Red Sox: Rick Porcello’s 20th victory rekindles memories

Josh Beckett

The Florida Marlins selected Josh Beckett with the second pick in the 1999 baseball amateur draft. The 3-time All-Star selection and runner-up to CC Sabathia for the 2007 Cy Young Award, won 20 games only once, as a member of the 2007 World Champion Boston Red Sox. Beckett won exactly 20 games while losing seven contests and posting a 3.27 ERA.

He is a two-time world champion, in 2003, as a member of the World Champion Florida Marlins and in 2007, as a member of the World Champion Boston Red Sox.

In 2003, as a member of the Marlins, Beckett won the World Series MVP after tossing a five-hit shutout in Game 6 against the New York Yankees to clinch the championship. In 2007, as a member of the Red Sox, Beckett won the ALCS MVP, largely for his masterful Game 5 performance in Cleveland, returning the series to Boston, where the Sox won games 6 and 7 to reach the World Series. They went on to sweep the Colorado Rockies and claim their second title in four years.

The Red Sox acquired Beckett and Mike Lowell, who won the 2007 WS MVP, on November 24, 2005 in a deal with the Florida Marlins to whom we surrendered Hanley Ramirez and Anibal Sanchez.

On August 25, 2012, in a nearly $300-million salary dump, Beckett, Carl Crawford, and Adrian Gonzalez were sent to the Dodgers for, primarily, pitchers Allen Webster and Rubby De La Rosa.

Beckett’s career record was 138 wins with 106 defeats with a very respectable 3.88 ERA.

As I have heard baseball reporter Peter Gammons say on multiple occasions, “If only Josh Beckett could have stayed healthy. He could have been one of the greats of this game.”

Unfortunately, Beckett’s career was injury-plagued, and those injuries robbed him of an electric fastball and a yellow hammer for a curveball.

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