Pinstriped Bible

Looking back, looking ahead

2009-11-06T15:21:42Z

THIS QUOTE COSTS ONLY FIVE CENTS
The Yankees clubs for which Lefty Gomez pitched (1930-1942) went to seven World Series and won the first six. Thus, when the Yankees dropped the 1942 World Series to the Cardinals, he was less than excited to have "just" won a pennant. "The Yankees' victory celebration," he said after the fifth and final game, "will be held at Horn & Hardart. Don't forget to bring your nickels." Despite all the rings, Gomez never got a tickertape parade, so perhaps he had cause to be jaded. On the other hand, Derek Jeter will never get to eat at an automat, so you win some, you lose some.

COFFEE JOE'S NEW NUMBER
My pal Colonel Lindbergh suggests that "Coffee Joe" Girardi should perhaps now be called "Champagne Joe," but I think not -- it sounds too much like "champagne chicken." Besides, "Champagne Joe" describes some toff who appears on "Lifestyles of the Rich and Indolent," not a manager who is often thinking not two steps ahead of the opposition, but 42 steps with a half-twist to the right (in the Olympic thinking event, Girardi gets high marks for difficulty of routine). Perhaps he should be called "Calculator Joe," and were this the 1920s or 30s, when sportswriters were all about bestowing nicknames like "The Little Napoleon" and "The Tall Tactician," perhaps he would be.

In any case, I am sticking with my Girardi nom de baseball, even though Girardi is not going to be sticking with his uniform number, trading up from No. 27 to No. 28 to symbolize the quest for the next championship. Fortunately for Joe and his motivational techniques, No. 28 is not one of the many numbers the Yankees have nailed to the wall, though one very prominent Yankee, a Cy Young winner, did have a long hold on the digits.

Courtesy of the book, "Now Batting, Number..." by Jack Looney, select Yankees who have worn No. 28: outfielder Myril Hoag (1931, 1934-1935), pitcher Atley "Swampy" Donald (1938-1945), pitchers Tommy Byrne (1948-1951) and Art Ditmar (1957-1961), famously busted outfield prospect Steve Whitaker (1966-1967), relief ace Sparky Lyle (1972-1978), first basemen Bob Watson (1979-1980) and Steve Balboni (1983), southpaw Al Leiter (1988-1989), future pitching coach Dave Eiland (1991), pitcher Scott Kamieniecki (1993-1996), outfielder Chad Curtis (1997-1999), and DH David Justice (2000-2001). The current holder is Shelley Duncan.

Perhaps the Yankees could bring Sparky in for the ceremonial change of jerseys. He did a lot for the team and deserves the nod.

BEFORE THE PARADE PASSES BY, A TO-DO LIST
In no particular order, and without going into detail just yet, just a few of the matters that Brian Cashman and pals will have to grapple with in the coming days. Let me know if I missed anything:

• Derek Jeter is going into the last year of his contract. Do the Yankees try to offer an extension now, so as not to have the matter be a distraction throughout 2010? How will baseball's post-downturn economic realities -- for the most part, players are not getting $20 million a pop any more -- affect negotiations?

• Mariano Rivera is also going into his walk year and expressed a wish for an extension in the giddy, celebratory moments after the World Series. He had a great season and was a key factor in the postseason, but he turns 40 in about three weeks. As with Jeter, the lack of a contract post-2010 might be a distraction.

• What roles will Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes have next year? Will they be starters? Relievers? Swing men?

• Does outfielder Austin Jackson, who hit .300 at Triple-A (but with only four home runs) have a role to play on next year's club?

• How to approach aging but important free agents Johnny Damon, Hideki Matsui and Andy Pettitte?

• How about lesser free agents like Xavier Nady, Jerry Hairston, Jose Molina and Eric Hinske?

• Are any members of a weak free agent class worth bidding on? If Damon or Matsui departs, do the Yankees want to take a shot at Jason Bay or Matt Holliday? Instead of trusting in Joba or Hughes again, do they want to bolster the back of the rotation with a veteran starter like John Lackey?

• Do they offer Chien-Ming Wang a contract and thus get tied into an arbitration situation with an injured player?

• What about other arbitration eligible types like Chad Gaudin, Melky Cabrera and Brian Bruney?

• Do they pick up the club option on Sergio Mitre?

• Coffee Joe is also going into the last year of his contract. Does the World Series win earn him an extension as well?

Man, do the Yankees have a lot to talk about, and so do we. If I'm Cashman, I don't linger at the parade. I get right back to the office and start working this stuff out. After all, yesterday the Red Sox picked up outfielder Jeremy Hermida (career .276/.359/.456 outside of Florida, and still only 26 next year), so the opposition is already hard at work trying to knock the Yankees off their perch.

I met my old lover on the street last night

2009-11-05T09:07:56Z

Hey, beautiful. It's been awhile. Can I say, you look really, really good? You haven't aged a day. Don't feel the obligation to say the same thing, even just to be polite. I know I've seen some dents and scratches. There have been a few accidents along the way in getting to this little reunion. Mistakes were made, I know that. Innocence is not a concept I cling to. Sometimes it seemed like there would never be a safe harbor, and yet, here we are at last. It's so good to be with you again. Thank you, I really mean thank you, for letting me feel this way one more time. I heard Jorge say you never know when you're going to get another chance. I know that you don't have a lot of time to stay, but Jorge was so very right, and he would know, wouldn't he? All I'm trying to say to you is, kid, let's not rush it. Let's just enjoy the moment. Let it breathe, because all I want to do is feel this way a little longer. And when it stops, give me one last look before you go, so I can make up another dream.

THE LORDS OF THE RINGS
Given that the Yankees won four World Series in the span of five years not terribly long ago, it is somewhat shocking to consider that there are fans--Yankees fans, baseball fans--now 18 years old who were only nine when the Yankees last hosted a championship trophy. This is not long by the standards of some teams; there are some Cubs fans who are now on their second or third afterlives since the last time their club got to dance on the field. Nor is it long by the standards of my own youth, when the Yankees got a little lost, a little tragic, and a little angry on their way to defending the 1978 championship and gradually disappeared, first from the postseason winners' circle, then from the playoffs, and finally even from the list of .500 teams. Eighteen years went by, each one of them more difficult and bizarre than the last. The Yankees only waited half as long this time, and yet, but the standards of expanded postseason baseball and the changed economic environment of the game, and the obvious effort the Yankees organization put in to winning, eight years seems like a very long time. Throw in painful lose-from-ahead defeats like the 2004 Championship Series against the Red Sox, throw in the midges that ate Joba Chamberlain, throw in Jeff Weaver, and (especially) throw in the last ten minutes of Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, and nine years seems like a very long time indeed. Derek Jeter turned 35 this summer. He was a youthful 26 the last time he earned a new ring.

Many congratulations are due to Joe Girardi and Brian Cashman, the latter of whom was strangely and undeservedly absent from the winner's podium. They made smart offseason acquisitions, certainly the best of Cashman's entire run. No Tony Womack this time, no Carl Pavano. They bought the best in Mark Teixeira, and had the perceptivity to see that the White Sox had badly undervalued Nick Swisher. They were also lucky in getting big rebound years from Jorge Posada (injury), Robinson Cano (inexplicable slump), Derek Jeter (uncharacteristic malaise), Melky Cabrera (wholly explicable slump), and Hideki Matsui (injury). Johnny Damon contributed his second solid year in a row, which also wasn't a sure thing, and Alex Rodriguez came back reinvigorated from personal scandal and surgery, which also didn't have to happen. All of these elements, when combined with a new ballpark that seemed to favor raw power ("seemed" because the jury is still out on YS II's true nature), gave the Yankees one of the best offenses in club history, one which would be able to hold its own if it ran into any other great offense in club history, 1927 and 1998 Yankees included.

With four switch-hitters and three left-handers in the lineup, opposing managers couldn't match pitchers with them, and even the weakest spot in the lineup was a short distance from average (center fielders hit .273/.338/.400; the average AL hitter averaged .267/.336/.428). All those comeback wins aren't surprising given that kind of depth. There have been years in the past when the Yankees have gone to the ninth inning down a run or two, and when I looked ahead to see who is coming up to try to pull the game out of the fire, I would see Andy Phillips and Miguel Cairo, or Bubba Crosby and Kelly Stinnett. "Oh great," I might sigh to myself. "Here comes Ruth and Gehrig." You knew the game was almost certainly over. There were very few moments like that in 2009, because in a lot of cases, Ruth and Gehrig, or some very reasonable facsimiles, were in fact coming up to the plate.

On the pitching side, the team also bought at the top of the market, bringing in CC Sabathia and the oft-dominant but erratic A.J. Burnett, as well as re-signed Andy Pettitte. Just as significant is what they did not do, which was hurl loads of cash at name-brand relievers, who rarely reward the investment. Instead, they were satisfied to stand pat with their improvised pen of late 2007, all balanced on the Rock of Panama, Mariano Rivera. When the relievers faltered, they didn't trade the farm for veteran help, as the organization almost certainly would have done in the past. Instead, they reconfigured the relief staff once again and emerged with the best bullpen in baseball--at least in the regular season, but the Rock was always there in the postseason to set things right.

Not every string that Girardi pulled, not every move that Cashman made was perfect, and as in any year there is a lot that you can argue about (as we often did in this space). As we'll discuss in the coming days and weeks, there were a few moves that they're unlikely to get away with twice. Still, as the old saying goes, flags fly forever, and for now those disputations are reduced to mere quibbles. They organized this team almost as well as a team can be organized, and I cannot wait to see what they do for an encore. Congratulations to the brains trust, to the coaches and scouts, to ownership and executives and interns, and, most of all, the players. Well played, gentlemen.

