Meanwhile, R.A. Dickey secured his seventh win of the season Friday night with 6 innings of work, in which he gave up 3 runs on 9 hits.
Charlie Haeger is starting today for the Portland Sea Dogs, the Red Sox AA team in the Eastern League. He is 4-0 since the Red Sox signed him on July 23. This Seattle Times piece featured Haeger and the difficulty of being a knuckleball pitcher:
Life in the minor leagues often provides a fickle future, especially when success hinges on one pitch -- the knuckleball. Charlie Haeger has learned this throughout his nomadic professional baseball career. The realization of just how quickly things can change hit me this week, when I noticed Haeger had been released by the Mariners, signed by the Red Sox and sent to Class AA Portland, Maine.The whole piece is worth reading.
That roster move made a feature I had written on Haeger moot before it was published. It shows just how quickly things can change with a player trying to find a long-term home on a major-league roster.
The 2011 season has been rough on the 27-year-old. He had back surgery in the spring and was tentative through his early season starts for Class AAA Tacoma. During a start in late June he made a decision “You’ve got to go out there and do it.” With his ERA moving in the wrong direction, he took the mound for a game against Colorado determined to take a step forward.
“Either your back is going to hurt or it’s not,” Haeger said. “Just start throwing the way you know how to throw, the way that feels natural to you.”
He went out that night and threw seven solid innings. He gave up four runs and struck out six. He wasn’t perfect, but he felt better. For the first time in the 2011 season, the right-hander found the flutter that a good knuckleball needs to frustrate hitters.
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