Well, the news that filtered through the Fenway Park press box just before the end of last night’s doubleheader finale certainly changes things up. Josh Beckett, the one, shining difference-maker after a quick perusal of the other American League playoff rosters, is having an issue with his right oblique muscle, and will miss his Game One start as a result.

Big Game Beckett has been slotted into the Sunday Game Three start at Fenway Park, but it remains to be seen whether the right oblique issue will have healed up enough to not be a throbbing factor in the division series.

A postseason starting quartet of Jon Lester, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Tim Wakefield and Paul Byrd doesn’t quite strike fear into the hearts of the opposition without the heat-tossing ace, and one has to continue to wonder if Beckett is paying for the heavy workload of last season. The Sox training staff and coaching staff have seemingly done everything they could to sidestep problems with Beckett, but they still seem to be cropping up.

Beckett basically had his spring training and the first week of the season wiped out by a lower back problem, missed several weeks with right elbow inflammation and now has an oblique problem that’s cropped up at the worst possible time. That’s three different injuries this season after the 28-year-old remained relatively healthy last season aside from the celebrated avulsion issue on the finger of his right pitching hand. Add to that the fact that – when he did pitch – he was inconsistent and put up a 12-10, 4.03 ERA in his follow-up campaign to a Cy Young Award quality 2007, and you have some interesting questions.

Then add the 230 innings (regular season and postseason) that Beckett pitched in the only season that he’s endured a full body of work from spring training through the entire regular season and then through 30 stressful, dominant postseason innings.

I’ve been banging the drum all season that Beckett is paying the price this season for his brilliance last season, and these little nagging injuries and less-than-Beckett performance could be the resulting collateral damage from last season’s full workload.

Could this just be a coincidence? Maybe, and perhaps Boston's ace comes back and is lights out in Game Three. That's certainly the anticipated happy ending. But I feel like I’m not the only one that senses something has just been a little “off” with Beckett’s mound performances all season long. I actually had an interesting conversation with Chicago White Sox GM Kenny Williams about the subject of starting pitcher fatigue not too long ago, and thought it at least tengentially applied to the Beckett situation.

Williams pointed to former White Sox starter Freddy Garcia – who ironically is attempting to end Chicago’s season while toeing the rubber for the Detroit Tigers today – as a striking example of a pitcher that paid a price after a large regular season/postseason workload. Garcia threw 228 innings while going 14-8 for the White Sox during the 2005 regular season and then tossed another 21 innings while helping lead a dominant Chicago pitching staff to a World Series title.

But the efforts came at a hefty price that eventually resulted in shoulder surgery that the 33-year-old Garcia is just now recovering from. Take a look at Williams' words and see if you think any of this could potentially apply to Beckett:

“There’s no question. I have looked at the history of what happens to not only teams that have gone to the World Series…but also teams that have gone deep into the playoffs. You look at the history of it and there’s a fatigue aspect to it. In our case, we not only had to deal with general fatigue but the World Baseball Classic also played into it. Freddy had to pitch for Venezuela so he had a month where he had to pitch later than everybody else and then he had a month where he pitched earlier than everybody else. And he hasn’t been the same since.

That’s not a surprise to me and whoever wins this season is going to have the same problem. You have to be very protective of those pitchers. I remember that I wanted to start the 2006 season with six starters and all of the pitchers and everybody thought I was crazy. They told me ‘We feel fine, we feel fine.’ Well, I should have made an executive decision and if we ever win it again we’re starting the season with six starters.

Our guys didn’t get hurt, but you could just tell there was sharpness that wasn’t quite there. They didn’t get hurt, but that was one of the fears that I had. We won 90 games as it was, but I think we could have won 100 games if we were fresh.

You’ve got to take into account the stressful innings too. I count any innings from about Aug. 15 on as a stressful inning and I had conversations with Todd Stottlemyre, Dave Stewart and John Smoltz when I was trying to figure out the whole pitching fatigue thing.

The question I was asking was ‘when you get in a pennant race, how stressful are those innings and do they feel the same physically as innings in April and May do?’ They told me that in a pennant race and the playoffs it’s as though each inning pitched is like you’ve pitched two innings physically. Mentally and physically you have to be there for every pitch and it’s all you’ve got. That’s why max-effort type guys, I worry more about them than guys that have easy, fluid deliveries because those pitchers are going to run out of gas.” 

Interesting food for thought, and I also went back and checked the velocity on Beckett's fastball in his last start against the Cleveland Indians on Sept. 22 after noticing his velo seemed to be down quite a bit from normal vintage Beckett. Here's the results from his last start and a random start he made in the middle of the season against the Yankees. Quite a difference there. It doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it's worth noting when several media members attempted to say that Beckett was sitting at 95-mph in his final start. That's just not true as he threw more fastballs 92-93 than 94-95. With all things being equal, it looks as if Beckett has lost 2-3 mph on his fastball dating before his elbow issue and then afterwards.

Sept 22 -- Beckett threw, according to the MLB GameDay Readings, 81 fastballs although a handful on the lower end of the scale may have actually been cutters or change-ups.

88 mph -- 1 pitch

89 mph -- 9 pitches

90 mph -- 5 pitches

91 mph -- 2 pitches

92 mph -- 9 pitches

93 mph -- 23 pitches

94 mph -- 25 pitches

95 mph -- 4 pitches 

Here is the July 25 radar gun stats, Beckett vs. the New York Yankees, with the reading again courtesy of MLB GameDay.

89 mph -- 1 pitch

90 mph -- 3 pitches

91 mph -- 4 pitches

92 mph -- 3 pitches

93 mph -- 6 pitches

94 mph -- 14 pitches

95 mph -- 22 pitches

96 mph -- 24 pitches

97 mph -- 3 pitches