game, Josh Beckett continues to be a footnote.

It's through no fault of his own. Beckett has been outstanding, deserving of high praise in one of the more remarkable bounce-back seasons you will ever witness.

By pure coincidence, his name just cannot find itself into many headlines when the game stories are hammered out by Boston scribes. Most of them are focusing on something else, and who can blame them?

Sunday's night's 3-2 win over the New York Yankees was just one example. Beckett limited the high-powered Yankees to one run in six solid innings, the lone tally coming on a 349-foot solo shot by No. 9 hitter Eduardo Nunez. The effort lowered Beckett's ERA to 2.17 (1.00 in four starts against New York) and left his WHIP at 0.94, both of which rank second in the American League.

However, the star righty was a mere spectator for about two hours before the real drama unfolded. Boston rallied in the ninth against Mariano Rivera to force extra innings and then won it in the 10th with a walk-off hit by Josh Reddick.

That's not to say Beckett is starving for the spotlight.

"It is what it is, and we won," he said. "It was a good win."

It was the same thing five nights earlier, when Beckett got the better of the Cleveland Indians over six innings, only to watch Jacoby Ellsbury record a walk-off hit long after he hit the showers. And it's been like that several other times in 2011.

Consider that of the eight extra-inning games the Red Sox have played this year, Beckett has been the starter in six of them.

And it seems as if every one goes so deep into the night and ends in such memorable fashion that Beckett's start is nearly forgotten, no matter how much he dominated opponents.

You might recall the first extra-inning affair of the season, April 21 in Anaheim. Beckett allowed just three hits in eight innings, but Boston's two-run rally in the 11th stood out. It involved one of Adrian Gonzalez's first really big hits with his new team.

Of course, who can forget a rematch with the Angels at Fenway Park on May 4? Pitching in a steady rain, Beckett yielded only a single in 4 1/3 innings before the tarp had to be put on the field. Beckett was unable to return after a long delay, part of a record-setting night that ended with a 13-inning Anaheim win just before 3 a.m.

The game was over five hours long, the delays almost three hours in duration. Beckett could've flown to his hometown in Texas and gone to bed before the game finished, and not many people would've even noticed.

Five days later, as if the baseball gods weren't done toying with Beckett, he threw seven scoreless innings against Minnesota in a game that Carl Crawford won in the 11th. While postgame media scrums broke out around Crawford and even Hideki Okajima, who threw a career-high 43 pitches and picked up the win, Beckett was a silent witness.

Beckett's ERA stood at 1.99.

Remember the game against Oakland in Fenway Park back on June 4? It was the one in which Jonathan Papelbon blew a four-run lead, blew what could have been Beckett's fifth win and then blew a gasket in a riotous argument with home plate umpire Tony Randazzo. When Carl Crawford scored another walk-off in the 14th, over five hours after Beckett's first pitch, it was bedlam in the ballpark. Beckett was in the clubhouse, wondering how someone with a 2.01 ERA and backed by a top-notch offense could have four wins in 12 starts.

And then there was the coup de grace, an eight-inning masterpiece in Tampa Bay on July 17 that got the Red Sox only halfway to a 16-inning, 1-0 victory. Beckett allowed one hit in his scoreless outing and then had to wait for Dustin Pedroia's RBI single hours later to begin packing his things for an early-morning flight to Baltimore.

Ellsbury's walk-off in the ninth on Tuesday and Reddick's in the 10th on Sunday were the latest developments to overshadow Beckett. Of course, run support less than half that of fellow starters Jon Lester and John Lackey have helped in the process; Beckett already has nine no-decisions, including five in which he has allowed one run or less, tops in the majors.

Since Boston is 16-6 when Beckett starts, it is a pattern the club will have to be happy about. At the very least, they know what they're getting from their All-Star right-hander.

"That's kind of what we've come to expect from him every five or six days," manager Terry Francona said Monday morning.

Well, that, some rain delays, extra innings and a walk-off hit. Just enough to bury the early storyline.

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