Media Notes: Gary Tanguay's research on Josh Beckett's numbers is quite terrible

Josh Beckett is the man even when he goes more than 200 innings.

On the early Monday edition of Comcast Sports New England’s Sports Tonight, co-host Gary Tanguay brought up concerns about Josh Beckett going into the postseason, specifically citing Beckett’s lack of success when he goes over 200 innings pitched in a season.

To paraphrase, Tanguay said that he simply wasn’t the same pitcher after he crossed that threshold. To be quite blunt, that is a ridiculous statement and simply not true.

Beckett has thrown more than 200 innings only three times in his nine-year career: 2006, 2007 and 2009. His regular season numbers in those years:

2006: 16-11, 5.01 ERA, 158 K’s, 74 walks in 204.2 innings (33 starts)

2007: 20-7, 3.27 ERA, 194 K’s, 40 walks in 200.2 innings (30 starts). He finished 2nd in the Cy Young voting and 22nd overall in the AL MVP vote.

2009: 17-6, 3.86 ERA, 199 K’s, 55 walks in 212.1 innings (32 starts)

So looking at these numbers, I guess I’m not seeing a trend of bad pitching. 2006 was his first season in the American League, so there’s going to be a transition year. 2007? Please. 2009? Despite a few bumps late in the season, how do you complain about those numbers?

With that myth debunked, perhaps Tanguay was referring to Beckett’s postseason performance when he goes over 200 innings. Alright then, let’s see the numbers.

2006: Boston didn’t make the playoffs.

2007: 4-0, 1.20 ERA, 35 K’s, 2 walks in 30 innings (four starts)

2009: His first start is Saturday.

Uhhh…what the hell was Tanguay trying to say? If there’s a point to be made, it’s that there could be concern over Beckett’s workload in the postseason considering he had a career-high in innings pitched this year and that last year’s playoffs weren’t that great for him. But he instead made a statement with no statistical backup and no one called him out on it…until now.

It took me roughly two minutes to look up Beckett’s stats and easily disprove Tanguay’s theory. And he’s the guy getting paid to be on TV and the radio? This was the same guy who said the Red Sox weren’t going to make the playoffs after their mid-summer swoon. Guess he was wrong there too.

C’mon Gary. You’re better than this.

Josh Nason is the main writer for Small White Ball, a New England-based sports and media blog on the MVN Network. Reach him via Twitter or josh [at] smallwhiteball [dot-com].

CSN Rumor: Kevin Garnett would have played if the Celtics advanced

This story was updated at 12:30 pm Wednesday.

Yeah, Comcast Sports Net New England’s Gary Tanguay isn’t exactly known for being one of the most original or ground-breaking media members in Beantown, but he did drop an interesting note Tuesday night regarding injured Kevin Garnett and his availability if the Boston Celtics had advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals vs. Cleveland.

During the late edition of their Sports Tonight broadcast, Tanguay told co-host Michael Felger that he heard from sources that Garnett would have played against the Cavaliers if the Celtics had defeated the Magic in Sunday’s Game 7.

Obviously, Tanguay’s got some inside connections (CSN is the official broadcast partner of the team and he is the studio host for the broadcasts) and by leading off with this, he puts himself out there in case it’s not true.

But it does raise some questions if it is true:

– Just how bad is this knee anyway? KG is due to have surgery next week, but there sure is a Tom Brady-esque feeling of silence around the situation, eh?

– Assuming the above is true, if he could have played in Game 1, why didn’t he play in Game 7 against Orlando?

– Was GM Danny Ainge simply smoke-screening all this time? I guess the answer to this is obvious, but if Garnett had returned, it would have interesting to hear what he would have to say after he so vehemently denied Garnett would play in the postseason.

– What’s the benefit of breaking this info now? I don’t see much of a benefit to be gained for everyone and actually, I see more negatives that could come out of it.

– How much could we have expected out of him? 5 minutes? 10 minutes? Celtics fans would probably say a 60% Garnett is better than no Garnett, but would he have been able to make any sizable impact?

There isn’t anything buzzing much yet on the interwebs about this, but I suspect we will hear more in the week ahead. It does twist the knife a bit to realize we could have been that close to an emotional Garnett comeback, but in the end, the Celtics got throttled in Game 7 and the Magic moved on.

Damn it.

Update: Tanguay uploaded the video of this announcement on the CSN site. I’m still surprised this isn’t more of a story yet.

Josh Nason – josh [at] smallwhiteball [dot-com] – is the publisher/main writer for New England sports and media blog Small White Ball.