Except it did. There went Daisuke Matsuzaka and Tim Wakefield and Justin Masterson and John Smoltz and Brad Penny and Junichi Tazawa. In came Paul Byrd, signed off the Little League field. The Sox neared a crisis point, but remained bolstered by the superb pitching of Jon Lester and Josh Beckett and, later, Clay Buchholz. Down the stretch, those three kept the Sox afloat as they found themselves one starter away from having a hole in their five-man rotation.
“I think when you look at our struggles to put a healthy starter out there on some nights and to keep five guys intact, especially in August and parts of September that were crunch time, I think there’s a deserved exhale that it didn’t really catch up with us,’’ Epstein said. “Because that’s not the way we want to go about it. We want to have surplus. We want to make choices in the rotation based on performance, not health, based on choosing between good alternatives, not scrounging for healthy bodies to throw innings.
“Yeah, there’s an exhale there.’’
Not that the Sox are alone in their struggle to stabilize their rotation. The Angels used 14 starters this season, as opposed to Boston’s 11. In each case, six pitchers started at least 10 games. In 2004, the Red Sox’ original starting five started all but five games.
There were moments when Epstein looked at the standings and scratched his head. No matter where they were - three games up, three games down - it didn’t seem like the Red Sox should be in that position. The general manager was spending a startling proportion of his time concerned about a rotation that had appeared solid in spring training, but lost bodies and effectiveness as the season wore on.
