St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols, who in nine seasons has never not surpassed a .300 average, 30 home runs and 100 RBIs, is Sporting News‘ Major League Baseball player of the decade.

The honor is part of a 14-page tribute to the athletes, coaches and teams of the 2000s in the new issue of the magazine, which arrives this week at all Barnes & Noble, Borders and Hudson Retail outlets. SN honored one athlete in each sport and enlisted the help of teammates, coaches and legends to make a case for both the winner and runner-up.

Said Cardinals Hall of Famer Lou Brock of Pujols: “There’s an adage in baseball that the sound of the bat dictates how well a guy is going to play. His first time in spring training, when Albert hit a ball, everyone stopped. All eyes turned to him. That sound just jerked you around. That in itself gave us a great indication of what was going to happen. The sound is hard to explain. It’s just different—like I hear people talk about when Tiger Woods hits a golf ball and it’s unlike anything they’ve heard. Babe Ruth, I’m told, had that sound. You don’t hear that sound in every decade.”

Pujols was SN’s player of the year twice this decade, winning in 2003 and ’08.

His pick for his favorite moment of the decade? “Nothing was more special than winning the World Series (in 2006),” he told SN. “Seeing Adam Wainwright strike out Brandon Inge to make the last out was one of those moments I will never forget. I have had some big games, but nothing was more important than that game. We played as a team that whole series and proved all the people wrong who did not think we had the team to win.”
SN chose Pujols over Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez. “His last 10 years have been as good as anyone’s,” teammate Derek Jeter said.

Other SN MLB honors:
— Manager of the decade: Joe Torre, Dodgers/Yankees

— Team of the decade: Red Sox

— Executive of the decade: Theo Epstein, Red Sox

— Performance of the decade: White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle’s perfect game against the Rays on July 23, 2009. Buehrle also threw a no-hitter on April 18, 2007, making him the only pitcher with two no-hitters this decade.

— Game of the decade: Game 7, 2001 World Series, Diamondbacks 3, Yankees 2.

— All-decade team:
C Joe Mauer
1B Albert Pujols
2B Jeff Kent
SS Derek Jeter
3B Alex Rodriguez
OF Barry Bonds
OF Ichiro Suzuki
OF Manny Ramirez
DH David Ortiz
SP Randy Johnson
RP Mariano Rivera

Here are some brief words from Daisuke Matsuzaka on Saturday afternoon speaking about his impending Tuesday night start at Fenway Park against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. It'll be Matsuzaka's first start for the Red Sox since landing on the 15-day disabled list back on June 19 with a slightly strained right shoulder.

The start gives Matsuzaka a fresh beginning after a series of false starts this season, and could allow the Japanese righty to issue a huge statement about his worthiness for a starting rotation spot on a potential Boston playoff roster. All questions and answers were translated through Masa Hoshino.
 
How excited are you to make this start coming up? DM: Of course, I’m excited.

How excited are you pitch with the Red Sox after working on so many things over the last few months? DM: I know that it took me some time to get here, but I also feel that I was able to use that time to get prepared really well. I just hope that I can apply all those things that I was preparing for in the start.

Can you feel a big difference stuff-wise with what you’re taking to the mound stuff-wise now as opposed to when you were going to the mound in May or June? DM: I wouldn’t say that it’s THAT big of a difference, but I would say that the stuff I have now is a little bit better.

Is it one of your goals to be pitching for the Red Sox in the playoff if they do make the postseason? DM: I don’t think it’s really necessary to think that far ahead. Right now I’d like to focus everything I have on my upcoming start.

Was it important to get back before the end of this season? DM: That had been my intent all along through the entire process.

Do you think you have anything to prove that you can pitch effectively at this level? DM: I think it’s less having something to prove than it is we’re at a point in the season where every win is so important and as long as I can contribute to the team in a way that helps us win – that’s the most important thing right now.

How difficult has this year been while going through DL, minor league stints, everything that’s been involved? DM: I think it was a difficult season, but I also firmly believe that the experiences I had this year are going to help me going forward.

Slowly but surely Victor Martinez is carving out a man-sized niche for himself in the Red Sox clubhouse, and becoming a new legend of the Boston fall in the process. Martinez was looked at as a nice, solid offensive addition to a team that badly needed a more dangerous hitter behind the plate when he was acquired for Justin Masterson and prospects on July 31 – but V-Mart has been so much more than that in a short time.

