The Red Sox enter tonight’s Game 7 with a chance to complete a comeback that might match, or perhaps even surpass when considered in terms of statistical improbability, what they did against the Yankees in 2004.
I’m sure the vast majority of Red Sox Nation, myself included, still cannot believe what transpired during the final two-and-a-half innings of Game 5. Josh Beckett’s gutsy performance, and the sudden reemergence of Big Papi and The Captain have been equally unexpected, but oh so pleasantly surprising.
However, the Red Sox could not have come back in this series — in fact, they might not have collected any of their three wins — without superb work from the bullpen, once thought to be the Achilles heel of an otherwise complete team. And while Justin Masterson and Jonathan Papelbon deserve plenty of credit for their contributions, I’d argue that Hideki Okajima has been their most valuable pitcher in this series.
Okajima has pitched in four of the six ALCS games played thus far, and the Red Sox are 3-1 in those four contests. In Game 1, Oki relieved Dice-K after Matsuzaka allowed two singles to begin the seventh inning. Tasked with retiring Carlos Pena — and with overcoming his troubles with inherited runners — Okajima fell behind Pena 3-0, but then induced a harmless flyout, allowing Masterson to take over and end the threat with a well-timed double-play ball from Longoria.
Since then, all three of Okajima’s appearances have been of the six-out variety, coming in Games 2, 5, and 6. Though the Sox were unable to fight-off the Rays in the first of those, Okajima’s two scoreless innings in relief of an awful Josh Beckett were crucial to giving them a chance in that game. And one cannot overstate the importance of Okajima’s four unblemished innings in the last two games, bridging the gap from a shaky Dice-K and a short-leashed Beckett to Masterson and Papelbon, enabling the offense to do the rest.
During the regular season, Terry Francona turned to Okajima for relief 62 times, but only thrice did he ask him to go two full frames. Six ALCS games was all it took to match the total from the prior 162.
Winning in the postseason requires going beyond the call of duty, and Hideki Okajima has done that perfectly so far in the ALCS. The series far from over, and the Red Sox will need to pull out all the stops yet again to advance to the World Series.
But if there were a Fire Brand Award for the ALCS, Okajima’s case for the honors would be very hard to beat.
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