March 11, 2008

Beckett Highly Unlikely To Make Japan Trip

A WBZ headline:
Report: Beckett To Miss Red Sox Opener In Japan
But the story under that headline (which comes via ESPN's Jayson Stark) is not as definitive.

Terry Francona: "I don't think we know [for sure] yet. But we're certainly not going to rush him back to pitch a game March 24 if he's not ready."

Beckett has pitched only five innings this spring, two against Boston College and three against a Twins split-squad. As Stark notes:
[H]e never made it past his warmup pitches last Saturday, hasn't thrown since and doesn't even have a schedule to resume throwing yet. So the Red Sox clearly aren't even focusing on Japan for him anymore. They're likely shooting now for either April 1 or 2 in Oakland, or April 4-6 in Toronto.
It makes sense that the Red Sox don't want to annouce anything publicly this early, but I can't see any reason why they would take the risk with Beckett in Tokyo.

Jeff Goldberg, Courant:
With Josh Beckett's back worsening Monday and Daisuke Matsuzaka's wife due to give birth later this month, [Jon] Lester could be emerging as the season-opening starter March 25 in Tokyo.
Starting the last game of 2007 and the first game of 2008 ...?

3 comments:

allan said...

In looking at various stories this evening, I've seen the trip to Japan described as 14, 17 and 19 hours.

allan said...

It's also possible that Julio Lugo will not make the trip.

Jere said...

Honestly, I'd rather him not go just to make sure he's healthy in the long run.

But what is it with headlines? They're always lies or half-truths or whatever. I saw a story about that Heath Ledger dude, and how he'd written his will before his daughter was born. So she's not in his will, though his parents have said they'll provide for her. You know what the headline was, though? "Ledger Leaves Nothing To Daughter." But of course, it worked on me--I saw that and thought, What's this, the dude snubbed his own infant daughter? Otherwise I definitely wouldn't have cared enough to click. Damn trickster headline writers.