BY MIKE CORMACK
sportsnet.ca
The Boston Red Sox and their glacial pace of play have plenty of detractors, but don't count Toronto Blue Jays manager John Farrell among them.
On Tuesday, the rookie Toronto skipper -- who spent the previous four seasons as the pitching coach in Boston -- was asked whether games against the notoriously deliberate Red Sox were tough on his players.
"No," he shot back; a day after his team emerged victorious from a three-hour and 51 minute, 11-inning, 1-0 game. "And I would like to say on the heels of that, I hope that we get into those three-hour plus games ourselves because that means that our approach at the plate is relentless. It's working deep counts.
"That's a proven successful formula."
At 84-56 entering play Tuesday, and seven games in front of the Tampa Bay Rays in the AL Wild Card standings, there's no doubt the Red Sox are doing something right, regardless of how long it's taking them or how much it's infuriating opponents and fans.
Earlier this month following another painfully slow-moving Red Sox-Yankees game, New York first basemen Mark Teixeira confessed to the New York Times that games against Boston are taking too long.
"It's brutal," Teixeira told the paper. "I can't stand playing a nine-inning game in four hours. It's not baseball. I don't even know how to describe it. If I was a fan, why would I want to come watch people sitting around and talking back and forth, going to the mound, 2-0 sliders in the dirt? Four-hour games can't be fun for a fan, either."
According to Elias Sports Bureau, Yankees-Red Sox nine-inning games in 2011 have had an average length of 205 minutes, while the average American League game clocks in at 169.7 minutes.
Farrell said there is a method to the sluggish madness.
"When you have relentless at-bats you drive up pitch counts," said the veteran pitcher of eight big league seasons. "Starters are going to be protected, you get to that middle reliever and if you look at the numbers, that's where (Boston) jump through the roof with their overall offensive performance."
Hitters are one thing, but the pitchers are another.
Monday's game between Boston and Toronto featured two of the Red Sox slowest mound operators -- starter Josh Beckett and closer Jonathan Papelbon.
In the 10th inning it took Papelbon an eternal 24 minutes to deliver 27 pitches.
Beckett -- who exited Monday's game in the third inning after spraining his ankle -- averaged more than 31 seconds per pitch during an Aug. 7 start, eliciting a phone call from Major League Baseball executive vice president for baseball operations Joe Torre, who asked Red Sox manager Terry Francona to ask Beckett to speed it up.
The MLB rule book says a pitcher can take only 12 seconds between pitches.
Farrell -- admitted two unnamed Blue Jays pitchers have received letters from the league regarding pace of play -- pointed out that the 12 second rule does not apply with runners on base and argued the pitcher's pace has nothing to do with gamesmanship and everything to do with controlling the game.
"We hear all the time that the game just sped up on the guy, figuratively and literally," he explained. "There's such a premium on performance and success that if you rush into things and you don't do your job, well, you know who bears the brunt of that -- it's the guy on the mound. So if he feels and he needs to slow the game down in that fashion, hey, it's a bottom line game."
Not surprisingly, Farrell's former Boston bench colleague agrees.
"But if I had my choice of (Beckett) pitching slow and winning or getting a letter from the league, that's what I'd go with, rather than him hurry up and pitch and not win."
And what about all those seemingly excessive trips the mound Monday by Boston's catchers?
"When you cheat and you steal signs, you have to try and combat those all the time," Farrell joked.