STAY TUNED--ALL WINTER LONG
Even though the lights have gone down on the 2009 baseball season, the Pinstriped Bible will be maintaining its usual five-day a week schedule, plus more when there's breaking news to discuss. Baseball never stops, and we'll immediately light up the hot stove and start talking about the path to championship No. 28 and all the other doings around baseball. It's going to be a fascinating winter, especially for the Yankees. I look forward to passing the cold months with you, and I hope you'll stay and be part of the discussion.

As I always do at this time, I'd like to thank you for reading the Pinstriped Bible. It has been my privilege to write the PB for about ten years now, and I never feel less than blessed to have the opportunity to (I hope) entertain you, challenge you, and learn from you. Even if your only contact with me was to register a compliment or a disagreement, I appreciate the fact that you took the time to give me your thoughts. I have the best job in the world, and it's all due to your support. Once again, thank you so very much, and may you enjoy this championship as much as I have enjoyed writing about it.

Three days

2009-11-04T22:18:30Z

Andy Pettitte has made 14 regular season starts on three days' rest. His ERA in those games is 4.36. He has made 281 starts on four days' rest. His ERA in those starts is 4.28. This seems like an insignificant difference and it is. Unfortunately, it is rendered even more insignificant by the fact that, like Jerry Hairston's supposed track record of success against Pedro Martinez, it all happened so long ago that we may as well be talking about another person. Pettitte last made a regular season start on three days' rest in 2006. The time before that came in 2001. All we can really say right now is: "The Golden Age Andy Pettitte wasn't better when he pitched on three days' rest -- though he also wasn't significantly worse -- and we don't really know what the Silver Age Andy Pettitte will do under like circumstances."

Even had Pettitte pitched to a 2.00 ERA in an extensive course of short-rest starts, we wouldn't have been able to generalize about the outcome of any one game, particularly one against the defending champions. However, such a generalization would have at least provided more of a sense of comfort after the debacle that was Game 5. In most cases, there is little reason to fear a pitcher being physically unable to withstand the rigors of short rest; they do throw extensively on two days' rest, after all. There is, though, something to be said for not asking your pitchers, particularly the 37-year-olds, to do something you have never asked them to do before in the tensest situation of the year. If you don't have any choice about it, fine. You do what you have to do. If the general says you need to take that hill to win the war, you go try to take that hill. Yet, the Yankees did have choices, and if Pettitte doesn't take that hill, Girardi's decision to ask both Burnett and him (and to a lesser extend CC Sabathia) to perform new tricks at this late date will have to be questioned. This is particularly true in the case of Burnett, whose poor work at Fenway Park this year (his ERA in three starts was 14.21), not to mention Game 5 of the ALCS against the Angels, suggested that he might get twitchy in a big spot on the road. That's in addition to the three-day element. Indeed, the three-day aspect may be irrelevant where Burnett is concerned --- the problem is emotion, not fatigue.

At the risk of repeating myself (and when has that risk ever stopped me?), subtract 10 Sergio Mitre starts from the regular season and this might not have happened. Chien-Ming Wang made his last start of the season on July 4. Alfredo Aceves took his next start. The next time the spot came up was during the All-Star break. Mitre made his first start on July 21 and got creamed. He made his second start five days later and got creamed. He made his third start five days after that and got creamed. He made his fourth start... The Yankees acquired Chad Gaudin shortly after the July 31 trading deadline. At that moment, Mitre's ERA was 7.50. Had Gaudin been immediately inserted into the rotation in Mitre's place, the Yankees might have felt more comfortable starting him in Game 5, instead of trying to do stunts with Burnett and Pettitte. When the Yankees say that they had some tough breaks with pitching this year -- Chien-Ming Wang and Ian Kennedy getting hurt -- we have to remember that there were other options, like Gaudin, like Phil Hughes, like Alfredo Aceves, that they did not use. The decision to just soldier on with Meatball Mitre was as complacent as any they've made in recent years and has led them to build the foundation of their World Series strategy on a very risky basis.

Still, they have a very good chance of winning tonight. The bullpen is rested from its day off, so Joe Girardi can go Coffee Joe10 if Pettitte falters. They've got the designated hitter back. Pedro Martinez's act may not be good enough to fool the Yankees a second time so soon after his last start. Martinez is unlikely to go all the way, and the Phillies relievers can pour gas on any fire. Mark Teixeira or Robinson Cano might actually hit something. Chase Utley might get lost in the subway on the way to the ballpark. Stranger things have happened. The 2009 season should come to an end tonight, one way or another, making Girardi's gamble an act of genius. And if not, he still has one day to think of something else.

Sights and sounds from Citizens Bank

2009-11-04T00:01:07Z

COUNTING OUT TIME
You ever see everything wrong with a team come out in one game? There isn't a lot wrong with the Yankees. The team won 103 games in the regular season and 10 more in the postseason so far. They're one win away from a World Series title. And yet, no team is perfect, and most of the weaknesses that the Yankees have bit them all at once in Game 5:

• Last winter, the Yankees were perceived to have paid too high a price for A.J. Burnett, because at times he fumbles on the mound like a schoolboy on his first date, and at others he has not been available at all. Given those negatives, only the Yankees were willing to pay a premium for all the good stuff in between. Last night, they got the schoolboy, the guy who can't find the zone. As Peter Gabriel sang in "Counting Out Time," "Better get [his] money back from the bookstore right away."

I don't think this was Burnett on short rest (something he hadn't done this year, though he had a few times in 2008); I think it was just Burnett being Burnett. Still, let us say this: If we say Burnett, or (in the future) Andy Pettitte, or CC Sabathia did not pitched well on short rest for reasons other than the missing day, we're making an assumption -- we can't know the real answer one way or another. No one can. That said, can we ask if the decision to change the pitchers' routines was inevitable based on the talent the Yankees have on hand? Heck yes, we can ask, and heck no, it was not inevitable. The "rise" of Sergio Mitre coincided with the infliction of the bizarre and ever-changing Joba Rules II. Had the Yankees been less interested in giving Mitre chance after botched chance, and more alert to other options, such as pulling Alfredo Aceves and his low-leverage innings out of the bullpen (there is another righty long reliever out there) or (dare I say) stop worrying about the eighth inning and let Phil Hughes start, and the Yankees might have had another rotation option now. As things are presently constructed, Girardi has no choice but to push. Had different avenues been pursued beginning three months ago, it might be different now. It is precisely because you cannot precisely anticipate the contingencies that future events might require that I go on and on about seemingly insignificant matters like the Yankees throwing away every fifth start on a punching bag -- that punching bag could have been a postseason contributor. Complacency, as the saying goes, sucks.

• Phil Coke is exceptionally home run-prone. In the regular season, he had the 12th-highest rate of home runs allowed per nine innings in the big leagues, relievers who pitched 50 or more innings. Even with Damaso Marte hurting, the Yankees had other options in the Minors. They didn't try them. Coke's inability to retire left-handed hitters Chase Utley and Raul Ibanez gave the Phillies the cushion they needed. Remember, the Yankees didn't need to beat Cliff Lee, they only needed to keep the game close enough that they could beat the Phillies' relievers. That is almost what happened but for Derek Jeter's ill-timed double play (with Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui on the bases, Ryan Madson's mild ground-ball tendencies, and Jeter's own high percentage of ground ball double plays, this was pretty much as close to an inevitability as you can get) and Coke's largesse. A home run is a home run, but Ibanez's shot, one of the longest I have ever seen in person, really sums up the problem with Coke.

• There's a flipside to Coke's performance, which is that the fellow has pitched 2.2 innings in the last month, having been pushed to the back of the reliever line by Girardi. I'm not making excuses for Coke, who as I pointed out above, has a tendency to get hit for airline-like distance. Still, it is hard to believe a pitcher can stay sharp on that basis. I also felt -- and as for everything here, this was something I first-guessed at the ballpark -- that the Yankees could have used a bit more Coffee Joe on Monday. Burnett gave up three runs in the first inning, walked Jimmy Rollins in the second, and opened the third with two walks. We've all been down this road with Burnett before; it was spectacularly unlikely that things were going to get better before they got worse. Burnett should have been pulled right after ball four to Ryan Howard. Instead, he remained to pitch to Jayson Werth, giving up a ground-ball single. He also pitched to the next batter, Ibanez, which was two batters too many. By the time Girardi got out of the dugout, the inning was out of hand.

ONE OTHER NOTE, WHOLLY SARCASTIC AND GREATLY BITTER
It sure is too bad that Mark Teixeira was too injured to play in this series and the Yankees had to play some nameless Triple-A guy at first base, Doug Miranda-something. Doug has a good glove, but man, he can't hit at all. I know Teixeira is trying his best to get back into the lineup before the series ends, but he's running out of time.

TOMMY'S HOLIDAY CAMP
I had the good fortune to attend Game 5 in the company of a cadre of Yankees employees, who did their level best to root the Yankees on in a highly hostile environment, one marked by a state of denial inhabited by approximately 45,000. It's fair to chant "A-Rod sucks," if not particularly original, but if A-Rod sucks, how the heck do you characterize Ryan Howard? Gamesmanship is swell, but let's maintain at least a slight tether to reality.

