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ALDS Game Five: Tigers @ Yankees

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Jose Valverde said the series wouldn’t get back to New York after Game Two. He was wrong. The Yankees bludgeoned the Tigers pitching staff in Game Four on Tuesday night, ensuring that the ALDS would come back home to the Bronx for the deciding Game Five. Someone’s season will end tonight. There will be heroes and there will be goats.

Ivan Nova is making the biggest start of his life tonight, one that will help determine if the Yankees will get a chance to exact revenge against the Rangers in the ALCS, or if they’ll head home for an early winter. He pitched well in “relief” in Game One, holding the Tigers scoreless through six-plus innings before some Luis Ayala-induced inherited runner funny business. The Yankees got to Doug Fister in that game, a pitcher they once drafted, tagging him for more earned runs (six) than he’d allowed in his final seven regular season starts combined. Here’ are the lineup Nova and Fister will be facing…

Detroit Tigers
Austin Jackson, CF
Don Kelly, 3B
Delmon Young, LF
Miguel Cabrera, 1B
Victor Martinez, DH
Magglio Ordonez, RF
Alex Avila, C
Jhonny Peralta, SS
Ramon Santiago, 2B

Doug Fister, SP

New York Yankees
Derek Jeter, SS
Curtis Granderson, CF
Robinson Cano, 2B
Alex Rodriguez, 3B
Mark Teixeira, 1B
Nick Swisher, RF
Jorge Posada, DH
Russell Martin, C
Brett Gardner, LF

Ivan Nova, SP

It’s chilly here in New York, but the sky is clear. There won’t be any rain, unlike the first three days they spent in the Bronx. The game starts at 8:07pm ET (not 8:37!) and can be seen on TBS. Enjoy.

Site Note: Ben, Joe, and I are at the game, so I have spillover threads scheduled to publish at 9, 10, and 11pm ET. Please use them accordingly to keep the site running smooth.

UPDATE: Sabathia available in Game Five, but not Verlander

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Update (Oct. 6th): You can rest easy now, Verlander will in fact not be available tonight. He threw a total of 56 pitches during his between-start bullpen session this afternoon. Max Scherzer, who shut the Yankees down in Game Two, is available in relief tonight, however.

Original Post (Oct. 5th): Via George King, CC Sabathia will be ready to go out of the bullpen in Game Five if needed. “It’s my bullpen day, so I will be ready to go,” said Sabathia. Remember, Sabathia was available in relief in Game Six of the ALCS last year, but Joe Girardi never gave him the ball. Being ready is one thing, being used is another. I think the bullpen is deep enough and rested enough that CC won’t be needed unless it goes crazy extra innings, or something.

As for Justin Verlander, he will be ready to pitch in relief tomorrow night as well, but Jim Leyland insists he won’t use him. “I wouldn’t do anything foolish,” said Leyland. “I try not to do anything foolish with any of my pitchers, let alone an arm like that.”

On Jose Valverde

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Someone's happy they allowed two runs in a non-save situation. (AP Photo/Kathy Kmonicek)

Even before we knew that the Yankees and Tigers were going to play in the ALDS, I wanted to see Jose Valverde blow a save in the postseason. The Detroit closer had gone a perfect 49-for-49 in save chances this season despite shaky peripherals (3.55 FIP, 71st out of 134 qualified relievers), prompting many old school types to dub him the best closer in baseball. They even gave him an award for it. We know that’s not true though. Add in the way over the top celebrations, and we all had every reason to want to see Valverde blow a save.

After the Tigers won Game Two of the ALDS, the right-hander declared that “the series will finish in our house … They have a good team, but the series is not (coming) back to New York.” This came after Valverde allowed four of the seven men he faced to reach base that night, turning a 5-1 lead into a 5-3 lead while stranding the tying run on base. He walked the tight rope again the next night, but again held on for the save. The Yankees won Game Four, and now the series is coming back to New York despite Valverde’s proclamation.

Heading into tonight’s Game Five, it’s almost a certainty that Jim Leyland will use his closer at some point, win or lose. I still want to see him blow a save, but given the circumstances, I’d rather see him not even get a chance tonight. A walk-off win against Valverde to eliminate the Tigers would basically be the most amazing thing ever, but I’m not sure I can deal with the stress. That 10-1 score in Game Four was stressful enough. I’ll happily take about a dozen first inning runs over rubbing Valverde’s nose in the mud any day of the week. The Yankees have bigger fish to fry than some closer spouting guarantees.

