Tim Wakefield

Tim Wakefield has probably been one of the most successful starting pitchers ever for the Boston Red Sox, maybe behind Cy Young and Roger Clemens.

The 1995 AL Comeback Player of the Year has been a mainstay on the Red Sox roster since '95. He has accepted every role that the Red Sox has given him wholeheartedly. If the manager said something like "Hey, Timmy, I need you to be in the 'pen for about two months", Wakefield would respond with "Sure, no problem skip."

Tim Wakefield has been a fixture with the Red Sox for so long, his presence with the pitching staff has been a given year-in and year-out. After two seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1992 and '93, Wakefield left for greener pastures.

Ironically, after guys like Wakefield, but especially Barry Bonds, left Pittsburgh, the team has had a losing record every year, and this year the Pirates are still in search of that elusive winning season.

He's got a knuckleball that floats like a butterfly, but stings like a bee.

With 382 career starts for the Red Sox, Tim Wakefield now needs just one more to pass Roger Clemens for the most in club history. And the knuckleballer is just five wins from matching Clemens' Fenway Park record of 95.

Clemens, long the team leader in so many pitching categories, has slowly – and surprisingly – been encroached upon by his former teammate.

Now Boston has a problem like really no other in baseball which is that they really have too much pitching depth on their roster. This is obviously a good problem for Boston and today I will analyze who really deserves to be in their starting rotation. I will give a short synopsis of each pitcher and see if they deserve a spot in the rotation. I will also see if they deserve to be where they are today.

Josh Beckett and Jon Lester

With Gary Sheffield's 500th career home run last night at the new Citi Field, Sheff entered a group that includes only 24 other men - quite a feat considering the hundreds and hundreds that have played major league baseball.

It got us to thinking about what other baseball milestone could be achieved this season. By the way, props to Paul Konerko and Jermaine Dye for not only hitting their 300th career home runs but doing it back-to-back. Now that is pretty awesome.

A few years back, 2007 to be exact, I used the term "effective" to sum up what Tim Wakefield was as a pitcher.  It was a debate about whether or not the Red Sox were good enough to win the World Series that season. 

And as any Red Sox fan knows, the pitching staff was a very important reason why we as fans thought the team to be good enough to win.  And I'm talking about the beginning of the season, when they took off with the division and left the Yankees behind.