Cy candidate has strong platform

BALTIMORE - As bad as a Red Sox fan might feel about Daisuke Matsuzaka right now, that's as good as one should feel about Josh Beckett.

He's the Sox' ace, their centerpiece, their stud, their No. 1 and the best reason to feel good about the first game of the playoffs.

Beckett won his 18th game yesterday, 3-2 over the Orioles, and is in line to win 20, with at least three more starts. No American League pitcher has won 20 since Bartolo Colon in 2005. Beckett joins the Yankees' Chien-Ming Wang, who claimed a 6-3 victory over the Royals yesterday, as the only 18-game winners in the AL, and they are two guys from both sides of the rivalry who are going be compared for years.

The possibilities are all in front of Beckett now - 20 wins, the Cy Young Award, postseason success.

This comes two years after Beckett and Mike Lowell came to the Sox for Hanley Ramirez, Anibal Sanchez, and two minor leaguers, in a deal that really helped both teams. As well as Beckett did in winning 16 games a year ago, he had an ERA of 5.01, and there were questions about the merits of that deal. Those have subsided.

Shoulder problems, blister problems, are all behind him. He's been a workhorse - at least as it's defined in this generation - going 115 pitches over seven innings yesterday and allowing only a pair of solo homers en route to a hard-fought win.

He's 10-2 with a 2.23 ERA on the road, always a measure of a great pitcher. He's 4-0 with a 2.05 ERA against Baltimore at Camden Yards, and except for homers to Melvin Mora and Nick Markakis, Beckett did his job and more yesterday in helping keep the Red Sox alive in a game in which they faced Jeremy Guthrie, who can be tough to hit.

Lowell, his teammate in Florida, thinks Beckett is a legitimate Cy Young candidate barring a poor finish against the likes of Wang, C.C. Sabathia, John Lackey, and possibly Johan Santana. Now 18-6 with a 3.27 ERA, Beckett appears to be the front-runner, though he isn't focused on that.

"This is about as consistent as I've ever seen him," Lowell said. "The biggest difference is the two or three innings when he doesn't have his good stuff. He doesn't let that turn into four innings or five innings of it. His ability to stay within himself and stick to the game plan is a major difference.

"The results show. You can't put a price tag on it. There's not too many guys in the league that even when he doesn't have his good stuff, he's going to give us a chance to win. That's why he's an ace and that's why he's a Cy Young candidate."

If Beckett didn't have that consistency, the Red Sox might be in a bit of trouble right now. Matsuzaka has struggled over his last five starts. Tim Wakefield is coming off a back problem. Curt Schilling is transitioning from power pitcher to finesse pitcher. Clay Buchholz, one of the Sox' most electric young arms, is under a strict innings limit. Jon Lester has pitched well of late, but is he ready to be a cog in the playoffs? Unlikely.

That leaves Beckett, who has now made 27 starts and has pitched 181 2/3 innings with 173 strikeouts and only 36 walks. He had one stint on the disabled list, with an avulsion on his right middle finger, but the medical staff said it was not associated with the blister problems he's had.

Beckett already has pitched World Series games and already has been through some of the most pressurized situations a baseball season has to offer. This is his time and place. Right smack in the prime of his career, Beckett is now the leader of this pitching staff.

He has the respect of just about everyone in baseball. Even though the Yankees have hit Beckett well, he is the one pitcher every New York hitter hates to face.

"He's got the best stuff in the league," Alex Rodriguez said during the last Sox-Yankee series in New York. "He doesn't back down. He's one of the most competitive pitchers you'll ever face."

Beckett will pitch inside and he'll knock you down if he has to. One of his biggest admirers is Roger Clemens, who believes Beckett has a lot of the same attributes he does.

That battling spirit could be seen yesterday when Beckett went toe-to-toe with Brian Roberts in the seventh on a 10-pitch at-bat which resulted in a swinging strike three. It was his last batter of the game.

"If I'd have walked him, [manager Terry Francona] probably would have left me in for another batter," Beckett said. "He's a great baseball player and one of the smarter players you'll ever play against."

"It's fun," Beckett said. "There's definitely a long way to go, but it's fun. I just need to go out there and execute pitches until they tell me that my day is over. Great teams come through for one another. We've done that to one another. Sometimes the pitcher has to pick up the hitters."

He seemed stumped when asked whether his confidence is at an all-time high.

"I don't know. How do you rate that?" Beckett said. "I really don't know. I've always been a confident guy."

Lowell has always seen it, although he also saw a younger Beckett who had the stuff but maybe didn't have as much maturity as he does now.

"If he gave up a home run, he'd try to throw the next pitch 107 miles an hour and start walking people," Lowell said. "He didn't have the ability then to settle down and keep the damage to a minimum. I think that's the case with most young pitchers who have that kind of stuff, and there aren't many of them, believe me."

"His whole goal is to give us a chance to win," said closer Jonathan Papelbon. "When you have a starting pitcher who can do that, you're going to be good. He's going on a career high with wins this year, and you definitely want to help your teammate achieve that."

Papelbon remembered when he was a starter in spring training and there were many comparisons to Beckett.

"We kind of looked at each other then, and he saw that I've been successful and I saw that he's been successful, and we kind of tried to feed off each other," Papelbon said.

Now they're the front and back of the rotation. They are the anchors, the leaders.

Without Beckett, where would the Sox be? That's why he is, right now, the pitcher who should win the Cy Young Award.

Nick Cafardo can be reached at cafardo@globe.com.