IF DICE-K WERE A YANKEE,

the pundits would, not unreasonably, be questioning whether he was the latest in a line of recent disappointments in pitcher signings. His ERA is about double Andy Pettite's, so we can imagine that his record would be at best reversed, 3-6 versus 6-3. He certainly has not pitched as well as Johnson did the last couple of years and everyone thought he was a failure in pinstripes. He's been better than Jared Wright was last year, but actually not all that much, whatever his potential seems to be. My point is that while Dice-K may turn out a good, even great pitcher, he has been neither so far and the pundits have been, to say the least, reluctant to say so. He is regularly still advertised as part of the Sox three-ace starting rotation. Whne you have three number ones like that, they always say. Well noone else has three number ones like that because noone else is regarded as a number one on the basis of a 4.83 season and career ERA. You don't become a number one by garnering run support, you have to shut people down start after start. Unless you are Dice-K. Then all the "experts" who slated you for Cooperstown on the basis of your first spring training start--see Heyman, Verducci, Donovan--have to protect their reps as prognosticators by insisting, against the evidence, that he has been what they said.

For whatever reason, Dice-K tends to have single inning blow-ups, 4 against Cleveland in the 6th last night, 5 in the 4th against Texas the start before. He has avoided that peril on a number of occasions to pitch stellar games, but almost always against weak teams. Indeed he has only pitched a really good game against a good team once so far this season. He's not getting results nearly as impressive as Schilling, who seems to have lost his fastball entirely. BGW can tell me how the great Dice-K is regarded on the streets of Boston, but in media-land he is still a god, despite performances that have been human-all-too-human.