BOSTON -- Before Friday night's game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Fenway Park, Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine said that he doesn't believe in momentum.
And was he ever right.
The old phrase in baseball, with regards to momentum, is simple. It's as good as the next day's starting pitcher.
Josh Beckett took the hill on Friday night, trying to keep Boston's two-game win streak alive following back-to-back solid one-run outings from Felix Doubront and Clay Buchholz.
And spirits were riding high entering Beckett's 16th start of the season, thanks in part to Cody Ross' ninth-inning walk-off home run the night before.
"I don't believe in momentum," said Valentine before Friday's game against the Blue Jays. "I mean, I think that you could have momentum in a game and in an inning, but I don't think yesterday necessarily carries over, other than you have a good feeling when the game starts."
Even that would be a stretch, mainly because of Beckett's brutal 10.20 first-inning ERA this season.
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But Beckett struck out Toronto lead-off man Anthony Gose to begin the game. And it looked like things would be different in this first inning.
Then Colby Rasmus drove a ball over Cody Ross' head in right field for a one-out triple. And in the next at-bat, Edwin Encarnacion grounded to third, and Will Middlebrooks decided to try and throw Rasmus out with a tag at home.
The throw was in time, the tag seemed good, but the ump called him safe, and the Blue Jays led 1-0. An Adam Lind single and then a J.P. Arencibia single scored another Toronto run, and it was more of the same for Beckett in the first.
"I thought the first inning, I made decent pitches," said Beckett, who also defended Middlebrooks' aggressiveness on his throw to the plate. "The second inning was the inning where things got away from me."
Yunel Escobar led off the top of the second with a double, and then Beckett got two outs, with Escobar eventually getting to third. That's when it fell apart.
Beckett was ahead of Gose 0-2, and then threw four straight balls for the two-out walk. And Rasmus made him pay, driving a two-out, two-run double the other way, off the top of the monster, giving the Blue Jays a 4-0 lead after two innings, and leading to a 6-1 Toronto win.
"Well I thought he had good stuff all night," said Valentine after the loss. "The leadoff strikeout I thought was good. Then Rasmus hit a low curve ball over Cody's head, and then we got a ground ball to third and we didn't get an out on it.
"He made a couple bad pitches in the first couple innings, and there were four runs. But he had pretty good stuff tonight."
Beckett allowed another run in the fifth, but it was unearned, thanks to a Will Middlebrooks error. Still, he picked up his eighth loss of the season after allowing four earned runs on seven hits and three walks, while striking out seven in six innings.
"I can't say that I'm looking at a whole lot of positives from that outing," added Beckett. "I got burned whenever I didn't make pitches."
Both Valentine and Beckett wish they could have back Gose's second at-bat of the game in the second inning, which was a two-out walk that gave Rasmus a chance to break it open, which he did.
"That 3-2 curveball to walk Gose, I think he lost a little concentration," said Valentine. "And he just threw a fastball out over the plate to Rasmus the next pitch. Before we knew it, it was two runs. He's out of that inning if he drops a curveball in there."
Other than that, Valentine still thought Beckett had "good stuff" in his last two outings.
"I thought he had good stuff tonight," said Valentine. "And I thought he had good stuff the last time out."
Beckett got the win his last time out. It stands as his only win between now and May 20. He's 5-8 with a 4.53 ERA. His and Jon Lester's win total (five each) matches that of Daniel Bard, who's been in Triple-A Pawtucket since June 5, and Bard's last win was on May 29.
"Obviously the results are not where we want them to be, but you've just got to keep going out there," said Beckett. "There's nothing you can really do."
The Red Sox would like those early-inning mistakes to be limited. And until that starts happening, the belief in momentum certainly won't be carrying over to Beckett's next start.