Friday, October 30, 2009
The leftovers tell us a lot from Game 2

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It has been a World Series of pitching so far, with the inevitable umpiring controversy sprinkled in. Some leftovers from Game 2:

Mariano Rivera is a legend because of the weapon that is his cut fastball, the pitch that veers in on the hands of left-handed hitters. Almost without exception, no matter the opposing hitter, he has looked to bury his cutter inside against lefties at some point.

But for the first time I can remember, Rivera carefully worked around a left-handed hitter in a big spot, doing everything except throw his cutter inside. Chase Utley had homered twice in Game 1 with his frighteningly quick swing, driving fastballs into the right-field stands, and in Game 2, he came to bat against Rivera with the potential tying run on base.

So you figured Rivera would throw cutters inside, right? Pitches that threatened Utley’s thumbs, right?

Wrong. Rivera pitched to the outside corner the entire at-bat, throwing his four-seam fastball and his cutter, and from pitch to pitch, Utley probably kept waiting for that cutter inside — instead, he wound up reaching for a pitch over the outside corner and grounding into what was called a double play.

The Yankees got more of the same from the great Rivera, writes Rich Hofmann. He got a big pair of outs, Mike Lupica writes.

Pedro Martinez turned out to be the losing pitcher, and Charlie Manuel probably made a mistake in sending him out for the seventh inning. But you can understand why managers (Grady Little, for one) tend to have a lot of faith in him. He pitched exceptionally smart, controlling the pace of the at-bats, constantly changing the eye levels of hitters, as Mark Teixeira, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez all would see.

First inning, Teixeira at the plate: With a 1-2 count, Martinez threw a 72 mph curveball below the strike zone, and Teixeira reached and barely fouled off the pitch to stay alive. The next pitch was a 90 mph fastball up in the strike zone — the fastest pitch of the game by Martinez to that point — and Teixeira popped up.

Third inning, Jeter at the plate: With a 1-2 count, Martinez buzzed a fastball over the strike zone, at 88 mph, to run the count to 2-2. Then, on the next pitch, Martinez quickened his delivery and zipped a fastball over the lowest edge of the strike zone, and Jeter — seemingly surprised by Martinez’s slide-step delivery, as well as his location — just stared at the ball as it crossed the plate for strike three.

Sixth inning, A-Rod at the plate: The first three pitches were fastballs high and inside, and it seemed as if Martinez was just challenging him; the count reached 1-2. But then Martinez threw a perfectly located changeup low and off the plate, and A-Rod awkwardly swung and missed.

But one batter later, Martinez might’ve gone away from his own strategy, throwing off-speed pitches too many times. With an 0-2 count, Martinez threw a 77 mph changeup down, and Matsui took it for ball one. Then Martinez threw a 73 mph curveball down, and Matsui fouled it off.

Would Martinez throw a high or inside fastball next?

No. He threw another curveball and missed his target — he meant to throw it low and away — and Matsui, conditioned to see slow stuff by this pitch, waited on Martinez’s pitch and drove it over the right-field wall to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead.

Pedro was probably left in the game one inning too long, writes Sam Donnellon. This might have been his swan song, writes Bart Hubbuch.

A.J. Burnett just pounded the strike zone, throwing first-pitch strikes to the first 11 batters; the first eight Phillies took the first pitch in their at-bats, and beyond that, the first seven Phillies took the first two pitches in their at-bats. Maybe they wanted to force Burnett to throw strikes, and maybe they were aiming to get him out of the game with a fast-climbing pitch count.

Either way, Burnett used his fantastic breaking ball to take advantage of the ball-strike counts that he got. Ryan Howard struck out three times against him, and in every case, the finishing pitch was a breaking ball — in fact, of the 15 pitches that Howard saw from Burnett, the last eight were breaking balls.

Why Burnett won, from Jeremy Mills of ESPN Stats & Information:

He threw 22 of 26 first-pitch strikes (95 percent), his best total of the season and well above the MLB average of 59 percent — 15 of the 22 were called strikes.
Left-handed batters were 2-for-16 with eight strikeouts, and they missed on nine of 27 swings (33 percent — the MLB average is 19 percent).
His curveball was dominant against lefties — they went 0-for-5 with four strikeouts against it. Burnett threw only one curveball to a right-handed batter all night.

He was more than OK, writes Bob Klapisch. Burnett shined, writes Ken Davidoff.

The blown calls in consecutive innings probably didn’t alter the outcome of the game, but they certainly could have. Brian Gorman misdiagnosed the little line drive that Johnny Damon hit at Ryan Howard, calling it a caught ball — and if the play had been called correctly, the Yankees would have had the bases loaded with one out, and a chance to tack on to a 3-1 lead. And if Gorman hadn’t missed the bang-bang call on a double play in the eighth — if he had called Chase Utley safe — the inning would’ve continued.

In both cases, the calls were extremely difficult. The safe-or-out call on Utley was close, a flip of the coin. And from where Gorman was positioned, there was no way that he could’ve seen whether Howard caught the ball; he was making an educated guess.

But here’s the thing — there is no need to guess. Replays show definitively and quickly that Howard had trapped the ball, and in the time that it took for Joe Girardi to run out onto the field and for him to argue, everybody watching at home knew the call was wrong. The technology is now available to get calls right, and we know this, because anybody sitting at home can see almost all of the time what the correct call is. Only the umpires don’t have access to it, oddly.

At this point, the decision to not use replay is a willful decision to allow incorrect calls to stand. It’s not about the umpires now; it’s about the choice made by Bud Selig.

http://insider.espn.go.com/esp.....ney_buster

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Cashman felt the same way before the 2004 season when he thought he was upgrading by replacing him with Kevin Brown. Good think Cashman didn’t make the same mistake 2x.

lickfest? i like it.

I’m here. Was it betsy who asked? But yes, we’d like to see if you’re willin to share.

Mel – still need the blog?