BOSTON - Pedro Martinez sees what everybody else does: Chris Sale as a reminder of Pedro himself.
In Thursday night’s 3-0 loss to the Yankees, Sale became one of four Red Sox pitchers to strike out at least 10 hitters in four consecutive starts. Martinez did it four times. Roger Clemens did it twice, Jon Lester once.
“I’m seeing pretty much the same thing,” Martinez said Friday at the Sheraton hotel in Boston, where he was part of a round table luncheon benefitting the Red Sox Foundation and the Foundation To Be Named Later. “This is a guy that’s a throwback reminds me a lot of myself, this is a guy that doesn’t pay attention to the media, is not there to show you or to say with his words what he wants to say what he wants to do and what he’s after. I think this is a guy that leads by example, pretty much like I was.
“The run support, not having it, is something I’m very familiar with. The strikeouts are going to come. I think it’s just a matter of time when the rotation probably flips and he ends up finding someone easier to beat. But I think he’s going to be OK. As a matter of my fact I can easily say he’s my first candidate for Cy Young so far this year.”
Martinez never had a problem pitching inside, and said he would have gone after Manny Machado just as Matt Barnes did — but not with a pitch that high.
“The intentions were normal for the game of baseball,” Martinez said. “But what wasn’t normal was what ended up happening, and I’m going to put it this way: Machado did not intend to hurt Pedroia, and I know that, because I know Machado.
“Barnesy did not mean to throw the ball at Machado’s head. That’s another thing. But the results at the end were the right ones. If I was pitching, I was going to drill Machado as much as I love him. And it didn’t matter what happened, the only thing I would have done differently was probably [throw] the ball a little bit lower. But everything else was nature of baseball. I think it’s something that’s going to happen. It’s part of baseball. Hopefully it won’t linger around for too long, or nobody will make it personal.”