The numbers are indisputable: Martinez is hitting at a .326/.411/.534 in roughly 150 at bats since arriving on the Sox scene Aug. 1, but what’s been even more notable is the timing of so many of those hits. Nobody is saying that David Ortiz needs to hang up his award as the Greatest Clutch Hitter in Red Sox History, but Martinez is beginning to trend in a Big Papi-like direction with his uncanny timing and steely nerves while the game on the line. 

“It’s all about being a tough out,” said Martinez. “That’s it. I always say that this game is tough enough without putting any pressure on yourself. The pitcher is out there doing his job and you’re up there doing your job. Some days he’s going to get you, and some days you’re going to get him.”

The switch-hitter has flashed a penchant for the clutch hit during that short time, and is quickly becoming Boston’s most dangerous man when the game is on the line in the late innings. He's been doing a lot of the "getting" as of late.

“He’s a professional hitter for starters and it’s a feather in his cap that he can catch as well. You don’t see catchers that can hit like that very often,” said Sox outfielder Jason Bay, who was in the very-same situation as the new kid in Boston when he arrived via trade last season on Aug. 1. “He’s a switch-hitter and an unbelievable clubhouse guy. He’s the loudest guy in the dugout, no question. He’s an easy guy to cheer for.

“He’s come in and – I came into the situation of getting traded over and moving right into a pennant race – he’s done it a few years ago in Cleveland as well, but when you’re new into a situation you want to impress your teammates as well as everybody else. He’s really done that.”

Props to New Bedford Standard Times Sox reporter Jon Couture for unearthing this statistical nugget: In 15 at bats with the Red Sox in the seventh inning or later with a runner in scoring position, Martinez is hitting .467 with three home runs and 12 RBIs with a 1.333 OPS since arriving. 

Those are off-the-charts type numbers in the clutch, and there’s more than enough anecdotal evidence of V-Mart’s burgeoning legend as well. Martinez has already collected 4 game-winning RBIs in less than two months of Sox duty, and still has a few more chapters to write in the middle of a playoff chase with the postseason still looming.

To wit:

--On Aug. 9 Martinez crushed a two-run homer to left field in the eighth inning of a 1-0 ballgame at Yankee Stadium, and finally erases a 31-inning scoreless streak that had reached epic levels. That bomb put the Sox up by a 2-1 score and was huge at the time, but the Sox bullpen gave it up in the bottom of the eighth inning and capped off a four-game sweep at the hands of the Yanks. The home run did begin to flash a glimpse of Martinez’s consistent ability to come through in those key late inning scenarios for Boston.

--On Aug. 14 in the first game of a huge series against the Texas Rangers and down one run against the Texas closer in the ninth inning, Martinez hit a two-out, two-strike, two-run double to right field that scored the tying and go-ahead runs and sparked a six-run ninth inning uprising. That two-out rally led to a key 8-4 win over a Rangers team that still sits only two games back in the AL Wild Card. Without Martinez’s heroics that night, Boston and Texas would be tied in the wild card standings at this point.

--On Aug. 18, Martinez launched a double off Brian Tallet in the top of the eighth inning at the Rogers Centre in a back-and-forth game that ended in a 10-9 win. Martinez’s RBI double that scored Alex Gonzalez ended up being the game-winning RBI in yet another victory for Boston.

--On Aug. 25 against the Chicago White Sox, Martinez pinch hit for Alex Gonzalez and smoked an RBI single to left-center field in the seventh inning that tied up the ballgame, and then added an RBI double in the eighth inning that helped pad the lead in an eventual 6-3 win for the Red Sox.

--On Aug. 29, Martinez drew a bases loaded walk in the sixth inning that ended up being the game-winning run in a 3-2 win over the Toronto Blue Jays. Not a clutch hit by any means, but another game-winning RBI for V-Mart.

--On Sept. 6, Martinez crushed a three-run homer in the ninth inning of Octavio Dotel in a tight 3-1 ballgame at US Cellular Field, and gave the Sox bullpen all the breathing room they would need in another important victory.

