Bleacher Creature Feature

#53: LDS Game 4

5 October 2003

Which is the main reason why the Yankees watched the ALCS from their living rooms last year and will watch it from the first-base dugout this year. Not because they "know how to win," not because the Twins didn't have the right character, not because of any of the other imbecilic platitudes spewed endlessly by David Justice and Jeff Brantley throughout the broadcast on ESPN, but because the Yankees starting pitchers allowed less than one hit per inning, allowed one walk every four innings, a bit less than a strikeout an inning, and only six runs in over 28 innings.

To put the differences in perspective, in 2002, the quartet gave up 1.85 hits per inning, 1.15 runs per inning, and .46 strikeouts per inning. In 2003, those same four gave up only .84 hits per inning, .21 runs per inning, and .94 strikeouts per inning. That's four damn good pitchers bringing their best game to the pitchers mound. Add this:

With pitching like that, all you need is a little bit of offense, and you'll win.

Which is good, as until today, a little bit of offense was all the Yankees provided. The cool thing was that today everyone contributed. The eight runs were scored by eight different people (only Alfonso Soriano didn't score a run, and he made up for it by driving in two), everyone in the starting lineup got a hit. Hell, in the six-run fourth inning, everyone in the starting lineup except for Aaron Boone got on base (Jason Giambi got on base twice in the inning).

The most heartening sights today were Giambi going 2-4 with a walk, including an RBI double to the opposite field (hitting to the opposite field is a great sign that Giambi might be coming out of his endless funk) and Jorge Posada going 2-5 with a run scored.

Best of all was Nick Johnson. First they walk Juan Rivera to get to him, loading the bases. After swinging through a high fastball that he was trying to hit into the seats, Johan Santana threw him the exact same pitch and Nicky wisely went with it this time, plunking it up the middle to get a big double. That made it a 4-0 game, and pretty much broke it open. After coming up short several times this series, it was good to see Nicky doing what he does best in that at-bat, as well as giving the Twins a nice fuck-you RBI after the intentional walk. He also had a second double robbed on one of two truly spectacular plays by Shannon Stewart (the other robbing Derek Jeter of a home run.)

Congratulations to the Minnesota Twins, who spent the first half of the year stumbling around looking up at the Royals (!), only to come on strong and win their second straight division title after Commissioner Bud Stupid said they should be eliminated as a franchise because they couldn't possibly compete. They have nothing to be ashamed of and a great deal to be proud of. Ron Gardenhire did a good job managing in the series, but there wasn't a helluva lot he could do against the buzzsaw of Yankee pitching. The frontline starting has been spectacular all season -- it's been the back of the staff that's been problematic, but the back of the staff is of little to no consequence in the postseason -- and it just shut the Twins down. Nothing Gardenhire could do about it except throw out his best, which he did. He wisely decided that if he was going to go down, it would be with his best -- Santana just couldn't get it done.

I have every confidence that we'll see the Twins back playing October baseball next year. And when they do, I will cheer, as it's yet another deserved poke in the eye to Bud Stupid.

Speaking of the back of the pitching staff, the Giants deserved to lose their series because of a string of idiotic decisions Felipe Alou made, which began with his incomprehensible decision to carry twelve pitchers. Joe Sheehan said it best in his 5 October "Prospectus Today" on BaseballProspectus.com: "Not only do you not need that many arms in a Division Series, you don't want that many. You don't want the 11th- and 12th-best pitchers in your organization anywhere near a mound in these games." Particularly in the National League, when you need a bench, as Alou learned when he ran out of bench players twice. Notably, he didn't have anyone to pinch run for J.T. Snow on what turned out to be the final play, and a pinch runner would've been real handy, as anybody who saw Snow I-think-I-can his way around third will attest. Add to that some remarkably idiotic play, from Jose Cruz Jr.'s dropped pop-up to Marquis Grissom and Snow getting picked off because they apparently forgot just who it is the Marlins have behind the plate, and you've got the Marlins in the NLCS against whoever wins tonight's Braves-Cubs game.

Not that the Marlins don't deserve credit. Ivan Rodriguez put on a one-man show that had to be seen to be believed. Their pitching did the job done by neutralizing Barry Bonds and keeping the rest of the Giants' mediocre offense contained. And I confidently predict that the shot of Ugueth Urbina tackling Pudge while the latter holds up the baseball will be one of those Shots We Never Forget in baseball, from Yogi Berra jumping into Don Larsen's arms in 1956 to Carlton Fisk willing the home run into fair territory in 1975 to Wade Boggs riding the horse in 1996.

For the record, I'm 3-3 so far in LDS predictions, since I picked the Giants (wrong) to sweep (dead wrong), the Yanks (yes) in four (right on), the Cubs-Braves series to be over in four (wrong), and the A's-Red Sox series to be over in five (correct). As I type, the Cubs are winning 4-0; if they hold on, and Oakland wins tomorrow, I won't have done too bad.

I'm just glad that the Boston-Oakland series has gone to five, as it puts us in a good position. Regardless of who wins, we won't see the #1 starter until Game 3, as Pedro Martinez and Barry Zito are going at it tomorrow in the rubber game. And whoever wins will have taken two cross-country flights -- one tonight to go to Oakland, another Monday night or Tuesday morning to get to New York for Game 1 Wednesday night -- while the Yanks will be nice and rested.

Of course, the flip side is that the Game 3 starter is usually the Game 7 starter...

We'll be back in the bleachers on Wednesday for Game 1. May it go better than our last Game 1.....

NEXT: 'Tween Series

MAIN PAGE | LATEST UPDATES

Appearances | Bibliography | Biography | Bleacher Creature Feature | Blizzard Games fiction | Buffy the Vampire Slayer fiction | Commentary | Covers and other artwork | Dead Kitchen Radio and The Bronx Bongo | Doctor Who fiction | Dragon Precinct | Fanfiction | Farscape fiction | Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda fiction | Gloat page | Imaginings: An Anthology of Long Short Fiction | KRAD Fan Club | Links | Marvel novels | OtherWere | Pictures | Star Trek fiction | Stories and story & novel excerpts | Urban Nightmares | Young Hercules fiction