This should come as no shock, but the Red Sox starting pitchers -- after the veritable rotational rocks of Josh Beckett and Jon Lester -- have hit the mother of all rough patches since the All-Star break.

Beckett is sitting at 2-1 with a 2.86 ERA in three starts since the All-Star break and continues to be the very spitting image of the 2007 Sox ace that spit, cussed and fumed his way to Cy Young consideration and a World Series Championship. Lester is 1-1 with an entirely passable 3.86 ERA in three post-ASB outings, and together Boston’s 1-2 hurling combination is 3-2 with a 3.19 ERA in 48 post-ASB innings pitched.

The rest of the Sox tattered rotation hasn’t exactly been getting the job done.
With 43-year-old Tim Wakefield resting his creaky back and bothersome sciatica – which dredges up bad memories of the final hobbling days of Dwight Evans in a Red Sox uniform…yikes – John Smoltz, Brad Penny and Clay Buchholz have been nothing short of a mound train wreck over the last few weeks.

Smoltz (9.18 ERA in 16 2/3 innings), Penny (7.25 in 22 1/3 innings) and Buchholz (6.05 ERA in 19 1/3 innings) have the three worst ERA’s on the Sox pitching staff since the break, and the three starters are a combined 3-6 in 11 starts with a 7.41 ERA with 15 home runs allowed in 58 1/3 innings pitched.

That is something that needs to be rectified immediately if the Sox are hoping to avoid losing any more ground to a New York Yankees team that the Olde Towne Team currently trail by 2 ½ games in the AL East.
Particularly when a quick perusal of the schedule reveals that the Sox follow their current four-game series in the Bronx with a four-game set against the AL Central-leading Detroit Tigers at Fenway and then a road series against a solid-hitting Texas Rangers team that’s pounded Boston pitching this season.

Both the aging Big Game pitcher (Smoltz) and wet-behind-the-ears (Buchholz) end of the awful troika are set to enter the belly of the beast in Yankee Stadium in a quartet of intriguing pitching matchups. The 41-year-old Smoltz will take on Joba Chamberlain Thursday night at the House that Hank and Hal built, and Buchholz locks up with C.C. Sabathia in a huge gut check of a start for the 24-year-old prospect on Saturday.

Can Smoltz begin to nullify left-handed hitters that have whacked his fastball around unmercifully to the tune of a .403 batting average and 1.098 OPS clip?

Will Buchholz finally harness the “stuff” that everybody raves about and begin pounding the zone with a potentially devastating fastball/curve/changeup combo?

Both pitchers need to address the mental and physical problems that have dogged them for their entire stints with the Sox this season, or Beckett and Lester will be forced to be nothing less than flawless in their two outings for a Sox team merely hoping for a “treading water” split of the four-game set.

In that case, this might just be a playoff preview within the setting of Yankees Stadium as the Sox will be leaning heavily – and perhaps solely -- on the strong shoulders of Beckett and Lester during the postseason if one body out of the Smoltz/Penny/Buchholz/Wakefield/Daisuke Matsuzaka mass of pitching arms doesn’t step forth and be counted. Beckett and Lester might just be good enough to carry the load all by themselves once the postseason “tournament” arrives, but it certainly wouldn’t be the optimal pathway to prosperity.