--On Sept. 9, Martinez pinch-hit for Jason Varitek in the bottom of the seventh inning with the bases loaded in a tie ballgame, and jumped all over the first pitch for a three-run double that rolled to the Green Monster in left-centerfield wall. It's just another game-winning RBI for Martinez in what’s quickly becoming a mystical final two months of the baseball season for the offensive backstop.

BOSTON -- Pardon Clay Buchholz if he experienced a little déjà vu whole toeing the rubber against the Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday night.

The 25-year-old Sox hurler was handed a generous lead by the Sox offense and asked to simply throw strikes, keep the game moving and gather outs against an offense battling out of an 8-0 hole after the first three innings.

Dustin Pedroia smashed a pair of home runs in his first career multi-home run game and J.D. Drew, Kevin Youkilis and David Ortiz also added their own four-baggers to the home run party in a 10-0 whitewash victory for the Sox.

The Texas Rangers swept a doubleheader against the Cleveland Indians on Tuesday, and – despite the Sox victory – moved within two games of the AL Wild Card race with four weeks left to go in the season. Armed with a big lead, Clay Buchholz pitched seven innings of shutout ball to earn his fifth win and lowered his ERA to 3.92 on the season.

It was eerily reminiscent of an Aug. 2 game against the O’s that Buchholz started at Camden Yards, but that game didn’t quite go according to plan.

The game took place just days after the Major League trade deadline and Buchholz was handed a seven-run lead after three innings courtesy of an energized offense brought to life by the newly acquired Victor Martinez. But the center didn’t hold for Buchholz on that muggy afternoon, and he couldn’t calm down the offensive storm around him and simply throw strikes.

Buchholz walked four batters and was cuffed around for seven runs in an eventual 18-10 Boston win that was due in no part at all to the starting pitcher. Buchholz had a 6.05 ERA after that debacle in Baltimore, but that’s proving to be something of a rock-bottom this season.

It’s no stretch to say that Buchholz has come a long way since that fitful afternoon.

“When he pitches like that – and I’m trying not to get ahead of myself – it’s amazing how good the organization feels about the future,” said Sox manager Terry Francona, clearly admiring Buchholz’s total command out on the mound. “You look at him up there putting up zeroes and the way he can do it, it’s very exciting.”

The young hurler obviously learned his lessons well in that situation, and erased thoughts of the enormous run cushion right out of his head this time around against the Orioles. He attacked within the strike zone with all three of his pitches, and conjured up images of former big league greats within the mind of Baltimore manager Dave Trembley after the game.

“He probably looked like a combination of Don Drysdale, Warren Spahn and Sandy Koufax when he got an 8-0 lead,” said Trembley of Buchholz. “He kept pitching.”

That’s exactly what Buchholz did, and he didn’t stop tossing quality pitches until Sox manager Terry Francona had removed the ball from his hands following seven innings of shutout ball with only one walk and three hits allowed. The young pitcher showed off another step in his maturation while pitching with a lead provided by the Sox offense, and continues to flash potential as Boston’s No. 3 starter behind the rock-solid duo of Josh Beckett and Jon Lester.

How different did Tuesday night’s start feel as opposed to the early August debacle against the very-same Orioles?

“A world of difference, I guess,” said Buchholz. “The first couple of innings from the last start were good. I sort of let it get out of control. Tonight I tried to pace the game as if it was still a tied game or a close game.

“If they got on base, I tried to pitch the count that would get me a groundball and work from there. I’ve had some failures with that same type of deal and I was able to get out of the inning without letting him score. It’s definitely a big deal for me.”

It’s a big deal for Buchholz, and it’s an even bigger deal for the Red Sox if their 25-year-old pitching product continues to mature right in front of their watchful eyes.   

Here are a couple of deep Red Sox thoughts on the eve of a big three-game series between the Olde Towne and a fading Tampa Bay Rays team that really lost some of their momentum when Scott Kazmir – crappy 5 plus ERA or not – was sold off to the Angels.
With the Rays 5 games back in the AL East entering Tuesday night, anything less than a Tampa sweep puts the Little Tampa Train that Could out of its misery – and does it in the House That Ryan Rupe Built, no less.

