Tagged: CC Sabathia

World Series Game 1 From a Distance

The first game of the 2009 World Series has Jerome in a dissociative state this morning, which is why he’s referring to himself in the third person. Just to be clear, this is in contrast to, say, Shaquille O’Neal or Rickey Henderson, who refer to themselves in the third person as though they are constantly looking in the mirror and admiring icons too great to be enclosed within their mere mortal frames.

Basically, Jerome doesn’t want to be the same guy who went to bed Wednesday night feeling surly and aggravated over the Yankees’ 6-1 loss to the Phillies. In fact, he doesn’t want to get anywhere close to that miserable, foul-mouthed dude. He prefers to avoid negativity as he starts the day.

hughes_250_102909.jpgJerome realizes there are going to be three or four major storylines surrounding the game as the Thursday media cycle gets on its daily roll. The first is Phillies ace Cliff Lee’s dominance over Yankees hitters.

The second is likely to be the failure of the Yankees bullpen mainstays, most especially Phil Hughes, to hold the Phillies’ offense in check after starter CC Sabathia left the game in the eighth, turning a two-run hole into a bridgeless, six-run chasm in just a couple of innings.

The third will be that the occasionally flammable A.J. Burnett being scheduled to start an all-important Game 2 for the Yankees is a nervous, uncertain, pressure-packed proposition.

Fourth … well, the fourth-place topic, or topics, will be a medley of dire comparisons to the Yankees’ weak 2003 World Series performance against Josh Beckett, concerns about the Alex Rodriguez pressing, and colorful Pedro Martinez highlight clips and quotes.

Jerome won’t feel too sorry for the Yanks as the day wears on. They earned all this chatter for themselves. Yes, one can say Lee had something to do with it, and tip one’s cap to him. But since he as much as tipped his cap to himself non-chalanting a Johnny Damon pop-up in the sixth, Jerome will refrain from doing it here. While Thursday morning’s Positive Jerome may not be anything like Thursday night’s wretched, cussing Negative Jerome, he remains susceptible to temptation by the dark side.

Rather than dissect what others already will be picking apart, Jerome is just going make a few quick points this morning. Get in, get out, and then lay low until tonight’s game.

The goat horns Hughes sprouted in Game 5 of the ALCS have fast grown large and unwieldy. As some may recall, Game 5 was when he followed the Yanks’ dramatic come-from-behind, lead-seizing, six-run rally in the seventh by entering the game at the bottom of that frame with two outs, and immediately coughing up a pair of runs to erase their lead and eventually lose them the game.

Hughes has now been a key factor, and arguably the deciding one, in two of the team’s three 2009 postseason losses. That’s pretty darned awful. One can only hope his coaches are privately telling him it’s time to stand tall and throw strikes — to man up — rather than using coach-speak like “too fine” and “mechanical flaws” and “shortening his delivery” to address his failures, because the latter are not causes, but symptoms. They are happening because he’s showing no confidence in himself. You can see it when he takes the mound. It’s in his face and body language. It has to change, because he is an absolutely vital component of the bullpen, which has itself been vital to the Yanks’ success all season.

Okay, that’s it for Hughes. Next up, Mark Teixeira, who’s hitting .186 for the postseason. This even worse than Damon’s .239 postseason batting average, Hideki Matsui’s .242, and Robin Cano’s dismal .211. For sure, Tex is doing better than Nick Swisher, who presently holds a team-low .114 October average. And yes, he’s got a superb glove at first base, but Tony Clark was no slouch at the defensive end, and neither was Doug Mientkiewicz, and no one ever clamored for the Yankees to go out and sign either of them as their regular first baseman.

Teixeira is the team’s No. 3 batter. He is supposed to be a big bopper in the lineup, supposed to drive in Derek Jeter, who is seemingly always on base, with timely hits. But right now he is not hitting at all, and that is killing the Yanks. If that doesn’t change soon, someone will have to drill horn holes in his batting helmet to prevent it from rising too high off the top of his head.