Let it not be said that the Yankees' staff lacks a sense of humor. If you've been to the new Yankee Stadium, you've seen those ballpark flight attendants carrying "May I help you?" signs with the Yankees' logo on them. The staffers appropriated these for the ballgame, and frantically waived them whenever the Yankees came to bat or took the field (the photo is from the top of the first). The Phillies fans loved this and chuckled kindly at the New Yorkers' amusing antics. Or something like that. One Phillies follower shouted, "Go back to your apartments!" I think might have been an attempt at class warfare, though not a very wise one. Does he know what those apartments are worth? There were other comments, some wholly inappropriate in any venue, and mostly went to underscore why I rarely attend games as a civilian -- drunk people say and do stupid things. I got to my seat at about 5:50 p.m., or two hours before game time. The beer vendors were already working the stands.

Human beings, tough to tolerate anywhere, aside, I enjoyed Citizens Bank Park. The interior design is industrial, featuring brick, high metal catwalks, and exposed girders. The effect is of going to see the world's most highfalutin factory team. This is both sad and amusing, as America distinctly lacks factories these days. In that sense, CBP isn't a throwback ballpark, it's throwback Americana, the playground of Ozymandias the Industrialist. It's as if Rome had a team and they built a replica Colosseum, complete with missing walls and fractured statures. "Celebrate the grandeur that was the empire! Have a hot dog!" As I walked through this memorial to Philadelphia's receding industrial past, down concourses that would have been wide had they not been stuffed with choke points due to various vendors, displays, and a sit-down restaurant, I kept imagining a sign that said, "If you worked here, your job would be in China by now." There has always been a school of thought that criticized America's predilection for creating faux experiences in place of actual ones. Disney architecture, with its miniaturized versions of actual places, is supposed to be the height of this tendency to vulgarize the real, creating facades that trivialize and sanitize without providing any illumination. I never felt that way before. CBP made me empathize for the first time.

Just as I was mulling these things over, two men in business suits pushed past me. One was tall and heavy, the other short and thin. It was kind of a Mutt and Jeff cartoon come to life. The taller one was carrying a huge, overstuffed cheesesteak sandwich in his giant paw. The shorter man looked down at it. "How can you do that in this economy?" he asked. The big man strode away, the shorter one hastening to keep up. At that moment, the ballpark PA system blasted a cover of John Lennon's "Instant Karma:" Instant Karma's gonna get you... Gonna knock you off your feet... Better recognize your bothers: Everyone you meet... My favorite moments in life are the ones in which the universe acts as your iPod.

I spent a few minutes at the Phillies' MLB-authenticated collectables booth. An autographed Jayson Werth ball (regular season) will set you back $60. Brad Lidge will bite you for $125. Happy people in red drifted past, holding hot dogs the size of my forearm.

On the whole, though, CBP seems like a fair place to see a ballgame, and probably a friendlier one on days in which the championship is not at stake and fewer Yankees are waiving "Can I help you?" signs around. You can see a few things not evident at Yankee Stadium, like fans standing along the railings during batting practice. Also, note the woman in the lower right-hand corner. Is her jersey:

A)   A tribute to Phillies pitcher J.A. Happ, misnumbered and misspelled?
B)   A tribute to 1940s outfielder/first baseman Johnny Hopp who never played for the Phillies but did play, briefly, for the Yankees?
C)   A tribute to rabbits, who both hop and breed frequently, hence the high number?
D)   Just a boring personalization?

I never did find out. I should have approached her with a "Can you help me?" sign. Finally, I never did find McFadden's Restroom, but it sounds enchanting, the Fiddler's Green of bathrooms.

The spine

2009-11-02T15:11:30Z

As the old saying goes, momentum in baseball is only as good as your next day's starter. The Phillies have a very good starter going in World Series Game 5, so perhaps it is premature to say that the Yankees may have broken their opponent's spine. Yet, the dramatic action of Game 4's eighth and ninth innings, which wrapped an entire "Yankees Classic's" worth of action into about 20 minutes, suggests that conclusion.

Let's review. The Yankees took a 4-3 lead into the bottom of the eighth. CC Sabathia, looking a bit frayed around the edges, pitched just that much better than Joe Blanton. The fifth inning was particularly tough, with the Phillies putting two on with none out for Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and the deadly-to-lefties Jayson Werth. Sabathia induced pop-ups from Utley and Howard, and struck out Werth to end the threat. In many games, that might have been the end right there.

Regarding the Sabathia- Utley relationship: I am reminded of Don Mattingly vs. Don Aase, who was the Orioles closer for a couple of years during the center of Mattingly's career. Aase was often a good pitcher, but he could do nothing with Mattingly, who went 6-for-7 with two home runs against him. After Mattingly hit his second ninth inning homer off of Aase in a year, Orioles manager Earl Weaver was asked if he would ever let Aase pitch to Mattingly again. "Not even to intentionally walk him," Weaver said. It's getting to that point with Sabathia and Utley.

Utley's home run in the seventh chased Sabathia, so Joe Girardi bringing in Damaso Marte's fresh arm to go after Howard. Marte again rewarded Girardi's faith in him this series. The Yankees stranded two runners in the top of the eighth, and Girardi decided to roll the dice on a new eighth inning man... Firpo Marberry! Actually, with Werth due up, he went for Joba Chamberlain with Phil Hughes being too scary and David Robertson having left the stadium to pick up some Chinese take-out. Joba is right-handed and has pitched a good inning in this series, so the manager was entitled to his fantasies of 2007.

Chamberlain seemed set to pay those off, as the old Joba was suddenly back, back for perhaps the first time all year, pumping 97 mph fastballs at the Phillies hitters. Unfortunately, Pedro Feliz took one of those 97 mph fastballs and made a souvenir out of it. Joba came back to get Carlos Ruiz on off-speed pitches, striking out the side around the game-tying home run. Baseball is a punishing game. For a moment, Joba had turned back the clock, and yet he still was punished. It's like something out of Greek myth.

That sets up the ninth. With the game tied, the Yankees finally got their first look at Brad Lidge, the lost-then supposedly-found closer. Lidge looked very tough in retiring Hideki Matsui and Derek Jeter, but then came Johnny Damon's terrific, nine-pitch at-bat. As Lidge threw fastball after fastball trying to get the elusive third strike, you could see Damon getting his timing down. We'll never know why Lidge didn't go back to his slider in any of his last five pitches to Damon given that the fastball wasn't fooling the left fielder. Damon finally singled to keep the inning alive. If Lidge wasn't unnerved at this point, he surely was after Damon -- who didn't run much in the regular season (and why would you if you're on base in front of Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez?) -- promptly stole two bases on one play, one by taking advantage of the Phillies' defensive alignment to swipe an unguarded third.

That was all it took for Lidge to turn into the pitcher who went 0-8 with 11 blown saves this year. He hit Teixeira, grooved a pitch to A-Rod for an RBI double, and couldn't retire Jorge Posada despite getting ahead 0-2. By the time Posada retired himself on the bases, the Yankees were up 7-4. Now, here is where I think we find the broken spine. Girardi called on Mariano Rivera to close out the game. The Phillies have now seen Mariano more times than I've seen "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." That's about a bajillion times, for those keeping score at home. Nonetheless, the Phillies did not battle, did not make it tough on the Yankees' Father Time. They went out on eight pitches -- two to pinch-hitter Matt Stairs, three to Jimmy Rollins, three to Shane Victorino. Some of that economy is due to the greatness of Mo, but it also, I think, reflected the mood of the moment, that this was too high a mountain to climb.

As I said at the outset, Lee is a terrific pitcher, and if the Phillies chose the better part of valor in the ninth inning, there is nothing in that to indicate that they won't come out fighting in Game 5. These are, after all, the reigning champions. If they don't get up off the mat, though, no one can blame them -- they've had to overcome a great deal of adversity this year, much of it at the hands of Lidge and their manager's loyalty to them. If this loss is one cut too many, it will be understandable. No team in the history of baseball has ever had to work harder to overcome one of their own relievers than the Phillies have had to work to overcome Lidge.

Instant replay classic

2009-11-01T16:36:10Z

THE SHOT HEARD 'ROUND THE CAMERA
I'm not sure how we ever had baseball without replay. I'm not sure how we can continue to have baseball without replay. Pennant races worth millions of dollars to the teams and a great deal of emotion to the fans are resolved on the whim of umpires -- any time a team loses a race by one game, you have to ask, "Did they earn that, or did a blown call earn it for them?" And we have had World Series games decided by poor calls in the past, going back at least as far as the 1922 World Series between the Yankees and the Giants when umpires decided to call Game 2 for darkness in the middle of the afternoon. As far as pennant races altered by umpires, they go all the way back to the very beginning -- just ask Fred Merkle. Wherever you are, Fred, we're sorry.

Alex Rodriguez's timely camera-shot would have been reviewed whether it occurred in the regular season or the postseason, but all calls should be reviewed. Baseball shouldn't be a game that is sometimes accurately refereed and sometimes not. As I've suggested in previous installments, it wouldn't have taken a booth umpire much longer than 30 seconds to change Rodriguez's double into a home run, whereas there had to be a complaint by Joe Girardi, followed by a near-minyan of umpires conferring on the field, followed by the long march off the field, the review, the long march back on -- what the heck is this, Napoleon's retreat from Moscow? Baseball is famous for being a retrograde institution, but let's get on with it already. Baseball games are slow enough without the March of the Penguins added for no good reason.

That said, the games aren't too slow for instant replay properly handled. On Saturday, my Baseball Prospectus colleague Joe Sheehan wrote at Sports Illustrated:

The most common objection to this system is that it would cause delays, but both pro and college football have survived, in part by selling additional television ads during the breaks. Delays would happen, but the improvement in accuracy, especially on high-leverage, high-profile plays, would be worth the time investment. You may even save time by eliminating the long arguments and conferences that currently occur.

