Sox Beat: Rookie Buchholz seeks out veteran Wakefield for guidance

FORT MYERS, Fla. – TOGETHER they form a baseball version of the Odd Couple.

At 41, Tim Wakefield is now in his 14th season with the Red Sox and his 13th spring training with his current club. He has been with the team for almost its entire exhibition season existence in Fort Myers, a tenure defined by a single mystifying pitch.

Clay Buchholz, the dazzling 23-year-old who threw a no-hitter in his second major-league start, was just 4 years old when Wakefield started his professional career in the Pirates system. Now, as he spends his first March in big-league camp, the experience remains one filled with an aw-shucks novelty.

"This is big-league camp," Buchholz remarked. "It's the real deal."

Yet while the two draw upon vastly different experiences this spring, in a number of important ways, the youngest and oldest members of the Boston are linked.

Either pitcher might have started the World Series clincher against the Rockies last year. Instead, with Wakefield out due to a shoulder injury and Buchholz having been shut down one month earlier due to diminished strength in his shoulder, the pair was left to watch Jon Lester lead the team to glory.

Now, slightly more than four months later, the two pitchers are trying to prove that they possess the durability they lacked at the end of last year. Yesterday represented the first step in doing so, as Wakefield and Buchholz both pitched in their first spring training game of 2008.

Wakefield logged two tidy shutout innings, while Buchholz struggled with his command in a four-run, two-inning performance. Afterwards, both made clear their intentions to build upon their contributions last year.

Wakefield went an almost-forgotten 17-12 with a 4.76 ERA in 189 innings in 2007 before suffering the disappointment of his late-season shutdown. The knuckleballer refuses to make concessions to his age by lowering his goals.

"If I can get the club 200 innings, and have as many decisions as I did last year, I should hopefully be right back where I was," said Wakefield. "I think that's my biggest asset to the team -- to give them innings."

Through his efforts to assume that responsibility, Wakefield has become something of a role model for his much younger colleague. Buchholz suggests that he is seeking out advice from the knuckleballer, "trying to learn the ropes" from a pitcher who is 19 years older than he, to understand how to prepare for the rigors of a full season.

Yet while Wakefield's ability to serve as that kind of stabilizing presence was once taken for granted, that is no longer the case. He may still be capable of such a workload, but not without significant effort.

"It's not fair (to take his innings for granted) anymore," said Sox manager Terry Francona. "(But) he wouldn't be pitching if he couldn't overcome that unfairness. He works hard and gets himself into good shape. I think (200 innings) is a very legitimate goal."

That is not the case for Buchholz. The Sox will manage him with even greater caution than Wakefield, carefully measuring the increase to his 148-inning tally of a year ago. The team has stated that he will not exceed 180-190 frames this year, and the rookie realizes that he will not breach that limit.

"I have to understand it. It's the organization. It's the Boston Red Sox," said Buchholz. "I want to be here for a long time. I don't want to be run out there every day, or every other day, and have to throw twice as many pitches as I should throw. They know what they're doing."

While the Sox face very different tasks in managing the innings of their youngest and oldest pitchers, their ability to do so will go a long way to determining their ability to return to the World Series. If they are successful in that undertaking, then perhaps neither Wakefield nor Buchholz will be forced to watch the Fall Classic from the sidelines.

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Alex Speier covers the Red Sox for the New Hampshire Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday News.

In a recent interview, Yankees Senior Vice President Hank Steinbrenner proclaimed Red Sox Nation a fiction. His Boston counterparts are trying to change his way of thinking on the matter.

"Just to ensure he knows how cool Red Sox Nation is, (Saturday) we officially inducted him as a member of Red Sox Nation," Sox principal owner John Henry wrote in an e-mail to multiple media outlets, including the Hartford Courant and Boston Herald. "We are sending him his membership card giving him access to an array of options including our newsletter, bumper stickers, pins, Green Monster seats and a hat personally autographed by David Ortiz."