This is also true for the other culprits mentioned above. Time to wake up, fellas. In fact, it’s past time to wake up. Jeter and Rodriguez can’t be expected shoulder the burden for the entire offense the rest of the way.

But Jerome promised he’d make this short and sweet, and he intends to keep that pledge. He moreover doesn’t want to be anything like the ill-tempered, cussing Jerome of Wednesday night vintage, and get himself or anyone else worked up. So he’s going to end on an upbeat note or two.

burnett_250_102909.jpgJerome believes all the yammering you will hear today about Burnett’s fragile psyche is so much noise. The rap on him is largely unfair. He can be wild, true. And we have seen him rattle. But he’s pitched well overall in the postseason, and has also stepped up in big spots, like when he outdueled Beckett in a pivotal series August series against the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium.

A.J.’s tough and talented enough for the stopper’s job. And ought to be better than a diminished Pedro Martinez, who should no longer strike fear into the collective heart of a Major League lineup, his seven-innings of shutout ball against a tepid Dodgers squad in the NLCS notwithstanding. The Yankees ought to be able to knock Pedro out early and get into the Phillies own horn-toting bullpen tonight.

It is worth pointing out that Phillies manager Charlie Manuel only elected to start Martinez in Game 2 because he has lost faith in Cole Hamels, last year’s ace of his staff.

The Game 3 starters will be Hamels for the Phillies and Andy Pettitte for the Yankees. Hamels has a 7.20 ERA for the NLDS and a 6.52 ERA for the NLCS. Pettitte’s numbers in the two American League playoff rounds, by comparison, are at 1.42 and 2.84. And forget the stats, he is Andy Pettitte.

So Sunnyside-Up Jerome likes the Yank’s chances in the next couple of games. He is going to continue keeping Sunnyside-Down Jerome at a distance throughout the day, concentrate on his work, and keep the TV and radio off till approximately eight o’clock tonight. Then he may or may not be at Yankee Stadium to watch the game, but will be definitely be watching it from somewhere.

He optimistically expects to be back to referring to himself in the first person tomorrow.

The Ghost of ’04

For two days before Thursday’s ALCS Game Five in Anaheim, I strongly discounted the media drumbeat that a Yankees failure to close out the series that night would evoke the leering specter of 2004’s collapse against the Red Sox in the minds of Yankees fans.

My feelings stemmed from the key differences between this season’s Yankees squad and the one that historically blew a 3-0 lead over its opposition. I was never comfortable with that lead in ’04. Even as the Yankees headed into Boston for three games after taking a 2-0 series advantage, and then pounded the Sox into their shower room in a 19-8 laugher, I worried about the pitching matchups in potential Games 6 and 7 at Yankee Stadium.

kevinbrown_250_102309.jpgThe Sox had Curt Schilling and Derek Lowe in line to start those games. The Yankees had Jon Lieber, followed by basically nobody. Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez was a candidate for a possible all-or-nothing seventh game, but a very iffy one, as he’d been struggling to recover from a late-season injury. It seemed doubtful that Javier Vázquez, who’d been a huge disappointment in his first and only year with the team, would get the ball. That left the Yankees’ alleged ace going into the season, Kevin Brown, as manager Joe Torre’s likeliest option if the series was extended to its limit.

No Yankees fan in the universe would have chosen to entrust his or her team’s fate with the injury plagued, surly, selfish and ineffective Brown. Most never believed the series would come down to it. The Yankees, after all, had three cracks at putting away the Sox before they reached that critical juncture.

As I said, I was jittery over the prospect all along. For one thing, overconfidence is not one of my personal failings. For another, I had always felt the Yankees’ unwise failure to re-sign Andy Pettitte after the 2003 season had birthed a big, vicious dog that would sink its teeth into them where and when it hurt the most.