Actually, the best way to save time would be to have umpires vigorously enforce pace-of-game rules. Doing that would more than make room for the occasional replay. Batters don't step out. Period. Batters don't get time called when the pitcher is already in his wind-up. Period. The pitcher holds the ball more than a set number of seconds -- less than it is now -- then it's a ball to the batter. Period. If the plate umpire or the base umpires can't manage a ten-second countdown between pitches, then the aforementioned booth umpire can do it.

Pant. Pant.

...There isn't much in the way of deep analysis to do with Game Three. Andy Pettitte didn't pitch well by his standards, but the offense helped him out, including Andy himself. Phillies pitchers were wilder than they're accustomed to, both with walks and hit batters, and the Yankees finally got a look into the bullpen, and they saw that it was good -- looking into it, that is, not the bullpen pitchers themselves. Nick Swisher came back to himself. Jorge Posada stranded a bunch of runners but got a key single. We're still waiting on Melky, Robbie and Teixeira. Joba Chamberlain pitched his first solid inning in recent memory. Phil Hughes didn't. Girardi seems convinced that Damaso Marte is back to his pre-injury, 2002-2007 form -- I will never cease to be bugged that the Yankees were smart enough to sign Marte as a free agent (out of the Mariners system, where he was a starter), smart enough to move him to the bullpen and make something out of him, and dumb enough to trade him for Enrique Wilson, one of the worst hitters ever to wear a Yankees uniform, worst even when you cut him some slack for being a utility infielder.

When Hideki Matsui came up to pinch-hit for Chamberlain with two outs in the eighth, I said, "This is a kind of low-leverage situation to use Matsui in, but then at this point in the game, a high-leverage probably isn't going to come up. Girardi might as well just go for it and hope for a solo home run." Moments later, Matsui made the move pay off, giving the Yankees an extra bit of cushioning which would make Hughes' failure to contain postseason superman Carlos Ruiz a bit less of a cause for tension. The only drag about THAT was that it momentarily pushed Girardi into Coffee Joe mode and he got Mariano Rivera into a game that he should have been kept out of.

On the topic of subjects for another day, if the Yankees are determined to keep just one from the expiring Johnny Damon/Hideki Matsui duo of imminent 36-year-olds, I'm beginning to wonder if the right answer isn't Matsui, regardless of the roster limitations a pure DH brings.

BLANTON TO START GAME FOUR
This is how chess is played: the Phillies have a paper advantage on the Yankees in starters because Joe Blanton > Chad Gaudin, but CC Sabathia > Joe Blanton. Move and countermove. Of course, it could have been CC Sabathia ? Cliff Lee, but Charlie Manuel didn't feel comfortable with that. Maybe with tonight's loss he'll rethink that decision, but I've not heard anything of the sort. Thus Sabathia goes on short rest, and he'll have to perform to make the chess move good. It might not matter: in four career starts against the Yankees, Blanton is 0-3 with an 8.18 ERA. The last time was in June, 2008, so we probably shouldn't become over-stimulated by this particular bit of trivia.

The real Burnett stands up

2009-10-30T15:14:03Z

My friend and colleague Stephanie Bee suggested that I write up World Series Game 2 as follows:

1. Mo was a bit over-used
2. Jeter shouldn't have bunted
3. Burnett was brilliant
4. Umps still [expletive]

That seems like a fair rundown to me, though while my temptation is to cavil about numbers two and four, it's probably best to stick with one and three. Actually, four is just a fact of life, and will be until Major League Baseball accepts that replay in baseball games need not be the Supreme Court hearing that is replay in the NFL and opts for having the most accurate baseball game possible, we're going to have to live with cloddish umps. There are fewer things happening at once in most baseball replays than in football. Balls are caught or not, fair or foul. It's not "did the wide receiver have his toes in bounds as he was/was not juggling the ball and did it cross the plane of the goal line or didn't it?" One replay umpire stationed off the field could have overturned Ryan Howard's non-catch in 10 seconds.

As for Jeter's non-bunt, although the Old Captain is top-20 in double play percentage (17 percent of his chances, worst on the Yankees) giving away outs, as opposed to gambling on the better than 80 percent chance that a very good hitter WON'T hit into one, is not good managing. It was a poor decision by Joe Girardi which Jeter doubled down on by bunting foul with two strikes.

Those two items dispensed with, on to the better stuff. On A.J. Burnett's loss/no-decision days this summer, he walked 4.8 batters per nine innings. When he won, it was only 3.4. Therein lies the sign of a happy curveball or an unhappy curveball. On Thursday night, the curveball was happy, and thereby were the Phillies made unhappy.

It's the most basic of all human relationships. If only Burnett could be the pitcher he was Thursday night a tad more often, and had had more health -- well, never mind. If your grandmother had wheels she'd be a wagon, and if Burnett had health and consistency he wouldn't be what he is, and that's plenty good in six starts out of 10. You just have to hope that the other four don't come at important times.

With the help of umpire Jeff Nelson's roomy strike zone, Burnett walked just two and struck out nine. In the game's Nelson umpired this year, the number of strikeouts were average or even a bit below, so it's puzzling that he gave the pitchers so much room off the plate. Still, he was consistent in having a wide zone for both teams, but for a pitcher like Burnett that little bit of generosity goes a long way. I'm not trying to diminish what Burnett did -- he saved the World Series from getting out of hand -- but the confluence of umpire and pitcher could not have been more perfectly timed.

During the YES postgame, one of the Yankees' players (Jeter, I believe) was asked how it felt to know that Girardi had the "confidence" to use Mariano Rivera for two full innings. The choice of term was ironic, as Girardi was really expressing a lack of confidence in any of his other relievers. Insomuch as Game 2 was a must win, it wasn't a bad call, but you have to question how long Rivera can keep this up. He threw 39 pitches, another high for the year, and though Girardi said in his postgame press conference that he didn't ask Rivera to do this all year precisely so he could do it now, I'm not sure that that reasoning makes very much sense.

You're talking about a 40-year-old guy who averaged 16 pitches per appearance this year more than doubling up his pitch counts. Given the lack of an off day between Games 3 through 5, can you really expect him to keep that up? Moreover, can you expect Rivera, a one-trick pony -- it's a wonderful trick, but it's still just one -- to keep fooling the Phillies at that rate of exposure? Andy Pettitte averaged 102 pitches per start this year and his 6.1 innings in each of his ALCS starts were the deepest into a game he's pitched since August, plus there's pinch-hitting for pitchers to consider in the National League park.

All of this means that Girardi is going to have to confront his bullpen problems as soon as Saturday. Rivera won't be able to carry the whole load in Game 3, and maybe not in any of the games in Philadelphia. We will see if anyone else stands up to shoulder his burden.

Just a little patience against Phils, for Swish

2009-10-29T22:04:33Z

SOMETIMES IT DOESN'T ALWAYS WORK
Before Game 1, I suggested that the Yankees' trademark patience would test Cliff Lee's exemplary control. Score that one a clean miss. Unlike just about every other pitcher in the biz, Cliff Lee, who had the demeanor of someone who had just enjoyed a Prozac cocktail, did not bend, did not waver for even a moment. He threw nine innings of mistake-free baseball, never giving the Yankees a chance. A team that walked 38 times in six games against the Angels did not earn one free pass in the game.

You could dismiss this performance as just one game, and say, "Let's see the next guy do that," but for two problems. One, the bullpen took a close game and turned it into a rout. Two, Pedro Martinez. Martinez isn't the old most-dominant-pitcher-ever Martinez, but the new version, which throws strikes and pulls strings, is still plenty good. He completely embarrassed the Dodgers in the NLCS. I will again cling to the belief that the Yankees' lineup isn't the Dodgers' lineup, isn't a National League lineup, and that lefties hit Martinez reasonably well in the future Hall of Famer's brief regular season tune-up. The Yankees have also done good work against him (and bad, that also) in postseasons past.

Lee's start and Pedro's excellent control points up a way in which this Phillies rotation can take the Yankees' best trait, their patience, and turn it against them. The Yankees like to work counts and take ball four. Phillies starters just don't issue ball four. As a whole, Phillies starters averaged just 2.5 walks a game. Lee walked just 1.1 batters per nine innings as a Phillie, Martinez 1.6, Cole Hamels 2.0. The National League average was 3.5 walks per nine innings (the American League was roughly the same). Joe Blanton and J.A. Happ, the club's wildest starters, walked 2.7 and 3.0 respectively. This staff is simply very good at throwing strikes, and if the Yankees play their usual game -- and it's not advisable that they start hacking, because that doesn't work either -- they may find themselves facing some long counts.

As for the bullpen failure, it had limited bearing on the outcome of the game -- you could imagine that if the relievers had held serve, Charlie Manuel might have been more inclined to go to his bullpen -- but since the Yankees never made up the initial deficit that resulted from the CC Sabathia-Chase Utley confrontations, it didn't matter. The real impact is in the uncertainty about the bullpen unit as a whole, which seems to have gone down the rabbit hole this October. Perhaps the relative inexperience of the unit has got them twitchy. Whatever the reason, they have to get over it quickly, particularly Phil Hughes, or this Series is going to end a lot faster than anyone anticipated. Worse, a bad performance could mean a winter of reaction from the Yankees' front office, chasing veteran relief hands at high cost. This is a subject for another day, but that would be an extremely counterproductive strategy that has rarely worked for any GM that has tried it. It's a quick path to a job on ESPN, however temporary.

We shouldn't overstate the impact of one game. Two is a different matter. A lot of pressure falls on A.J. Burnett's right arm. Does he come ready to dance, or does the wild, uncertain version of the pitcher show up? Mister Cream Pie could do more to improve the Yankees' morale tonight than all of the cans of shaving cream he's gone through put together -- or he could break it.

