The Red Sox are full of ideas, from ownership to baseball operations, and many of them are good. Hiring Bill James was a good idea. Putting new seats in left and right field was a brilliant idea. Making decisions with the fan base in mind was a necessary and long overdue idea.
And then there was the clunker that resulted in 10 days' rest for Derek Lowe.
Ten days? Your No. 3 starter certainly needs time to recuperate, but he doesn't need a leave of absence.
For some reason, the Sox are intrigued with the concept of "breaking up" Pedro Martinez and Curt Schilling by placing Tim Wakefield between them. The thinking is that hitters will be thrown off by a 65-mile-per-hour knuckleball between the fastballs of two power pitchers.
That might sound mildly fascinating during a staff meeting, but I'm sure Walter Alston never wanted to put a change-of-pace type between Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. Anyway, it's not very practical when you consider that some pitcher will have to pay the price for all the office brainstorming.
Lowe -- after being washed out by rain and skipped over by his manager -- finally got the chance to pitch yesterday at Fenway Park. He quickly realized he would have had better luck placing balls in a pitching machine. He couldn't get the Yankees out; maybe a mechanical pitcher would have been better. (Both man and machine would have had their way with .156-hitting Alex Rodriguez, who is going to be lifted for a pinch hitter any day now.)
Catcher Jason Varitek knew Lowe was struggling, but he was determined to come up with pitches he thought Lowe could make. Together they flashed through sinkers, cutters, and curves. Nothing worked. "The curve was [expletive]," Lowe said. "I don't think I threw one for a strike all day."
Just 2 2/3 innings and 75 frustrating pitches later, Lowe was done. He allowed seven earned runs and four walks in the Sox' 7-3 loss. Entering the game, he had pitched 433 career innings at Fenway and never had allowed more than six earned runs in a start. His career ERA at home is 2.83, but yesterday he walked around the clubhouse saying, "I'm the one with the 35 ERA. My ERA is in the -- God knows what stratosphere I'm in."
Actually his ERA is 9.35. But that's not the point. The Sox seemingly have drawn a pitching line that is just as senseless as the red "Keep Out" line in their clubhouse. They no longer want to give Martinez an extra day between starts when they have the opportunity. And they'd like to have the luxury of Wakefield starting between their fastballing bookends.
"Well, between Pedro and I we gave up 14 runs in seven innings," Lowe said, referring to Martinez's awful start against the Orioles Thursday.