I believed then, and still believe, that the Yankees would have never had their 2004 championship aspirations murdered by the Red Sox if Pettitte had been on the team. If they’d held onto Pettitte, I think there’s a good chance they would have won their fifth World Series title in less than a decade.

It’s poetic to me that Pettitte, with his hawkish stare and Texas-sized heart, a Yankee to the marrow rightfully back in the place where he belongs, will be taking the ball for the Yankees in a vital Game 6 of the 2009 ALCS in hopes of staving off yet another apocalyptic Game 7.

But six years have passed since Pettitte threw what would prove to be the last pitch as a Yankee for far too long in the 2003 World Series. He is not the same pitcher now as he was back then, and Yankee Stadium is not the same place as it was back then. His cut fastball has lost several miles of velocity, and he relies more on off-speed pitches and precision accuracy than he used to. The cutter remains his best weapon, the one gets him his groundball outs. If it isn’t sharp, though, it can lead to hard-hit fly balls. And in Yankee Stadium, now, fly balls can travel great distances. This is probably the major reason Pettitte’s 2009 record on the road was better than it was at home.

There’s still reason to be confident–not overconfident–that Pettitte can do his part to send the Angels flying home on droopy wings Saturday night. That the Yankees will close out the series behind him, pop their champagne corks and go on to tackle the Phillies in the World Series. He was excellent overall throughout the regular season, and found renewed success at Yankee Stadium back around June or July, very uncoincidentally when he rediscovered his feel for the cutter.

But even if he pitches well, Pettitte is going to need help. If 2009 is not to resemble 2004 in its outcome — albeit with the current opposition wearing a more garish shade of red than the Boston team — it would be helpful for Phil Hughes to pitch with the courage and confidence we saw from him all season rather than look like Tom Gordon reincarnated on the mound.

It’s okay for Hughes to tell the media, as he did after Thursday night’s loss, that he was “too fine” with his pitches when he entered the game with two outs in the seventh inning, surrendering two runs after the Yankees staged what could have been a comeback for the ages. I wouldn’t have expected him to say Anaheim’s thunder sticks and Rally Monkey overwhelmed him, as the entire postseason seems to have done thus far. But “too fine” is latter day coach-speak, a positive way to say a pitcher isn’t throwing strikes because he’s shying away from contact, which is itself a polite way of saying Hughes is looking scared right now. That has to stop, and at once, or the tomorrows for the Yankees may be numbered. Coach-speak doesn’t win series. Sometimes I think all does is provide a player with a psychological cushion when a hard jolt of reality would serve him better.

joba_250_102309.jpgWhile Hughes may have taken the loss, there were goats aplenty in the pitching staff. The guy one New York Times reporter calls “the pitcher who used to be Joba Chamberlain” was ineffective in the eighth inning, giving up a leadoff double and a single, putting men on first and third with one out, leaving it to the great Mariano Rivera to enter in a non-save situation and hold the Yankees to a one-run deficit. Starter A.J. Burnett would wear the biggest set of horns, first putting the Yankees in a four-run hole before we’d even carried our chips and soda in from the kitchen, and then putting two men on base in the home half of seventh after the Yankees’ breathtaking rally at the top of the inning, the one we all thought would start the corks popping in California.

Offensively, it’s unfortunate the Nick Swisher succumbed to his bête noire, the hyper-adrenalized dark beast of impatience that undermines his natural talent for identifying the strike zone in tight spots. YES postgame analyst Ken Singleton pointed out that Swisher would have been well advised to take a cue from former Yankee Bernie Williams in his bases loaded, ninth inning at-bat, and repeatedly step out of the box to throw off the timing of the Angels’ shaky closer Brian Fuentes. Fuentes was self-destructing, and Swisher had run up a full count on him. A little psychological gamesmanship might have led to ball four, a tie game, and a very different final result.

As fans await Saturday night’s penultimate game of the series, it should be comforting to know that Pettitte will be on the mound. It is an equal comfort that CC Sabathia, the anti-Kevin Brown, will follow him should things come down to a Game 7.