AND ONE COFFEE JOE NOTE: THINK!
I buy that Nick Swisher needs a mental health break, but considering yesterday's performance to be part of his slump isn't exactly fair given the way Lee pitched. After Lee, the whole roster might need a mental health break. In addition, Swisher continues to get into good counts, working the pitcher, which has value in itself if you want to get to the Phillies' relievers already. In any case, Jerry Hairston is a bizarre choice to substitute for him. I'm thrilled that Hairston has had 10 hits in 27 at-bats against Martinez IN A PERIOD THAT BEGAN IN 1999 AND ENDED FIVE YEARS AGO. Martinez ain't the same Martinez, Hairston ain't the same Hairston, and the relevance is extremely, extremely debatable. As with Jose Molina's time in the game, we'll assume that this decision won't have more than an at-bat or two's worth of impact, but wow, Coffee Joe, that's an odd call. You readers know I believe in the stats, but you can't be a slave to the numbers. You also have to THINK.

More to come...

Helter Skelter

2009-10-28T23:12:48Z

I was called into a meeting with the YES men today, so I've been trapped away from desk. As such, I am so far beyond the schedule that, in the words of Mel Brooks, I've gone to plaid. Herewith, a r-r-r-rapid run through the head to head matchups we still had yet to cover--and if anyone asks, the dog ate my homework, too.

THE STARTING ROTATIONS, AND GAME 1 STARTERS
CLIFF LEE vs. CC SABATHIA

This is as perfect a baseball matchup as any of those 1912 Walter Johnson-Smoky Joe Wood confrontations you've read about in the history books. Two top lefties with a shared origin in Cleveland. Lee had a slightly better year than Sabathia, with two thirds of it against the same DH-infused competition in the AL. The wins aren't there, but that was a function of run support early on than it was anything that Lee did wrong--his quality start percentage was over 80 percent as an Indian. The Phillies gave him more support later, but thanks to some late-season hammerings he wasn't quite as effective as he had been. The one thing Lee retained all the way through was excellent control, walking just one batter per nine with the Phillies. The Yankees will of course test this aspect of his game, but it would probably be better to disregard most of the career stats you'll see quoted during the broadcasts--it's nice that Mark Teixeira has done well against Lee, but Lee has been a lot of different guys in his eight seasons and most of those guys weren't as good as the version that won the Cy Young award last year.

Shifting haphazardly to CC (everything about this installment is haphazard), if you emphasize late-season action then you can make a more pointed comparison between the two. Lee made his last 12 starts for the Phillies and was a 50-50 proposition, making a quality start half the time. Even so, his low ERA testifies to just how good he was when he was on. "Unhittable" wouldn't be too strong a description. CC wasn't quite as spectacular in his last 12 games, but he was more consistent overall, making 10 quality starts and posting a 2.52 ERA overall. Both Sabathia and Lee are getting to innings totals that they've never reached before, so fatigue could be a factor.

As for the rest of the rotations, you'd think the Yankees would be up to dealing with Pedro Martinez's artistry. He was Leonardo da Martinez against the Dodgers, but the Yankees have a very different offense than the one Joe Torre had in Los Angeles, with more impact hitters getting the platoon advantage on Pedro. Cole Hamels can be dominant, but that wasn't the case this year, either in the regular season or the postseason. As I wrote earlier this week, a key to this series for the Yankees is whether their slumping switch-hitters can find themselves against Lee and Hamels.

On the Yankees side, In Andy Pettitte we trust, but I fear A.J. Burnett's wildness and right-handedness against hitters like Chase Utley and Ryan Howard. That said, lefties had a harder time with him this year than righties did (.217/.310/.343) which could be a fluke or a sign from Zeus. Your pick until the actual game. If the Yankees have to go to a fourth starter, the Phillies are in a better position with either J.A. Happ or Joe Blanton. A slim EDGE: Yankees, assuming CC takes Game 4 again. Otherwise, we're even or very slightly leaning towards Philly.

BULLPENS
I only have time to say that the Yankees have far greater depth, assuming Coffee Joe doesn't start making like a hyperthyroid octopus and start pulling two relievers at a time from the bullpen. Note that though Phillies relievers have not been as problematic in the postseason as expected, they have allowed 25 hits in 25 innings while walking 13 and striking out 19. That suggests to me that their aggregate 3.24 ERA ain't worth the pixels it's written on. Again, the Dodgers had a lot of guys who could be pitched to, or pitched through to get out of trouble. The Yankees are, at least on paper, a far deeper lineup.

The other day I suggested the Yankees pull Mike Dunn back from Arizona to become the bullpen's third lefty. Dunn is crazy wild, but that's not such a bad thing--a walk to Howard from Dunn is better than a home run off of Bruney. This point may be moot if Coffee Joe is careful and doesn't spend his southpaws too early. The good news is that thanks to his cutter, Mariano Rivera can sort of pass as a third lefty. EDGE: YANKEES

MANAGERS
Again, the Clock-Hounds nip at my heels, so I will again resort to something I wrote earlier: Should Girardi play the hyperactive, overly fastidious neat-freak to Charlie Manuel's laid-back slob, this version of the Odd Couple will benefit Philadelphia. EDGE: PHILLIES.

THE PREDICTION
I worry about Burnett and I see a bullpen loss somewhere due to missed matchups, but CC and Pettitte come up big again and some of the sleeping Yankee hitters will wake up. Yankees in six games.

ONE OTHER QUICK NOTE ON THE ROSTER
I was in such a rush that I forgot to comment on the addition of Brian Bruney, which is good, but I'd hate to see him slide ahead of David Robertson if the latter is actually healthy enough to pitch. This actually raises two questions: if Robertson isn't healthy enough to pitch then why is he still on the roster, and if he is healthy enough to pitch than why isn't Girardi pitching him? There's really no good answer to either of those questions.

As for Eric Hinske returning and displacing Freddy Guzman, that undoes a move that should never have been made. Hinske gives the Yankees some pop off the bench that they lacked last time around, something that became obvious in all those tight late- and extra-inning games where Girardi ran out of players. Guzman was essentially a kick-returner on a baseball team. Even if the Yankees had a 50-man roster available to them, the utility of a kick-returner would be questionable as there is no kicking in baseball. Steve Martin once referred to luxuries like a gasoline-powered sweater and a fur-lined sink. That's what Guzman was, and the only times that Girardi used him his impact was solely negative in that he achieved nothing decisive on the bases while depriving the Yankees of a more useful player. That Guzman actually got to bat in the ALCS demonstrates that if there's a manager who can correctly utilize this particular chess piece, he's not working this World Series.

Thus: up with Hinske! ? with Bruney, S-O-S to Robertson, and as General McAuliffe said to the Germans at Bastogne, "Nuts!" to Guzman. Finally, best of luck to the Yankees and may this be a fun series for all.

DEEP BREATH...
As mentioned earlier, I go directly from here to a live Baseball Prospectus roundtable at game time. It's a fun way to watch the game, with a parallel commentary track, somewhat on the tart and irreverent side. All are welcome, and I look forward to hearing from you then... And I'll be back with some more commentary after the game. Somebody hose me down, 'cause I'm burning up!

World Series head-to-head Part II

2009-10-28T15:21:37Z

ANOTHER ANTICIPATED REUNION THWARTED
Miguel Cairo will not be on the Phillies roster for the World Series. I'm sure this will be a relief to John Sterling, who will now not have a conflict of interest.

IN RESPONSE TO A SWISHER-BASHER IN THE COMMENTS
How can Nick Swisher be a better player than Bobby Abreu? I'll make this simple for you.

• Swisher hit 35 doubles, Abreu 29.

• Swisher hit 29 home runs, Abreu hit 15.

• Abreu took 94 walks, Swisher took 97, in fewer plate appearances.

• Swisher was dangerous from both sides of the plate, whereas Abreu wilted against left-handers.

• Abreu has the advantage on Swisher in two categories: He had 22 net stolen bases to Swisher's none (Swisher also had no caught stealing) and he hit more singles. Abreu had 65 more at-bats than Swisher. If you even out the playing time, figuring that Swisher would have continued on roughly the same pace, then Swisher would have hit 40 doubles (+11) and 33 home runs (+18). Abreu would have maintained his lead in singles, 118 to 65. That's a big gap, but it comes to an advantage of 53 total bases, whereas Swisher is up 94, giving him a net advantage of 41 total bases.

• Because extra-base hits generate more runs than singles (I'm assuming that you know how a home run works), this works out to a small advantage for Swisher. If you look at a basic stat like runs created per game, Swisher created 6.5, Abreu 6.3. That doesn't seem like a huge difference but:

• Swisher is an average defensive outfielder, whereas Abreu splashes around out there like a toddler in a kiddie pool. Since defensive plays not made lead to runs, deduct several from Swisher's total. At that point, Swisher's advantage is no longer so small.

PS: Regarding Melky Cabrera vs. left-handed pitching: Yes, he has gone 6-for-14, all singles, against southpaws this postseason. However, for the full season he hit .268/.343/.420 against them. These were breakthrough results, though the power portion was inflated by an early surge. From the halfway point on, he hit .265/.337/.361, albeit in a small sample. Given that his career rates against lefties is .255/.325/.355, the latter number seems more likely to replicate itself in the future than the former, and has more predictive power than a 14 at-bat .420 streak, because Ted Williams is dead, by which I mean that no player is likely to carry that kind of performance forward for any real length of time.

