Josh Beckett Cements His Place In The Boston Sports Scumbag Hall Of Fame

It is hard to believe how far both the Boston Red Sox and Josh Beckett have fallen off the map in the last few months (going back to September). The ringleader of last season's chicken and beer fiasco, who should have been traded over the winter, has completely given up on his career. Or so it seems. There's no other way to explain it since a guy with his talent should never be this consistently awful.

The Cleveland Indians (18-13, 10-3 away) beat the Red Sox (12-19, 4-11 home) 8-3 tonight in the series opener at Fenway Park. Boston has now lost three games in a row and eight out of nine overall plus 11 of its last 12 games at Fenway.

Beckett (2-4) had his shortest start in nearly four years as he couldn't make it out of the third inning, against a weak hitting team. In the first start since his golf trip last week, the Texas Toughguy showed his true colors by folding easier than anyone could have possibly imagined. In 2.1 innings, he allowed seven earned runs on seven hits with two strikeouts and two walks.

The best part was that Bobby Valentine had to take him out of the middle of the third so that allowed the crowd to really get on Beckett. If the Red Sox are going to go down in flames like this, at least we can all enjoy booing the hell out of a worthless piece of shit like him.

Cleveland scored two runs in the second and four in the third. Former Red Sox first baseman Casey Kotchman opened the floodgates with a sacrifice fly. Jack Hannahan (3rd of the season) hit a two-run homer to right.

It only got worse for Beckett as Jason Kipnis (6th of the season) hit a solo homer to right in the third, followed by Shin-Soo Choo's RBI double and Michael Brantley's (4 hits) double that scored two.

Former Red Sox pitcher Derek Lowe (5-1), who is a few weeks away from his 39th birthday, proved that some guys are winners and never lose the desire to compete in MLB. The sinkerballer went six easy innings, allowing two earned runs on nine hits with three strikeouts and a walk. And to think, the Red Sox easily could have picked him up with a throwaway trade to the Braves.

Daniel Nava had an RBI double in the fifth, his first game in 2012 with Boston, then Dustin Pedroia (5th of the season) homered to right in the seventh. Pedroia actually came to the plate as the tying run with two outs in the eighth and the bases loaded but he popped up.

Carlos Santana tacked on one more Indians run in the ninth with a sacrifice fly.

The main reason that the Red Sox have been so brutal is that their starting rotation is nothing less than a nightmare. You keep waiting for somebody to step up and throw a gem but other than Lester's win in Chicago, that has been severely lacking. I've said the bullpen has sucked (and it has at times) but who can blame them when they've been forced to throw 3+ innings every single game.

Ubaldo Jimenez (3-2) faces Clay Buchholz (3-1) tomorrow night (7:10 p.m., NESN) and if you want to make some money: bet against Boston. I'm serious, for whatever reason they were pretty big favorites tonight. We might as well get something tangible from this lost season, it's only a matter of time before Vegas figures out that this team is hopeless and changes up the lines.

Tweet


Follow @RichSlate