The 2009 Yankees aren’t the 2004 Yankees. I think they will pull this one off.

But I would be lying if I denied that the malevolent specter of the ’04 debacle didn’t reach its cold, ragged-clawed fingers into my heart last night. After insisting all day that the press was summoning up a false demon to sell newspapers papers and keep radio listeners near the dial, I realized I was wrong and they were right. Burnett spoke of leaving it all on the field after his losing effort. That’s all fine and dandy. But I now realize I’m no different than countless other Yankees fans who left something the field at the Old Lady Across the Street after Game 7 of 2004’s ALCS. Burnett didn’t do anything Thursday night to help us reclaim it. And as I went to bed, I couldn’t shake the image of Hughes looking like Gordon on
the mound amid a roaring sea of red.

In my mind’s eye, there was something very scary and dangerous hovering over him.

CC!

Figure things probably won’t be as easy the rest of the way. It’s hard to believe the LA Angels of Anaheim will continue to bumble and stumble around the field like Ringling Brothers clowns flopping out of a circus train down at the Garden. And most of all, the Yanks won’t have CC Sabathia on the mound every night for the rest of the LCS.

sabathia275.jpgFriday night, though, the first night of the series, that baby belonged to CC.  Somewhere over the Yankee Stadium frieze, and the lights, and the hard, cold wind blowing in from left field, and the wet snow early in the game, and the sheet of gray October clouds spitting that snow down our hooded heads, somewhere high above it all in the New York City sky, the stars and moon and planets were aligned over CC, were shining down on him as he stood there throwing lightning for strikes in the middle of the infield diamond. Even the flags out in left were pointing stiffly at him as if to say, “This night belongs to you.”

Big stage. Big night. Big man, that CC.

And the crowd let him know it once he got to mowing through that Angels lineup. See ya later Figgins, it’s hard to run wild on the bases when you can’t get on. Fuggedabout it Abreu, you can’t draw a walk when the Big Man’s pounding you with strike after strike. Props to Torii for getting the first of those four Angels hits, but a single won’t hurt CC when he’s firing 95 mph heat to get Guerrero to line out, especially when he then spun him and his humongous lumber in a helpless circle after Vlad touched him for that one mistake in the fourth.
 
Tough to remember exactly when the chanting started. With the wind ripping into us up in the frozen stands, we were still getting loose those first few innings, still trying to get our blood circulating under layers of clothing that made us feel like kids dressed for a snow day — our coats and hoodies and thermals and Under Armour, our gloves and double socks.  Those first few innings, couples were still snuggling under their blankets while trying to stay warm.  We’d clap and yell but our brains were too frozen and numb to come up with something special. Something to fit the occasion.

And then we heard it. Maybe from somewhere in the right field grandstand, though you know those Bleacher Creatures will want to take the credit.  But it really doesn’t matter where it started, or who got it going, because the one who counted Friday night was the guy that got everybody on their feet and out from under the snuggle blankets, the guy that growing, rhythmic chant was all for, the big man on the mound, big man in a big game in the Bronx, where some of the biggest in the history of baseball have been played:

“CC! CC! CC!”

Straight on, no frills, and nothing could have felt more right, because that’s CC in a nutshell. He doesn’t showboat and rarely flashes his emotions. He just plants his foot on the rubber and mops that wide brow of his and deals. Seven, eight innings. 100, 115, 120 pitches. It was like that all summer, and here we are in the fall, and now he’s showing the Yanks, who will tell you over and over he’s their horse, that he wants them to ride him into November’s baseball dreamland.

“CC! CC! CC!”

115 pitches last night. 76 strikes, four hits, one run, eight innings. And then the ball to Mo. Figure it won’t be as easy the entire series. But it was Friday night.
 
Must-see CC hurls the Yanks toward a big postseason win.

Big as big can be.