WORLD SERIES HEAD-TO-HEADS PART II
While writing Part I, I was so caught up in getting past the obvious A-Rod/Pedro Feliz match-up at third that I never typed the words, "EDGE: YANKEES." If it hadn't been obvious before, well, now the suspense is over.

CATCHER
CARLOS RUIZ (15.6 VORP, 11th among catchers) vs. JORGE POSADA (35.7, 3rd)
Ruiz is a career .296/.406/.432 hitter in 26 postseason games, which is kind of amazing when you consider that he's only a .246/.337/.379 hitter in the regular season and that he also went 1-for-14 in the 2008 NLDS. If you're looking for Jeff Mathis II, here he is, with the same position and everything. Defensively, Ruiz is a good thrower, not a great one. He and Posada threw out about the same percentage of baserunners this year. He's much better than Posada at corralling balls in the dirt, but then everyone is. The thing to remember about Posada is that as good as he is in the regular season, he seems to be play a bit tight in October. He's played in 25 postseason series (a "wow" number all by itself) and he's had good series and bad but overall has hit only .238/.353/.388. He keeps up his selectivity against good pitching, which is nice, but the rest of his came suffers. EDGE: YANKEES, but you can see how it could go the other way.

LEFT FIELD
RAUL IBANEZ (38.5, 6th) vs. JOHNNY DAMON (39.3, 4th)
Ibanez was more productive than Damon on a per-game basis but played less due to injury... Ibanez's season breaks down into two parts, pre- and post-DL stint for a strained groin. At the moment he went down, he was having the season of his career at .312/.371/.656. A month on the shelf cooled him off considerably, and he hit .232/.323/.448 the rest of the way. His postseason has been a mixed bag.

The difference in Ibanez's production this year was that while he was the same hitter he always has been against right-handers, but he killed lefties, knocking 13 home runs in just 144 at-bats. His career rates against them stand at .269/.326/.434, which isn't of the same level but does give him more proficiency in lefty-on-lefty battles than your typical southpaw hitter.

Damon slumped in September and disappeared in the first round of the playoffs before coming back strong against the Angels. He too isn't too damaged by seeing a left-handed pitcher, although most of his power disappears. The same thing happens when you take him out of the new Yankee Stadium. Ibanez will spend some time at DH in this series, including Game 1. Ben Francisco should be a defensive upgrade. Slight EDGE: Phillies.

CENTER FIELD
SHANE VICTORINO (37.7, 5th) vs. MELKY CABRERA (17.1, 22nd)
A rare two-time Rule 5 draftee, it took some time for Victorino to find his place in the Majors. He's in the prime of his career right now, and he's just good enough to start -- whenever he slips a little he's going to be no fun anymore. He does most of his hitting in Philadelphia. A switch-hitter, he's more powerful from the right side, which means turning him around is not the greatest idea. Cabrera struggled in the first round, then hit well against the Angels, though like all Yankees a few more hits with runners on would have made it a faster and more painless series than it was. Defensively, this matchup is a push. Offensively and on the bases, Victorino is significantly better, and he's been a postseason monster in other series, including both rounds this year. EDGE: Phillies.

RIGHT FIELD
JAYSON WERTH (42.8, 3rd) vs. NICK SWISHER (30.9, 10th)
Philadelphia's big weapon against CC Sabathia, Werth crushes lefties, batting .302/.436/.644 against them this year and .294/.391/.570 for his career. He strikes out quite a bit, but is patient, powerful, and runs the bases as well as any non-burner in the game. He also excels defensively. It has been an unusual career for the former first-round pick, for it took a change of position and several changes of organization for Werth to find himself. He made his first All-Star team this year, at age 30. We've already talked too much about Swisher lately, but the Yankees can be competitive here if he can get out of his own head. Even if he does, this is an EDGE: PHILLIES.

BENCH AND DH
In his handful of interleague games, Charlie Manuel used the DH spot to get one of his weaker defensive players, either Ryan Howard or Raul Ibanez, off the field. Ibanez is nursing an injury (torn abdominal muscle), so he will DH in Game 1 with midseason acquisition Ben Francisco (open your golden gates) patrolling left field. Francisco is one of those tediously decent role players. Starting he would mediocre you to death, but in spots he can be helpful keeping his position above replacement level. He had a reverse split against lefties this year, hitting only .247/.351/.392, but that might have been a one-time thing. Phillies pinch-hitters hit only .186 but did hit 9 home runs in 237 at-bats. Matt Stairs, 41, had a rough year but remains very selective and is still a threat to hit the ball a long way now and again, with five home runs in 62 pinch-hit at-bats. Lefty hitter Greg Dobbs, who used to have a share of the third base job, was strictly bench material this year and his game suffered for it. As a pinch-hitter he was only 9-for-54.

Hideki Matsui gives the Yankees an edge when there is a DH and a strong weapon on the bench when there isn't. Brett Gardner gives the Yankees a speedy option the Phillies don't have, and Jerry Hairston won't kill you if he has to take an at-bat or two. EDGE: YANKEES.

NEXT
Starters and bullpens, managers, and my prediction, all before curtain time tonight.

LIVE ROUNDTABLE TONIGHT
I'll once again be participating in the a live roundtable with my Baseball Prospectus colleagues during Game 1. As always, everyone is welcome. If you want to hang out at game time, or just submit a question early X marks the spot.

World Series head-to-head Part I

2009-10-27T19:50:44Z

My stat of choice is again VORP, which answers the musical question, "How many runs above the theoretical journeyman Triple-A player did the player contribute?" VORP does not include defense, but we'll talk about that.

Remember that this is just a ballpark estimate. On any given day, Player B can be better than Player A, even if Player A is the best player overall.

FIRST BASE
RYAN HOWARD (47.7 VORP, 9th among 1Bs) vs. MARK TEIXEIRA (54.7, 5th)
Let's begin with the obvious. A switch-hitter, Teixeira is a career .281/.371/.547 hitter against right-handed pitchers and a career .309/.394/.537 hitter against left-handed pitchers. A left-handed hitter, Howard is a career .307/.409/.661 hitter against right-handed pitchers. That's not a typo: he slugs a Ruthian .661 against righties, with a home run every 10 at-bats. Left-handed pitchers are a different story. He's a career .226/.310/.444 hitter against them, striking out about 40 percent of the time, with a home run every 18 at-bats. This year was worse than the norm, with Howard slumping to .207/.298/.356 against left-handers, hitting just six homers in 222 at-bats against them (while slugging .691 against righties).

Some would say that this makes Howard a platoon player who has been overextended into a regular role. I would argue that in most years his home run rate against southpaws still works out to 30 over a full season, so he would still be worth playing against the majority of southpaws. Still, Howard's potency can be greatly reduced by employing left-handed pitchers against him, and he's the one player where Joe Girardi can enjoy his Coffee Joe propensities to their fullest extent. With the exception of Mariano Rivera, there is no time after, say, the fifth inning that Howard should be allowed to face a right-hander.

Howard gets a bad rap on defense, but he's not Dick Stuart out there. He's also not Teixeira, but there's some decent ground in between those two extremes. One interesting difference between the two is that playing in the National League, Howard had to do a lot more throwing than Teixeira, fielding 21 bunts to Teixeira's five. Despite showing great range off the bag, Teixeira somehow did less throwing this year than at any other time in his career. Still, the quality of Teixeira's defense shows in where he threw the ball. Though he had only 49 assists, 29 of them were on plays away from first base, whereas Howard, though he had 95 assists, had only 26 plays away from first base.

There aren't many better hitters against right-handed pitching than Howard. Teixeira, assuming he can finally dig out of his postseason slump, is the more versatile offensive and defensive package. This is an EDGE: YANKEES, but if the Yankees aren't careful about how they handle Howard, this could easily go the other way.

SECOND BASE
CHASE UTLEY (61.7, 1st) vs. ROBINSON CANO (50.3, 3rd)
Though he's been a four-time All-Star, Utley is one of the game's great unsung players, an MVP-quality player on a great team that has never won an MVP award, or even come close. He hits for average, for power, takes a goodly number of walks, pumps his on-base percentage with 25 HBPs a year and is also one of the best baserunners in the game. A left-handed hitter, lefty pitchers only slow him down a little, and his offense isn't a product of Citizens Bank Park. On the flipside, offseason hip surgery -- he had A-Rod's problem, but went through the whole surgery rather than the partial treatment Rodriguez successfully pursued -- may have dragged his defense down from superb to merely above average.

Cano had his best year in the Majors save for a glaring problem hitting with men on. Cano can fire off line drives almost at will, leading to his strong batting averages, but he forgets himself in important situations, widening his already generous strike zone. This leads to swings with less than his usual authority. It has been a career-long problem. To Cano's credit, after a tough start to the postseason, he came up with some important hits in the last three games of the ALCS. Cano has vastly improved as a fielder over the years, but lapses of concentration are still an occasional problem. Charlie Manuel would do well to remember that southpaw relievers don't trouble Cano too much. EDGE: PHILLIES.

THIRD BASE
PEDRO FELIZ (3.5, 29th) vs. ALEX RODRIGUEZ (52.3, 4th)
Due to a hot start to the season, Feliz hit about as well as he's capable of these days and even drew the second-highest walk total of his career, but he's still a glove man who gave his team very little with the bat. He hit .323 in April, then gradually cooled, or maybe it's better to say he melted, then evaporated, hitting just .225/.254/.367 over the final two months. The Phillies can buy out the last $5 million of Feliz's contract for $500,000, and given that he'll turn 35 next year and hasn't come close to even average production since 2004, they might give it some serious thought if they can identify an alternative. Feliz is a career .252/.288/.417 hitter against right-handers. Normally sort of competent against lefties, he slumped to .208/.278/.385 against them. Feliz has been a poor postseason hitter in his career, and although he did hit a triple and a home run against the Dodgers, it seems unlikely he'll turn into Jeff Mathis in this series. As for Alex Rodriguez and his recent accomplishments, I think you know about them.