Previewing Doug Fister, Part Two

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Will Fister switch up the game plan tonight? (AP Photo/Kathy Kmonicek)

When I previewed Doug Fister prior to the continuation of Game One, I noted that he’s an extreme strike-thrower that gets ahead with his fastball and generally pitches lefties and righties the same way. Righties will get a few more fastballs, lefties a few more changeups, but otherwise it was the same approach. He’s not a huge stuff guy, instead relying on command and the willingness to attack hitters rather relentlessly.

The Yankees touched Fister up for six runs on seven hits and two walks in 4.2 IP in Game One, drawing the same number of free passes in that game that he issued in his final four regular season starts combined. He did plow through the lineup the first time through the order, but the Yankees adjusted and really went to work once it turned over. Seven of the final ten hitters he faced reached base, and the Yankees won the game.

Fister will start the decisive Game Five tonight, so I figured it would be good to look back at Game One to see how he attacked the Yankees hitters. It’s just one game, a sampling of just 90 pitches, so we shouldn’t take any of this stuff to heart. It’ll just give us an idea of what he did in that game, and give us something to look for tonight. Let’s break apart the two different types of hitters, starting with the guys he’ll see more of…

Left-Handed Batters

(via Brooks)

Pay attention to the numbers in the strike zone plot, and remember this is from the catcher’s view. The vast majority of the number ones (i.e. the first pitch of a given at-bat) are down and/or away. Most of the higher pitch numbers (three and up) are inside. Fister started the Yankees left-handed batters off with pitches away before coming back inside a little later in the at-bat to keep these guys honest. Outside then inside, and usually that was it.

The pitch selection, seen in the chart to the right, shows that Fister threw his five different pitches at a rate consistent with the regular season. He only threw 64 pitches to lefties in Game One, so one individual pitch represents 1.6% of the sample. The difference in the rates is like, plus or minus three pitches. Nothing crazy. For the most part, Fister was his usual self against all the left-handed batters the Yankees threw at him on Saturday. As for the guys on the other side of the plate…

Right-Handed Batters

(via Brooks)

Obvious statement is obvious: Fister pounded the Yankees righties (Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Russell Martin) inside with fastballs on Saturday. I mean really pounded them inside; just two (two!) of the 26 pitches he threw them were on the outer half of the plate, and they were two waste pitches so far outside they were easily taken for balls. All but six of those 26 pitches were two-seam fastballs, only three were offspeed pitches (two curves and a changeup).

Unlike his approach to lefties, it seems pretty clear that Fister and his battery mate Alex Avila made an effort to go at New York’s three right-handed bats high-ish and hard, preventing them from getting any kind of extension in their swing. Martin, A-Rod, and Jeter combined to go 2-for-6 with a double, a ground ball single, three strikeouts, two ground outs, and one fly out off the big right-hander in Game One.

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Just looking at Fister’s combined pitch chart (all batters), you can see that he threw the majority of his pitches to the armside, or inside to righties and away to lefties. That could just be his comfort zone, some guys have trouble throwing to the glove side, or it could be by design. My semi-obvious theory: he was pitching to Yankee Stadium. He didn’t want to put a pitch outside so a righty could flick it towards the short porch, nor did he want to have a lefty pull their hands in and yank something down the right field line. It’s just a theory, but if it’s what Fister was trying to do, it didn’t work. Five of the nine balls he allowed to be hit to the outfield went to right, another two to center.

Whether or not Fister continues to bust righties in with fastballs while working away to lefties remains to be seen, but that seems to have been their plan in Game One. It didn’t really work, but that doesn’t necessarily mean an adjustment is coming. The Tigers could be banking on better execution instead.

An ode to the out

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Unlike the other major sports, baseball, as we well know, is not a game that adheres to a clock. Time may pass quickly or, as is often the case with the Yankees, games can slow to a crawl as batters take pitch after pitch. All told, the Yankees played over 507 hours worth of baseball in 2011 and ended the season with the same 162-game schedule as the Mariners who posted just 447 hours.

The currency of baseball then is the out. The Tigers and the Yankees each have 27 outs, divided into groups of three, in which to score or stop the other team from doing so. For one of those teams, all they have left in the season after 166 previous games, are those 27 outs. Outscore your opponent after those outs and play the Rangers; lose and dig in for a long winter of maybes.

