Josh Beckett Electric in 2nd Spring Start
Josh Beckett was electric in his 2nd spring start – tossing 3 perfect innings against the stacked St. Louis Cardinals offensive lineup. Beckett needed just 35 pitches to work through the 9 batters. He threw 25 of the 35 pitches for strikes and had 3 K’s, using a great combination of fastballs and change-ups mixed in a with a handful of breaking pitches. Beckett was plain-old nasty: “I felt like I located, I got the ball down well. I got some ground balls in the first inning, then really got my legs under me in the 2nd… I got out there a little bit later than I usually do. Warmups took me right up until game time, pretty much. In the second inning, my timing was getting better… This year, timing is big for me. It goes into how I feel. It changes from year to year. You have different things you want to work on from start to start, from bullpen to bullpen. I really want to establish my changeup and the arm speed on my changeup. I want to throw it in different counts, just getting a feel for it.”
The good news just keeps on rolling in for most of the Red Sox pitchers. Jonathan Papelbon, Hideki Okajima and Ramon Ramirez – 3 important Red Sox relievers – each tossed a hitless and scoreless inning of work. Manny Delcarmen stumbled a little bit by putting himself in a hole with 2 walks in his 1 inning of work, but he limited the damage to just 1 run.
So far so good for the Red Sox this spring. Let’s hope we continue to get good reports from Fort Myers for the next few weeks. Opening Day at Fenway Park is less than 4 weeks away!
