Daisuke Matsuzaka joining John Lackey on the disabled list has the Red Sox searching for rotation help and Sean McAdam of CSN New England reports that they’re desperate enough to consider Kevin Millwood.
Millwood signed a minor-league deal with the Yankees near the end of spring training, only to opt out of the contract two weeks ago after a pair of unimpressive starts at Triple-A.
According to McAdam the Red Sox would want Millwood to join the rotation at Triple-A for “a chance to evaluate him further.” It’s unclear if he’d be willing to do that when he wasn’t willing to remain at Triple-A for the Yankees, but at this point the 36-year-old right-hander is going to have to prove himself in the minors for some team before returning to the majors is even an option.
Not only did Millwood go 4-16 with a 5.10 ERA in 31 starts for the Orioles last season, he rarely got his fastball above the mid-80s while pitching at Triple-A last month. He’s also had an ERA above 5.00 in three of the past four seasons, so the Red Sox showing any kind of interest says a lot more about the sorry state of their rotation depth than it does about Millwood’s chances of making a big-league impact again.
