The Yankees will bring the tying run to the plate in this game.
World Series Game Five Spillover Thread
Two run deficit in the first? The Yankees eat shit like that for breakfast.
World Series Game Five: Yankees @ Phillies
27.
It’s the number of outs that stand in the way of the Yankees and a World Championship, which coincidentally would be the 27th in their history. It’s the number manager Joe Girardi wears on his back, and it’s the number of miles that separate the hometowns of tonight’s starters, A.J. Burnett and Cliff Lee.
Burnett, who grew up in North Little Rock, Arkansas, will take the mound on three day’s rest for the first time as a Yank, and as history shows, he’s been pretty good in those spots in the past. Lee, originally from Benton, Arkansas, is fully rested after his Game One complete game. The two also share an agent (Darek Braunecker), and have been good friends for years.
The Yanks have been up 3-1 in the World Series eight times before, and they’ve wrapped up the title all eight times. They’ve never even had to go seven games to do it. It’s so close we can taste it, but as a great Yankee once said, “It’s ain’t over ’til it’s over.” Here’s the lineups.
Yankees
Derek Jeter, SS
Johnny Damon, LF
Mark Teixeira, 1B
Alex Rodriguez, 3B
Nick Swisher, RF
Robinson Cano, 2B
Brett Gardner, CF
Jose Molina, C
AJ Burnett, SP (13-9, 4.04)
Philadelphia
Jimmy Rollins, SS
Shane Victorino, CF
Chase Utley, 2B
Ryan Howard, 1B
Jayson Werth, RF
Raul Ibanez, LF
Pedro Feliz, 3B
Carlos Ruiz, C
Cliff Lee, SP (14-13, 3.22)
In case you haven’t seen it already, this was in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer.
Melky out with mild hamstring tear; Peña in
A few minutes ago, Joe Girardi revealed that Melky Cabrera suffered a mild strain of his left hamstring during the 6th inning of last night’s game. He will be unavailable for the remainder of the World Series, and the Yankees are working to replace him on the roster, most likely with Freddy Guzman. Official word will come down at 6 p.m., and we’ll update this post accordingly. With Melky out, the Yankees will hand center field over to Brett Gardner this evening, and the Yanks’ lineup will feature a 6-7-8-9 combination tonight of Robinson Cano, Gardner, Jose Molina and A.J. Burnett. On the bright side, the bench is very strong tonight.
Update (5:45 p.m.): The Yankees have announced that Ramiro Peña will take Melky Cabrera’s place on the roster. Peña isn’t as fast as Guzman but provides more versatility both with the bat and in the field. Peña could be asked to bunt tonight as well if the situation calls for it.
Wearing out a well-trod path to the mound
For a World Series game, last night’s three-hour and 25-minute affair isn’t a long one. We’ve seen nine-inning playoff games stretch well past the four-hour mark. It wasn’t though for a lack of trying on the part of CC Sabathia and Jorge Posada. As many noticed, the two had enough conversations on the mound to last a lifetime.
Landon Evanson at Bugs and Cranks summed up his feelings:
For f*** sake, how many times does Posada need to head out there for a heart-to-heart? I mean, trips to the bump on 0-2 counts with two outs and nobody on? What could possibly be shared at that moment? Seriously, is it too much to ask that Posada and the likes of C.C. Sabathia or any of New York’s hurlers get on the same page?
I understand you have to get the signs and the sequences down but the Bombers battery does realize that they can talk in the dugout, right? I mean, that’s still allowed in the World Series, isn’t it? Or have the Yankees done away with that like the whole facial hair thing?
You get the point. Except for Yankee fans placing their hopes, fears and low blood pressure on every pitch, most baseball fans — and especially those sporting red in Citizens Bank Park — just wanted CC Sabathia to throw the ball. Of course, it’s never really that simple, and today, Buster Olney offered up a reason in his blog post dissecting the game.
“Sunday night,” Olney writes, “Jorge Posada went with multiple pitch signs even when there were not any runners on base — and the reason, one longtime talent evaluator said, is that there has long been a concern among visiting teams that the Phillies steal signs from their bullpen and relay them to the hitter.”
In the prior paragraph in his post, Olney notes that the Phillies are concerned with the Yanks’ hitters as well. Apparently, Carlos Ruiz believes that A-Rod peeks back for a hint at pitch location — something every good hitter does — and has tried to shift late to receive the pitch.