For Yankee fans, a do-or-die, best-of-one scenario isn’t entirely a rarity. The Yanks have played in 31 previous postseason series since baseball added the Wild Card, and eight of those have gone the distance. (Mike charted the ALDS earlier on Wednesday while Larry Koestler at The Yankee Analysts added the ALCS and World Series Game 7s to the list.) Of those eight, the Yanks have won three and lost five.

Game 5 (or 7) for me has always been about counting down outs. The 1995 loss to the Mariners is a fleeting one in my memory. I was young and just thrilled that the Yanks had made it to the playoffs for the first time in my life. The loss in 1997, too, is a blur. As I got older, though, the Game 5s grew more and more tense. In 2000, the Yanks made us all feel better pretty quickly, but the A’s inched back in it. It was a comeback that never happened.

A year later, and just a month removed from September 11, the Yanks and A’s would square off again in Game 5, and this time, the Yanks seemed like a team of destiny. Thanks to a play from Derek Jeter than will live in infamy and one of the most overlooked pitching performances in Mike Mussina’s Yankee tenure, the team overcame a 2-0 lead to oust the A’s. I was at Yankee Stadium for that game, and the atmosphere, as it always is during potential clinching games, was electric. The crowd would not let the Yankees lose.

In 2003, it took a few extra outs as 27 would not be enough. With just five of their own offensive outs remaining, the Yanks staged an improbable comeback, and Aaron Boone added the exclamation point. A year later….well, we know how that ended. In 2005, the Yanks, maybe feeling the pressure of living down the previous year’s collapse, fell apart defensively. Those were 27 outs to forget.

And so we’re back with just 27 outs separating us and the team with which we live and die from their destiny. If everything goes according to plan, 15-18 of those outs are Ivan Nova’s and the remaining 9-12 belong to Rafael Soriano, David Robertson and, of course, Mariano Rivera who has thrown just three pitches during the ALDS. You can’t watch the outs melt away until the game starts, but Rivera looms, as sure a thing as there is in baseball. Some of those outs might just be easier to get than others because of him.

Whenever these do-or-die games come along, I find the waiting to be the hardest part. We have 20 hours to go before the Yanks and Tigers start their march toward the ninth inning. When it does, I’ll be ticking off the outs, hoping the 27 we need to move on and live for another series come easier than those the Tigers need. I’m not ready for the season to end yet. I’d like another day, another game, another series, another 27 outs.

The Game Changer

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Hurts so good. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)

Last night’s Game Four win was all about A.J. Burnett’s surprisingly effective start and a late-inning offensive relay, where everyone in the lineup just kept passing baton to the next guy. The final score (10-1) doesn’t really tell the whole story story though, because it was just 4-1 heading into the eighth. Baseball is a team game, but one man really stood on his head a bit and contributed to that 4-1 lead. That would be Curtis Granderson, the club’s MVP.

I don’t want to say that we’re overlooking what Granderson did last night, I don’t think that’s case at all, but it’s worth taking a step back to appreciate his efforts again during the off day. The defensive stats may not like him to varying degrees this year – DRS hates him (-15 runs), UZR doesn’t like him much (-5.3), and dWAR says he’s basically average (-0.2) – but even if you don’t like Granderson’s defense, you can’t deny the two plays he made last night. That first inning lunging catch (video) completely changed the dynamic of that game. If it gets by him, that ball has inside-the-park grand slam potential. At the very least, it’s three runs for the Tigers. Instead they got zero, then Burnett settled down and kept it that way. Six innings later, he made another thrilling catch on a Jhonny Peralta fly ball (video), laying out to save a run, keep the tying run from coming to the plate, and ending the inning.

On the offensive side of the ball, which is really what Granderson is known for, he doubled in the team’s third run of the game, which also helped setup the fourth run later in the inning. He also tripled in Derek Jeter in the first inning of Game Three and whacked a solo homer in Game Two as the Yankees tried (and failed) to make a comeback. Everyone’s spent so much time focusing on how poorly Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, and Nick Swisher have hit over the last two postseasons that they haven’t bothered to notice what Curtis has done with the bat, namely hit .318/.464 (!)/.614 in the playoffs as a Yankee. Remember the came tying triple off Francisco Liriano in Game One of last year’s ALDS? Another feature in his cap.

Granderson had a weak September (.205/.300/.375 in exactly 100 PA), no denying it, but he still had an MVP caliber year. We’re talking a .262/.364/.552 batting with 41 homers, and he’s shaken off that slow September to again become a force in the ALDS. He was a two-way threat last night, creating runs with the bat and certainly saving runs with the glove. Granderson impacted the game as much as any player on the field, which is something he’s been doing all year.