1. The Red Sox magic number is at 29 games after the Rangers lost again on Monday night. It appears that the Sox have found enough patches to get push them into the postseason barring a September collapse, and could do some real damage with the real Josh Beckett and an ascending Jon Lester at the top of the rotation along with a bullpen quartet of Daniel Bard, Hideki Okajima, Billy Wagner and Jonathan Papelbon available just about every night given the typical staggered schedule during the playoffs. They’ve shown enough offense with everybody now healthy and accounted for.

This Sox team is built for the playoffs – much more so than the regular season – and it could set up an interesting little run during the month of October if things break correctly, and Clay Buchholz can step up as Boston's No. 3 starter.

2. Most people just assume that the Sox will roll over the Angels in a potential Division Series just as they did in 2004, 2007 and again last season. There's a line of reasons why Boston should roll over the Angels: The Halos don’t have the starters. They have a mental block against Boston. John Lackey wakes up in a cold sweat when he dreams about Fenway. Brian Fuentes is a so-so closer. Yada, yada, yada.

The go-go Angels are second in Major League Baseball with 130 stolen bases this season, and the Red Sox are ill-equipped to deal with an athletic, aggressive baseball team like the Angels that also enough offensive firepower.

The Sox have nabbed a Major League-worst 14 percent of potential base stealers this season and have nailed only 20 total in 142 stolen base attempts this summer. Some of that is obviously dropped at the feet of Brad Penny, who simply didn’t do anything to slow the running game down, but the catchers are also having trouble.

Jason Varitek has thrown out 15 of 107 base stealers for a 14 percent success rate, and Victor Martinez has also thrown out only 7 of 50 base stealers this season. V-Mart has also already racked up three throwing errors attempting to control the running game in only 16 games in Boston -- and clearly isn’t any better than Varitek.

That’s what you call a potentially bad matchup in a series that many would mistakenly considered to be a cakewalk for the Red Sox.

3. Billy Wagner looked devastating in his Sunday debut with the Red Sox, and it had nothing to do with the afternoon shadows at Fenway. It appeared like hitters were having trouble recognizing the slider out of Wagner’s left hand, and the hard-throwing southpaw got a series of stilted check swings on his offerings.
Varitek brushed aside any thought about the shadows, and instead said it was all about the 38-year-old’s nastiness. He was consistently pumping up 95-mph fastballs along with an 84-mph darting slider, and the middle of the Blue Jays lineup could barely touch him.

“Because Wagner isn’t a vertically imposing guy and because of where he lines up on the rubber, he doesn’t have that effect in the shadows that some left-handers do at Fenway. I got a really good look at everything that came out of his hand, and so did the hitters,” said Varitek. “That was all about stuff. That wasn’t about shadows.”

Chatted a bit the other night with Sox pitching coach John Farrell about the recent two-start struggles for Josh Beckett. The Sox ace had allowed 10 home runs in his last three outings, and had allowed an unbelievable 18 hits and 15 earned runs in 13 1/3 un-Beckett innings against the Blue Jays and Yankees.

His fastballs were mis-located and tailing over the plate, and his curveballs have routinely been flatter than 2X4's at a carpenter's convention. The August downturn has become something of a pattern for Beckett over the course of his baseball seasons in a Red Sox uniform, as he's put up an 8-7 record with a 4.77 ERA and 17 home runs allowed in 122 1/3 innings pitched during August. It's easily been his worst month of the year during his time in Boston.
 
Farrell said that Beckett’s problem was more mechanical than physical, and his action of “reaching back” for a little extra oomph on the fastball and bite on the curveball had thrown of his normal, natural fluid delivery. The Sox pitching guru was expecting an entirely different Beckett on Friday night against the Blue Jays after streamlining Beckett’s delivery in bullpen sessions. The Sox pitching coach was also clear that Beckett's right arm is healthy, and there's nothing injury-related that's affecting the hard-throwing Texan during this August swoon.

Here’s Farrell:
“His delivery got a little long and spread out. He lost a little bit of the downward plane on his fastball and that caused his curveball to be recognized out of his hand early. He also went through a 3 ½ month stretch there where he just basically dominated the bottom half of the strike zone and dominated it in a way with the flight of his baseball going downward on his two-seamer and dominating with the lateral movement.”

