FORT MYERS — Worlds collide all the time in baseball.

Last night there was a Big Bang as far as the Red Sox’ ever-expanding (and ever-parochial) universe is concerned: Carl Pavano, Josh Beckett and Clay Buchholz all pitched in the same spring training game.

That’s a frivolous factoid in the grand scheme of the 2011 baseball season, but their presence made for a freakishly instructive mash-up of fate and fortune behind the Red Sox’ rise to excellence beginning in the late 1990s, when they traded for Pedro Martinez.

It also was an emphatic endorsement of the truest maxim in baseball: Nothing is more valuable than starting pitching. When young starters get traded — or when they don’t — the payoff can hold the ultimate value.

The two championships the Red Sox snagged in 2004 and ’07, for example, directly followed two key trades the team made — one for the 26-year-old Martinez in 1997, and the other for the 25-year-old Beckett in 2005.

And by not trading the 26-year-old Buchholz, the Red Sox now have both quality and depth in their rotation, the envy of virtually every other ballclub in baseball and two qualities that likely could carry the team deep into October.

And remember: This all started with Pavano.

“I remember how big he was — a really good kid, worked hard, busted his butt,” Tim Wakefield said yesterday of the current Twins right-hander and former Sox farmhand. “He was a big prospect, I remember that, and I remember he threw really hard. He was big and strong.”

Wakefield is the only player with enough Red Sox experience to remember spring training in 1996 and ’97, when the broad-shouldered and not-yet-filled-out Pavano, of Southington, Conn., was used to pry away Martinez from the Montreal Expos, who realized they could not afford to hold on to their 1997 NL Cy Young Award winner.

Sox general manager Dan Duquette and Expos counterpart Jim Beattie agreed to the deal in November 1997, and Pavano, then just 21, headed north of the border.

Flash forward six, then seven years.

In 2003, the Red Sox lost the AL Championship Series to the Yankees, with Martinez and Wakefield the key figures in Game 7. Some consolation was gained when the Marlins, led by Beckett and with a big assist from Pavano (who Florida acquired from Montreal in July of that season), beat the Yanks for the World Series title.

The following year was Martinez’ final one as a Red Sox, and it resulted in the team’s first championship in 86 years.

Martinez left via free agency after 2004, signing a four-year deal with the Mets. The 2005 draft pick the Red Sox received as compensation from New York was No. 42.

They selected Buchholz.

The Red Sox were one-and-done in the playoffs in 2005. After the season, with general manager Theo Epstein on a brief hiatus, the club traded for Beckett. Two years later, the right-hander led the Sox to their second title in four years.

After throwing a no-hitter in his second major league start as a 23-year-old in 2007, Buchholz struggled with consistency the next two seasons. Teams tried to buy low on him, but the Red Sox said no and waited.

Last year, he rewarded their patience with a breakout season: 17-7, 2.33 ERA.

Both him and the Red Sox share a bright future.

Martinez was missing from last night’s spring training opener, but Pavano, Beckett and Buchholz were at Hammond Stadium to remind everyone that the pursuit of quality starting pitching is always worthwhile.

Copy the Story Link