Meanwhile, Olney wasn’t the only person noting the sequences behind the plate. In a rare moment of good analysis, Tim McCarver and Joe Buck noted that both teams’ batteries seemed to be going with a series of signs with no one on base instead of just one sign with location. Clearly, someone or everyone is trying to gain an edge.
Some baseball fans might object. Are the Phillies trying to cheat? Are the Yankees trying to disrupt the Phillies’ hitters’ rhythms at the plate? Is A-Rod trying to gain an edge? It’s all part of the game within the game as the league’s top two teams fight it out for the crown. Keep an eye tonight on A.J. Burnett and Jose Molina. The two of them love to chat, and if Olney’s analysis is right, we should see a lot of conversations and fewer signs from Molina.
Tonight, though, won’t be the end of this sign-stealing brouhaha. Between A-Rod’s getting plunked and the Sabathia/Posada conversations, sparks will fly when these teams play during Spring Training next year. For now, winning the World Series is what matters, but baseball players never forget.
When Johnny comes running home again
Because of the way FOX produces baseball games, when Johnny Damon slid safely into second, popped up and then started heading for third, my heart dropped. “What are you doing?” I thought. How could Damon, already in scoring position for Mark Teixeira, dream of taking third when Pedro Feliz was covering second and had the ball?
It was then that I realized Pedro Feliz, the Phillies’ third baseman, had the ball. If he had the ball, well, then no one was covering third. And why was no one covering third? Because Mark Teixeira was up from the left side, and all year teams have put a drastic shift on for lefty Teixeira.
So when Feliz fielded the ball in front of the base, Damon raced him to third. Says Jayson Stark:
Damon admitted afterward he had never done this before. And, in fact, it wasn’t immediately clear the last time anyone did this. But Damon said he’d been talking about it and thinking about it all year, since it became clear The Shift was going to be a regular feature of Teixeira’s left-handed at-bats.
Damon had to be safe. He had to know he would be safe because with Phil Coke, and not Mariano Rivera, warming up for a tie game, the Yankees couldn’t afford to take chances. After the game, Damon chuckled disbelievingly at the play. “If it was Chone Figgins,” he said, “that might have been tough. I just went off of instinct. And fortunately, it worked out.”
Once on third base, Damon was firmly inside the heads of Brad Lidge and Carlos Ruiz, the Phillies’ battery. Lidge hit Mark Teixeira with the next pitch and refused to throw Alex Rodriguez a slider for fear that a wild pitch would give the Yanks the lead. A-Rod and Jorge Posada made that slider a moot point, and before the dust had settled, the Yanks were sitting pretty on a 7-4 lead.
While thinking about the play as the post-game show unfolded last night, I remembered 2003 and so did Derek Jeter. On Opening Day, the Yankees were in Toronto, and Jeter had a lead off first base. Jason Giambi hit a bouncer to Roy Halladay, and Doc threw to Carlos Delgado at first. Jeter knew that, with the Giambi shift on, third base was unoccupied, and he didn’t stop. Delgado threw across the diamond as Ken Huckaby, Toronto’s catcher, raced up the line. Huckaby caught the ball and crashed into Jeter. Derek’s shoulder was dislocated, and he would not play again until May 13.
Last night, there was no Ken Huckaby, no Carlos Ruiz, no Brad Lidge awaiting Johnny Damon at third base. The Yanks’ left fielder caught everyone off guard, and as the Yankee bench, millions of fans, and Carlos Ruiz watched the play unfold, Damon beat Feliz in a dash to third. It was a race for ages.
“You know how people always tell you that they’ve been in baseball for 40 years, 50 years, and things happen every game that they never saw?” Yankees bench coach Tony Pena said last night. “Well, I’ve never seen that before. I never saw that before in my life.”
Burnett’s history of pitching on three days’ rest
Tonight, in the first elimination game of the 2009 World Series, the Yankees will send A.J. Burnett to the mound on just three day’s rest. The tactic makes sense. The alternative is Chad Gaudin, who hasn’t started a game since late September and who has a well-documented deficiency when facing left-handed hitters. With such a significant drop-off between the Yankees third best starter, Andy Pettitte, and their fourth, Gaudin, the choice was not a difficult one.
