Editor's note: NESN.com is going to tell the story of the 2012 Red Sox in Bobby Valentine’s words. Each game day, we will select the best Valentine quote that sums up the day for the Red Sox.
It could have been a watershed moment in Josh Beckett's season — a turning point from which to launch a successful stretch run, put the team on his back and propel the Red Sox to a playoff berth. Perhaps that's going a little far, but either way it was a turning point in a game the Red Sox easily could have taken from the Texas Rangers.
Runners were on first and second with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning. Beckett was at 108 pitches and clearly his evening was about to come to an end, one way or another. Sox manager Bobby Valentine strolled up the steps of the visiting dugout and began to amble in a beeline straight to the mount, while Beckett defiantly held his hands on his hips and looked in the direction of home plate, not wanting to turn the game over to a reliever and let it out of his control.
And Valentine showed faith in his fallen ace, giving the 32-year-old the opportunity to finish the inning and head to the dugout on a positive note, having completed seven successful innings.
But instead, things wouldn't work out that way for Valentine, Beckett or the Red Sox, as the right-hander got on top of an offspeed pitch and threw it to the backstop with Michael Young at the plate. Catcher Kelly Shoppach tried to do his best Tim Thomas impression but was unable to stop the ball from skidding behind him. Elvis Andrus eventually scored from third base, putting the Rangers ahead 4-3, and from that point on they would never look back.
"It was a gutty performance, [Beckett] put up that zero in the first inning that he needed to," said Valentine, alluding to Beckett's — and the Red Sox, collectively — struggles in the first inning. "And the fourth inning — it was just one of those crazy innings… he pitched pretty well tonight."
Ultimately, however, it's just another loss that drops the Red Sox, once again, a game below the .500 mark. And as much as you'd like to say that Beckett pitched well despite the end result, the plain fact is that this is too late in the season for hollow moral victories — the Sox need results, the Sox need wins and they need them now.
Whether it have been reining in the fourth inning, or preventing Andrus from crossing the plate in the seventh, those are the kinds of moments where the execution just hasn't been there from Beckett, or fellow fallen ace Jon Lester, either. Those are the moments that separate an ace from just another pitcher, and so far in 2012 Beckett, Lester and the Red Sox have usually been on the wrong side of them.