SHORTSTOP
JIMMY ROLLINS (19.3, 10th) vs. DEREK JETER (72.8, 2nd)
"J-Roll" gets treated like a star player, but he's not one. Because he's a durable leadoff hitter who never walks, he bats more than anyone else (including, in 2007, more often than anyone in history). Because he hits the ball with authority in those many at-bats, he piles up high totals in the counting stats, lots of hits, doubles, and triples. It pays to remember that all those extra-base hits are diffused through that crazy number of plate appearances, and that at his best he's below average at getting on base. This year he hit the ball in the air more, but he's not really a power hitter and the change dropped his batting average to .250. Since batting average makes up most of his on-base percentage, his OBP dropped to a miserable .296, especially crippling for a leadoff hitter. Rollins did come on a bit in the second half, hitting .272/.306/.495, but these numbers shine only in comparison to his pathetic .229/.287/.355 first half. He posted a .266 OBP against lefties this year, but that hasn't always been his pattern -- i.e. Coffee Joe shouldn't decide Rollins merits the Chone Figgins treatment. Parenthetically, did Figgins play his way out of the Yankees' rumored plans with his 3-for-23 during the 30 Days of ALCS? Let's hope so.

Rollins has won two Gold Gloves, but he's not going to remind you of Ozzie Smith -- he's okay, not great. Add in that he has not hit at all this postseason (and didn't hit much in the last two either) and the guy playing opposite him is an annual Fall hero who is coming off a great year, one he's continued into the postseason, and (bonus) is currently at his best with the glove and you have an EDGE: YANKEES.

NEXT
Catchers, outfield, managers, Game 1 and 2 starters and a prediction.

Beware of small sample size with Swisher

2009-10-26T21:18:53Z

ON NICK SWISHER, BABE RUTH, AND OTHER FAILURE-MINDED BALLPLAYERS
Nick Swisher had a very difficult ALCS. In six games he went 3-for-20 with three walks. He struck out seven times, didn't have an extra-base hit, didn't drive in a run. This is the definition of a miserable performance. However, extrapolate at your own risk. Reggie Jackson, Mr. October himself, went 2-for-16 in the 1977 ALCS, just days before he personally bombed the Dodgers to death in the World Series. As I've been saying all along, this stuff happens. But don't take my word for it. Here are just a few other examples:

Babe Ruth, 1922 World Series: 2-for-17 (.118), no home runs, one RBI.
Tony Lazzeri, 1926 World Series: 5-for-26 (.192), no home runs, three RBI.
Bob Meusel, 1927 World Series: 2-for-17 (.118), no home runs, one RBI.
Joe Gordon, 1939 World Series: 2-for-14 (.143), no home runs, one RBI.
Bill Dickey, 1941 World Series: 3-for-18 (.167), no home runs, one RBI.
Phil Rizzuto, 1941 World Series: 2-for-18 (.111), no home runs, no RBI.
Joe DiMaggio, 1949 World Series: 2-for-18 (.111), one home run, two RBI.
Mickey Mantle, 1962 World Series: 3-for-25 (.120), no home runs, no RBI.
Willie Randolph, 1976 World Series: 1-for-14 (.071), no home runs, no RBI.
Dave Winfield, 1981 World Series: 1-for-22 (.045), no home runs, one RBI.
Paul O'Neill, 1996 World Series: 2-for-12 (.167), no home runs, no RBI.
Derek Jeter, 2001 World Series: 4-for-27 (.148), one home run, one RBI.

That's a dozen examples, and all, with the exception of Winfield, picked at random from the long list of Yankees greats. There are eight Hall of Famers on the list, plus Jeter, who is going in as long as he doesn't rob any banks between now and 2020 or so. For some of them, the series listed above represented their only poor postseason; for others, I had several choices. Swisher hit very badly in the series just ended. There is no way around that. It changes nothing about the valuable season that he had or other series that he might play in the future.

We could also throw a Jorge Posada series or two onto the list above; in 23 World Series games, he's a .208/.337/.338 hitter. He's also had some very good postseason series. For example, he drove in six runs against the Red Sox in the 2003 ALCS. These are very small segments of performance we're talking about, and they don't have much in the way of predictive power. As the Jackson and Jeter examples above show, they can call you Mr. October or even Mr. November, but, in the words of Casey Stengel, sometimes it doesn't always work.

For once, nothing amiss, just a win

2009-10-26T08:11:47Z

CONGRATULATIONS, YANKEES!
There were no insects this time, no Paul Quantrill making his 90th or so appearance of the season. A terrified Esteban Loaiza did not make an appearance in extra innings. Tom Gordon did not pitch with his arm hanging by a thread. Tanyon Sturtze was not called upon in a big spot. Alex Rodriguez did not hit .133 for the series and get demoted to eighth in the batting order. The starting ace, whoever it was, did not fold in the key game. Jaret Wright did not start, and Kyle Farnsworth could not be found in the bullpen. Randy Johnson did not pitch like a 42-year-old. An injured Gary Sheffield was not called upon in desperation. In short, aside from some compulsive pinch-running and pitching changes by the anxious manager, there were no Hail Mary passes, no fourth stringers dressed up as stars. There was, shockingly for the Yankees, NO WEIRDNESS. They played their games, played them well, and for the first time since 2003, they will return to the World Series. The 2009 Yankees have one of the deepest rosters in the history of the club and they played like it. Finally. Congratulations and good luck to the entire organization.

SOME NOTES ON GAME SIX
1. Even though he didn't hit, Nick Swisher played his best defensive baseball in this series, culminating in his doubling Vladimir Guerrero off of first in the second inning. He also looked more relaxed at the plate in this game.

2. Jorge Posada was having a decent offensive series (.267/.450/.533, a home run and five walks) before Game 6, in which he had several chances to break the game open and failed miserably, going 0-for-5, hitting into two double plays and stranding 10 runners. Had the Yankees somehow lost the game, you would have had to point the finger his way.

3. Joe Girardi was fully in the grips of Coffee Joe mania when he went to Mariano Rivera for a two-inning save. Asking your closer to pitch two innings is normally a great idea -- it's always better to cut out the (pardon the expression) middle-man -- and that's the way it was done until Bruce Sutter and then Dennis Eckersley cemented the idea that closers could only be used one inning at a time. The truth was that THEY could be used one inning at a time, but not everyone was subject to the same limitation. The difficultly with asking Rivera to do it in Game 6 is: (a) He's about four weeks from turning 40; and (b) He had been asked to get six outs just once all year, and that was during a tie on May 16; so (c) As a result, Rivera threw over 30 pitches (31 and 32) just twice all season, and between 20 and 30 pitches just 11 times. This meant that (d) when Rivera ended his difficult eighth inning having already thrown 21 pitches, he had already exceeded his pitch count for all but a handful of his appearances. By the time it was all over, Rivera had thrown 34 pitches, his high for the season, and that was after sitting through the long bottom of the eighth. It worked, but it was risky, and it did nothing to reestablish Phil Hughes, who is going to be needed.

4. I wonder if Dave Robertson is going to get dropped from the World Series roster on the basis of injury. Girardi said he pulled him from Game 3 because his velocity was down (though he had pitched well) and never went back to him again. It wouldn't serve the Yankees to announce that Robertson was injured as long as the round continued given that they couldn't do anything about it, and the idea that their bullpen was short a man could somehow impart a psychological or tactical advantage to the Angels. Perhaps we will see the triumphant return of Brian Bruney, though part of me thinks that with the Phillies' left-leaning batting order, the Yankees would be better off pulling Mike Dunn out of the Arizona Fall League, thereby giving themselves a third bullpen southpaw. I'm half-kidding about that, but only half.

5. It's amazing how badly one can mess themselves up by thinking about purely physical things. Normally, your hypothalamus controls your breathing. Start trying to control it with your conscious mind -- you'll be gasping for air directly. Similarly, pick up a baseball and simply throw it as you've known how to do all your life and you make the play. Think about it, aim it, and you're going to toss it into short right field. Yes, I'm talking about Scott Kazmir, who could probably make a 40-foot throw to first base blindfolded. Under most conditions, you and I could (I would probably need an empty stadium and advance notice that all errors would be forgiven). Make things just a little tense and even a professional ballplayer can fumble away a key play. The Angels, normally a very together club, did it repeatedly in this series.

6. Why was Gary Matthews, Jr. allowed to make the last out of this series? Why was he allowed to make any outs this series? Why did Mike Scioscia keep pinch-hitting him for Mike Napoli and Howie Kendrick, who are both far better hitters than Matthews? I've been hard on Girardi, but Scioscia, normally a fine manager, had his own Coffee Mike problems during 30 Days of ALCS.

7. At least there were no umpiring controversies in the last game.

8. What is with the faux-stitch-style league championship caps? They're terrible. From spring training, your team plays nearly 200 games to get to the World Series and then you're forced to put something on your head that looks like it was cut from the backside of your overweight older brother's hand-me-down jeans. I guess someone thinks the kids really like stitching this year.

9. I don't know what's going to happen when Andy Pettitte becomes eligible for the Hall of Fame. I imagine not much, just "thanks" and "no thanks." Before the voters dismiss him, they ought to give him some outsized credit for his going 16-9 in 38 postseason starts.

