Everyone Pleased With Bard's Outing

Daniel Bard allowed five runs in six innings to the Blue Jays yesterday (6-6-5-3-5, 85) and no one seemed to care. Yet his line was, in many ways, worse than the one from his last start (5-3-3-3-2, 83), which caused so much panic and consternation.

Bobby Valentine:

I liked everything. He had some tough breaks, I thought. He worked his way out of jams. He had some pitches that could have been called strikes, didn't let it affect him. He threw all of his pitches today. His changeup at times was devastating. His slider was sharp at times. ... I liked how he was responding to things. I thought it was a really good look today. He worked runners when they were on base. He got ground balls when he needed to. He got some swings and misses when he needed to, too. I just like what I see.

Bard:

Today was the first game I can actually say I felt like a starting pitcher out there and not like a reliever starting. I used all four pitches -- a steady mix of all four, and then would favor one and felt confident about it. ... I was throwing the changeup pretty consistently [about 10 of them]. ... [F]or the most part, I got some big outs on it. I was able to work on a lot of things and take the five runs out of it, I feel pretty good. ...

I felt comfortable in my routine before the game. I kind of finally have the times down, when I need to start getting ready, how many pitches to throw in the pregame bullpen, things like that are really getting comfortable for me. And then just the sitting between innings.

Valentine:

No matter who's pitching, I like our pitching. We'll see how it works. I think it's going to be an easy decision. Yeah. It's not like we're going to be searching for pitchers to start games.

Bard:

For a little while it kind of gets where you wonder and wonder [what's going to happen]. But I've just kind of gotten to a point where it's out of my hands. I'm going to put the work in and do the best I can every fifth day out there right now, and if that shifts to a bullpen role, I'll do the same thing. ... [L]ike everything in life, if you can't control it, it ain't worth worrying about.

It looks like the rotation will be Jon Lester, Josh Beckett, Clay Buchholz, Felix Doubront, and Bard. ... Opening Day is one week from Thursday!