What can you do to counteract things when Beckett’s delivery gets a little bit on the long side? JF: This is a case where it’s not a flaw in his delivery, but in his case there can be a little extra exertion to try to get a little more velocity or more bit on his curveball. This can cause his delivery to get long and spread out and it’s not unlike a hitter that’s trying to get a home run every time up there when he flaps on the backside and starts swinging uphill. There are a lot of similarities to that.

So part of it is just getting Beckett to relax and ease up a bit on the pitcher’s mound? JF: We spend a lot of time with every pitcher trying to quiet the mind, and he even has a saying that ‘less is more’. Because when they try to get more that’s when they work against their natural body movements and their delivery is inefficient and they can sacrifice command in an effort to gain velocity.

BOSTON -- On a night when Red Sox starting pitcher Junichi Tazawa brought little in the way of actual Major League stuff to the mound with him, the Boston bullpen was sure to take a double-hit when the originally designated long man, Brad Penny, asked for his release from the ballclub on Wednesday night.

That left Boston without a suitable Plan B when the 22-year-old clearly didn’t have it after two innings, and – as Sox manager Terry Francona often uses as a go-to phrase – put “them in a bind” in a 9-5 loss to the White Sox.

So after four innings from Tazawa, two innings from Manny Delcarmen and an inning from Ramon Ramirez, the Sox were forced to embrace the unavoidable and tossed a position player in to pitch the final two frames.

It was the second time this season that a hitter has turned pitcher for the Sox, with former outfielder Jonathan Van Every appearing in a game April 30 at Tampa Bay. This time it was shortstop reserve Nick Green, who is blessed with a strong right throwing arm, that got the call.

Green's flight of mound fancy was the only compelling shred of entertaining baseball on a night that was over before it began for Boston.

The hard-throwing Green has consistently flashed some impressive velocity with his arm while manning the shortstop position this season, and had previously told several reporters that he was once clocked as high as 92-mph on a radar gun.

“I feel like I could even throw harder, but I was trying to throw strikes,” said Green, who topped out at 90-mph but also walked three batters in two innings of emergency pitching work. “I just wanted to throw strikes, but my ball was moving all over the place. I was even trying to throw it with movement.”

So Green loosened up with outfielder Rocco Baldelli in the catacombs behind the Fenway Park around the fifth inning of a blowout loss, and then warmed up in the bullpen prior to his eighth inning appearance. While Green only threw 13 of 35 pitches for strikes in the two innings of work, he didn’t allow a single hit and walked only one batter in the two innings. It was the longest pitching stint for a Sox positional player since first baseman David McCarthy hurled two innings for the Sox back in 2005, and it was longest hitless stint for a Sox positional player since the immortal Eddie Lake did it twice during the 1944 regular season.

For the Sox, the positional tandem of Green and Van Every marks the first time that the Red Sox have employed two different position players to pitch since Doug Taitt and Jack Rothrock both pitched in during troubling times for the Olde Towne Team way back in 1928.

“He told me pretty early that I might (pitch),” said Green, who said he hadn’t pitched since roughly 1998. “At first I didn’t want to pitch, but we didn’t really have a choice. If I had to go out there and try to pitch because our pitchers couldn’t go, then that would be my only reason to pitch.

“I told (John Farrell) that I was going to pitch the eighth, and then asked him ‘who was going to pitch the ninth? I didn’t know I was going to pitch two innings. I didn’t know what to expect because I haven’t thrown to a catcher in 11 years. It was something I might never do again in a Major League game, so I had some fun with it.”

The only big problem for Green was the walk to former teammate Mark Kotsay. The shortstop showed a little bit of emotion after walking the White Sox first baseman/outfielder on four pitches.

"I was friggin pissed that I walked (Kotsay)," said Green. "I'll get him later."

Green even hit 90-mph a handful of times over the course of the two frames and impressed the ever-quotable Ozzie Guillen while the Chicago skipper was watching from the visiting dugout.

“I think they’re going to make a change,” said Guillen of Green and the Sox. “They might start having the Japanese guy back in the bullpen. You know, he impressed (me). That was pretty good. I think Francona has found another guy who can help him in the bullpen.”

When and if there’s another spot for Green to show off that golden arm, the shortstop might just pitch again and will be carrying a perfect big league 0.00 ERA right along with him.