Burnett has experience starting on three days’ rest, and most of it came in the 2008 season with Toronto. His performance in those games might have helped influence Joe Girardi’s decision, so let’s take a look at exactly what happened when Burnett took the mound a day earlier than normally scheduled.
July 4, 2004
Burnett underwent Tommy John surgery in early 2003 and made his return in June, 2004. He had a few blips, including a 4.1-inning, eight-run outing against Cleveland, but generally pitched well in his first month back. Unfortunately, the Marlins could not pick him up, losing each of Burnett’s six starts that month. This included back to back starts in which Burnett allowed just two runs over seven and eight innings.
On July 4, the Marlins called on Burnett to start on three days’ rest against the Tampa Bay Rays, against whom he had thrown the aforementioned eight-inning game. He didn’t pitch quite as well, allowing three runs over 7.2 innings, but it was enough to earn his first win of the season. He struck out six Devil Rays that day, including Carl Crawford to lead off the game. Atypical of Burnett, he also didn’t issue any walks — though Tampa Bay drew the fifth fewest walks of any MLB team that season.
It might seem strange for Burnett to start on three days’ rest so shortly after recovering from elbow surgery. That seems like the kind of move that could lead to a relapse. Burnett, however, had thrown just 30 pitches on June 30, leaving the game two batters into the second inning after allowing five hits and walking two. That light workload made the short-rest start make a bit more sense.
July 13, 2008
Burnett started off July 2008 with two horrible starts. In seven innings against the Angels on Independence Day, Burnett allowed eight runs, six earned, on 12 hits over seven innings. The next time out he allowed seven runs on seven hits and three walks over 5.1 innings to the Orioles. Why, then, would the Blue Jays bring back Burnet on there days’ rest to face the Yankees on July 13?
I’m not quite sure. It was the last game before the All-Star Break, so perhaps Cito Gaston didn’t want Burnett to have such a long layoff. Whatever the reason, it worked. Burnett took a shutout into the ninth inning, though Jason Giambi ruined it with a solo home run. B.J. Ryan came on after a Jorge Posada single to record the final two outs. Still, Burnett was magnificent, and it’s one of the reasons that the players lobbied the team to sign him over the off-season.
September 13, 2008
At the end of August, Burnett found him with quite the challenge. On the ledger for his final three starts of the month: the Yankees twice, with Boston in the middle. While the Blue Jays were out of the race, it was still an audition for both teams. He killed the Yankees, but faltered a bit against the Red Sox. He’d get his chance for redemption against them, though, as Gaston named him the starter on September, just three days after his seven-inning, one-run performance against the White Sox.
It wasn’t an easy six innings for Burnett, as he used 102 pitches, walking three. But at the end of the sixth he had allowed just one unearned run. The Blue Jays went to town, scoring eight runs in support of their free-agent-to-be, helping him pick up his 18th win of the season.
The phantom three days’ rest start — April 16, 2008
When looking up Burnett’s short-rest starts, I first went to his Baseball Reference splits page, where it says he has started four games on three days’ rest. Yet I found only three such games. It comes down to a nitpick: does a start count as being on three days’ rest when the previous appearance was in relief?
On April 16, 2008, then-Blue Jays manager John Gibbons called on Burnett to come into the 14th inning of a game at home against the Rangers. It was tied 5-5, and the Blue Jays needed some more innings out of a dwindling pen. He had last pitched on April 13, also against Texas, and didn’t pitch particularly well in that start, allowing four runs over 5.2 innings. It seemed curious that Gibbons would call on Burnett two days later, but he did and paid for it. Burnett allowed two runs on three hits and a walk in the 14th, leading to a 7-5 Blue Jays loss.
Then, three days later, Burnett came out to start against the Tigers. It was six days after his last start, but just three days after his last appearance. He allowed three runs over five innings, walking six in the game. It was easily his worst start on three days’ rest, yet the Blue Jays offense put him in line for the win, his second of the season (the first was against the Yankees in his first start of the season).
In a way, I don’t want to count it because the start on three days’ rest did not follow another start, but a relief appearance. Then again, Burnett did throw 24 pitches in that span, six short of the 30 he threw on June 30, 2004, which he followed with a start on three days’ rest. Is there much of a difference there? I thought so at first, but I’m not so sure after thinking it over some more.
None of this guarantees Burnett anything tonight. It proves that he’s physically capable of throwing on three days’ rest and succeeding, but that’s about it. Knowing his track record is a bit reassuring, at least.