Extra innings for Red Sox starting pitchers

This October, unlike last, five innings will be woefully insufficient. The blueprint is altogether different. Red Sox manager Terry Francona has far more depth in his starting rotation than he does in his relief corps, which last night consisted of one:

Jonathan Papelbon.

This is all presumptuous, of course, though in the wake of last night's 3-0 win over the Tampa Bay Rays at Fenway Park, the Red Sox are now within a half-game of first place in the American League East and lead the wild-card race by a full seven games. Boston's magic number is 13. The Sox are 23-10 since trading Excedrin-strength headache No. 24, and the Sox are now a mere two games behind the Los Angeles Angels for the best record in baseball.

Once again, the postseason beckons.

If and when the Red Sox get there, Francona will do so with a team markedly different from the one that swept the Colorado Rockies in the 2007 World Series. While that Sox team relied heavily on the back of its bullpen, this one depends greatly on the front of its starting rotation. Never was that more evident than last night, when Francona opted to let starter Jon Lester pitch into the eighth inning despite having thrown 106 pitches through seven.

There was no bridge to Papelbon in this game.

The Red Sox didn't need one and clearly didn't want one.

"He looks like he's built to give a lot of innings," Francona said when asked of his decision to ride the 6-foot-2-inch, 24-year-old Lester. "He's a big strong kid and he looks like he's getting stronger. The ball's coming out of his hand the best it has all year."

Given that Lester's fastball touched 96 mph in the first inning of this game, who are we to argue?

It's time to stop calling Lester a kid. On the mound, he's a grown man now.

There was a time last season when the Red Sox needed no more than six innings from their starter because of the strength of their bullpen; by the postseason, the number actually had dropped closer to five. In the Sox' 10 postseason games last October not started by Josh Beckett, their starters worked just a combined 54 innings, an average of roughly 5 1/3 innings per start. In those 10 games, a Sox starter made it through the sixth inning only twice.

Both times, that man was Curt Schilling.

Somewhat incredibly, the Sox went 7-3 in those contests, defying one of the longstanding tenets of baseball: the starting pitcher sets the tone.

This year, things have been much different. Last night, in the seventh inning of a tightly contested affair with obvious playoff implications, Hideki Okajima and Justin Masterson were throwing in the Red Sox bullpen. By the eighth, Okajima was alongside Papelbon. Lester took the mound for his final inning with dangerous lefthanded hitter Carlos Pena due to bat fourth, and it essentially was then that Francona decided he would bypass all other options and go directly to his closer.

Said Francona, "As long as [Lester] was still throwing the ball well, we really wanted him to get to Pena."

Pena ended up hitting a two-out, ground-rule double to put runners at second and third with two outs -- he had been 0 for 3 with a strikeout against Lester before that at-bat -- but that's missing the point, which is this: Francona stayed with Lester (.223 vs. lefties) over the fresher Okajima (.194 against lefties) to face Pena, who is hitting .196 against southpaws. The manager seemed to act as if he trusted no one in his bullpen other than Papelbon, which is understandable given some of the problems Sox relievers had earlier in the year.

Clearly, no matter how much the Sox bullpen has improved as the season has progressed, some of the scars have not fully healed. As is usually the case, those wounds get revealed when the team is under stress -- in this case a close, late-season game against a division leader.

Of course, there were other factors at play here -- aren't there always? -- not the least of which is that Daisuke Matsuzaka is due to pitch tonight. Of the 34 AL pitchers with 10 or more wins, Matsuzaka ranks 32d in innings per start. (Only Scott Kazmir and John Danks have averaged fewer, Danks by a whisker.) All of this makes Matsuzaka's record (16-2) even more extraordinary, suggesting the Sox bullpen has performed far better for him than anyone else. (Beckett, Lester and Matsuzaka have received virtually identical run support, ranking a respective sixth, seventh, and eighth in the league among the 45 starters with at least 140 innings.)

The point? Part of the beauty of having Lester precede Matsuzaka in the rotation is that Francona can rest his bullpen for the inevitable support required behind Dice-K. That is not likely to change in October -- and again, it can't -- because the Red Sox don't have the kind of bullpen depth that allowed them to be successful last postseason. The greatest sacrifice Francona might have made last night was using Papelbon on a second consecutive day and allowing him to go more than one inning, which at least raises the question about the closer's availability tonight. (Papelbon has pitched on three consecutive days on a pair of occasions this season, but it's hard to imagine Francona allowing him to go more than one inning tonight.)

For all of the second-guessing and criticism that comes with occupying the perpetually hot seat in the home manager's office at Fenway Park, know this about Francona and pitching coach John Farrell: they are extremely organized and prepared. Francona entered last night's game knowing which matchups he wanted, particularly in the sixth and seventh innings, where the Sox have been most vulnerable this season. Entering tonight, the Sox have outscored their opponents by a noteworthy percentage in all but two innings this year: the sixth and the seventh. (In those innings, opponents have essentially played the Sox even.) As general manager Theo Epstein long ago pointed out, those are frequently the innings when leads change and games are decided because modern pitching staffs are most vulnerable in the middle.

In the case of the 2008 Red Sox, who have clearly distinguished themselves as a very good team and a championship contender, that is especially true. A year ago, Francona might have been content to pull his starter after six innings of a meaningful game because he had great bullpen depth. Certainly, with his starter having exceeded 100 pitches, he would have asked no more than seven. Yet there was Jon Lester last night, coming out for the eighth in an age when the average big league pitcher is fortunate to pitch five innings per start. And there was Papelbon, recording four outs in an age when closers usually are limited to one inning of work.

Kind of tells you something, doesn't it?