I'm officially worried about Scott Baker.

Not only did he begin the season on the disabled list with shoulder soreness and then serve up four homers to the Blue Jays in his first start last week, Baker took the mound for the second time this afternoon at Fenway Park and the Red Sox lit him up with two-run homers in each of the first three innings on the way to a 10-1 blowout.

Baker has always been among the most extreme fly-ball pitchers in baseball, so keeping the ball in the ballpark will forever be a struggle, but this is just absurd. He's allowed homers to seven of the 43 batters he's faced, which works out to a 161-homer pace over 200 innings. Last season, while going 11-4 with a 3.45 ERA in 28 starts, Baker allowed 20 homers in 172.1 innings.

A couple of this afternoon's bombs likely wouldn't have gone for homers had they not been hit at Fenway Park, but regardless of that Baker joins Lance Cormier in 2007 and Curt Young in 1985 as the only pitchers since 1954 to allow seven homers in the first two starts of a season. In other words, during the past 55 years no pitcher has been more homerific than Baker through two starts.

Toss in the fact that his mechanics seemed out of whack today as he made several pitches without any real follow-through and my guess is that something is still wrong with Baker physically. Unfortunately for the Twins not only are they counting on Baker to lead the rotation after he was their best starter in 2008, they just handed him a $15 million contract extension last month.

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