10. Was their ever a time in history when players actually drank the champagne they were given upon winning? That must have been the original intention, and then somewhere in the TV era somebody started spraying champagne, and everyone watching thought that was pretty novel, and soon everyone was doing it. Now the original thing would be to have a decorous toast. If players know to bring goggles to the party, the celebration is no longer spontaneous.

NEXT UP
We begin the Yankees-Phillies head to head comparisons.

To the mats: Reader comments from Game 5

2009-10-24T15:22:20Z

1: DESPITE WHAT W.C. FIELDS SAID, SOMETIMES WE GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK
I'm surprised you ignored the single worst tactical decision Girardi made: pinch-running for A-Rod. See this article at Fangraphs. And while there is an argument to be made for starting the 7th with a reliever, leaving Burnett in is also an acceptable decision. It's not Girardi's fault that Mathis has turned into Superman this series, or that Hughes grooved one to Vlady when Posada's target was at eye level.-- L.Bury

Always good to hear from you, Dr. Bury. To deal with the last point first, a few readers took my including Mathis's success in the list of questions as a criticism of Joe Girardi. That wasn't the case. It was, probably alone on the list, a rhetorical question with a bit of Old Testament "How long, O Lord?" tossed in (let's go with Habakkuk 1:2, just to be esoteric). As I said in an earlier installment here, these things happen -- Pat Borders, a thoroughly risible hitter, was the MVP of the 1992 World Series after hitting .450 in six games. Bucky Dent was the MVP of the 1978 World Series, having hit .417 with seven RBIs in six games. Dent probably went whole months during the regular season without driving in seven runs -- the guy averaged 38 per 162 games played. When a hitter muscles up and goes crazy like this during a short series, it's not necessarily anyone's fault, nor an indication that the scouting reports are off. It just happens. Dent played in five postseason series and didn't come close to that level of success in the other four.

Pinch-running for Alex Rodriguez was ludicrous. Even with a bum hip, Rodriguez is still a relatively fast runner (he does take some bad gambles running the bases); it's not like we're talking about Jorge Posada, who by one measure was the second-worst player to have on the bases this year. Had the game gone into extra innings, that move would have badly punished the team. I stayed away from it because I was focusing on the crucial seventh inning, whereas the removal of A-Rod came in the ninth and had no bearing on the outcome of the game. It was a decision that had an extremely limited upside compared to the possible negative consequences. A full-blown "Coffee Joe" call by Mr. Girardi.

2: FAIR IS FOUL AND FOUL IS FAIR
Haven't been here for awhile. Are you still pushing Nick Swisher as the be all end all? How could you have left him out of your Friday Morning Quarterbacking Second Guess-a-thon? We all knew his odds of hitting safely in that situation as close to nil. Other commenters were dead on - HINSKE NOT GUZMAN ON THE BENCH. In fact I'd start him over Swisher with the funk he's in.-- Javamanny

Welcome back, Javamanny (is that like Coffee Joe?). Among the things you missed: I said Hinske-not-Guzman as well. I've also brought up Duncan-not-Guzman and am leaning towards Chicken Stanley-not-Guzman. Also, these are first-guesses, not second-guesses. If you read the live chats I've been doing during these playoff games, you will see me make a lot of the same points, though it happens I didn't do one for Game 5. I wouldn't kill the manager for something that wasn't an obvious problem as it was happening. In fairness, I would use words like, "In retrospect..." Thursday's game situations weren't all that subtle.

As for Swish Nicker, I still think he's a very productive player and far superior to the alternative initially proposed, but right now he's in a disastrous slump. There's just no other way to put it. That's he's in the wrong slump at the wrong time doesn't change my earlier opinion on him, just like Gil Hodges' infamous 0-for-21 in the 1952 World Series didn't make him a bad player or Dave Winfield's 1-for-22 in the 1981 World Series made him bad player. In the same way that sometimes a hack like Jeff Mathis suddenly turns on the hitting in a short series, other players... don't.

3: THE EXECUTION BLUES
Why, why, why do you throw Vlad a fastball again with 2 strikes, curveball, curveball, curveball. Posada/Hughes come on, are you guys kidding me.-- jesseguerrero30

I find this one harder to complain about. Sometimes pitchers just miss their spots. By a lot. Had the pitch been out of the strike zone where it was supposed to be, there might have been a different result. As it was, it's not like Guerrero nuked it. He hit it up the middle and Derek Jeter just missed catching up to it. It was a mistake, but pitchers miss their spots and hitters swing at bad pitchers. I'm trying to imagine the mechanics of the game if players always performed exactly as they intended to -- you get into a paradox where hitters always swing at pitches they can hit, but the pitchers always make the right pitches so they get them out. I think my head is going to explode like one of those computers on the old "Star Trek."

4: DETAILS, DETAILS...
Don't the biplanes win in the end???? Otherwise, I love Rally Kong.-- stultusmagnus

This remake ends differently. The biplane pilots realize that their reliance on fossil fuels is damaging the environment and fly home, leaving the giant ape to root on his favorite baseball team and turn the Union Square Greenmarket into a million-dollar business due to his high-volume grape purchases.

5: SOMEDAY THEY'LL KNOW BETTER
Goldman, posts like these are why you are my favorite NYY analyst. WHERE THE HECK IS DAVID ROBERTSON!?!?-- nyyls1fan

I happened to tune in to WFAN in the car this afternoon, and Mike Francesa was shooting down callers who were intent on asking why Robertson hasn't been used properly by saying that you shouldn't make him the flavor of the month based on two innings in this season. "He hasn't been there all year," he said, which I found very odd given that he pitched in 45 games and generally did very well, with that high strikeout rate to which I keep referring. Francesa is correct in insisting that Robertson is in no way a proven postseason performer, but then no one is asking for him to close games, just to be used in the situations in which he might help the team. He also was incredulous that Robertson might be ranked ahead of Joba Chamberlain, but that fails to take into account just how poorly Joba has been pitching. Better to go with the untried pitcher who you feel has a reasonable chance of succeeding than with tried solutions that have already failed.

MORE FROM ME...
After the game. If we have a game. I just saw Aquaman swim past my window, and I'm on the second floor.

Coffee Joe extends ALCS

2009-10-23T08:08:47Z

Despite getting some things in Game 5 that seemed impossible just hours and minutes before they happened --- big hits from Mark Teixeira and (holy cow) Robinson Cano -- Joe Girardi helped pay back a terrific Yankees rally by once again mismanaging his pitchers. There are many questions to ask about the fatal bottom of the seventh, some in the Yankees' control, some not.

1. Why can't the Yankees retire Jeff Mathis, a career .200 hitter who normally strikes out once every 3.3 at-bats, equivalent to 152 Ks over a 500 at-bat season?

2. With a rested bullpen and another day off in front of him, why did the previously hyper-twitchy Joe "Coffee Joe" Girardi stay with A.J. Burnett to open the frame? Sure, his pitch count was on the low side, but he had also been on the bench for nearly half an hour and, despite settling down after being roughed up in the first inning, had struck out only three Angels, suggesting that, lacking his best stuff, he could again be damaged by a combination of walks and balls in play.

3. Why wasn't Burnett yanked after the Mathis single to open the inning? Having broken ground on his grave, he was allowed to dig further by walking Erick Aybar, a hitter who took just 30 free passes in the regular season in close to full-time play. Girardi, who was so pepped to make changes in prior games, sat on his hands after the Mathis hit.

4. Why not start the inning with Phil Hughes? The way relievers pitch when they enter with men on is very different from the way they pitch when they start an inning. Though Mariano Rivera has performed some Houdini-like escapes in this series, including one to bail out Joba Chamberlain in this very game, even he yielded to the Twins in Game 2 of the Division Series, entering with two men on and allowing an RBI single.

5. If the Angels' batting order was the problem and Girardi didn't want to have Hughes pitch to Chone Figgins after (theoretically) retiring Mathis and Aybar, then why not burn David Robertson and his strikeouts in that spot, then pull him for the inevitable lefty?

6. Related to the previous question, is it really even necessary to worry about the platoon matchup when facing Chone Figgins? The Yankees have done a great job of taking him out of this series, in part by giving him a steady diet of lefty pitching to face. But even if Figgins beats a righty pitcher, he is likely to beat him with a single; this is a guy who homered once every 123 at-bats this year. The same is true, though to a lesser extent, of Bobby Abreu. Even against right-handers, he hit just 12 home runs in nearly 400 at-bats. That's one per 32 ABs. Against hitters like these, a manager should only pursue the platoon advantage if it's not going to trip them up in other ways.

In this case, it led to Girardi, so profligate with relievers previously, to keep his starter in the game, solely so he could avoid making a pitching change before those two lefties were due up. And as long as we're on the subject of platoon advantages, let's talk about Damaso Marte for a moment, and for that matter, Phil Coke as well. Even Casey Stengel, who loved the platoon more than anything else in the world save his wife, said that you don't switch out a good pitcher for a bad one just to get a platoon advantage. You can see that done every day of the regular season, and though the move worked out in Game 5, Girardi might have been guilty of it here.

7. It didn't have an impact on the game thanks to Rivera, but why is Chamberlain pitching ahead of Robertson, or Urban Shocker for that matter? It's depressing, but sending Joba back to the bullpen has not magically turned the clock back to 2007. There are still the makings of a fine pitcher here --- the guy just turned 24, which means he's about 2.5 years younger than Tampa's Jeff Niemann, who is going to get some Rookie of the Year votes. There is still time for him, but his moment might not be now.

8. I am sick of the Rally Monkey. Have the Yankees' scoreboard operators gotten to work on the New York equivalent as of yet? Guys, I want to see Rally Kong climbing the Empire State Building and smashing biplanes. You don't need more than a day to get that set up, right?