Innings Count May Be Wearing on Indians’ Aces
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In a great baseball series, nothing ever happens the way you expect it will. Therefore, no one should have been surprised when the American League Championship Series turned into a game of pinball, with the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians each scoring 16 in splitting the first two games at Fenway Park. After all, the games had been widely touted (including in this column) as sure classics. The four starters in these games counted among them two World Series MVPs, three of the American League’s five 19-game winners, and the likely top three finishers in this year’s Cy Young voting. Only one of them, Boston’s Josh Beckett, lasted even five innings. We should have known.
It’s easy to blame for failure rather than crediting for success, so it should be noted that the main reason these lineups are scoring is that they’re both very good. Preposterously, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez reached base every time they came to the plate in the first game, while Cleveland’s big three of Travis Hafner, Victor Martinez, and Grady Sizemore are taking full advantage of the chance to show all the world that they deserve their reputations. Slightly lesser lights are shining, too. Kevin Youkilis’s two-out at-bat in the bottom of the ninth Saturday, in which he took two strikes and then fouled off six tough pitches with the winning run on base and Ortiz on deck, is exactly the kind of at-bat the Yankees used to have when they were winning championships.
This kind of at-bat is what hurt the Indians. They are not going to win if twin aces C.C. Sabathia, 27, and Fausto Carmona, 23, each fail to last five in their next outings, and they are not going to last five if they walk five, which each did in his first start. These two have excellent control, having walked just 78 in 457 innings this year, but the Red Sox are an incredibly disciplined team. They led the league in walks with 689 (25 more than Oakland, the next-best team), and most all their hitters consistently grind out the kind of quality at-bat that wears down a pitcher whether or not it results in an out.
Patient as the Sox may be, though, a lot of this is probably just because Sabathia and Carmona are cooked; each vastly surpassed his career high in innings this year. Before this year, Sabathia had last pitched more than 200 innings five years ago; the 250.7 he’s now thrown this year are nearly 60 more than he threw last year. Carmona’s 228 innings are more than twice what he threw last year. Twenty-seven-year-old Beckett, meanwhile, has now pitched 215.7 innings, just above the 204.7 he threw last year. It’s no wonder he’s still fresh and pitching like a young Curt Schilling.
If exhaustion is the problem here, it’s hard to see how the Indians will solve it. Carmona relies on a heavy fastball thrown low in the zone; the Red Sox are not going to help him out if he’s throwing it below the zone. Sabathia is a complete pitcher, but his most impressive weapon is a mid-90s fastball that he can usually put exactly where he wants it. This keeps right-handed hitters’ hands a bit back, gets left-handers defending the inside, and leaves both gaping at Sabathia’s other pitches. It also looks to be gone right now. Sabathia walked more than two men in a game just twice all season, and both times allowed only three; in his two postseason starts this year, he’s allowed 11, because he doesn’t have full command of the fastball. A team like the Red Sox is just going to sniff at anything out of the strike zone, take their walks, and wait for mistakes.
Happily for them, the Red Sox have problems of their own. Saturday’s seven-run bullpen meltdown was so predictable that everyone knew beforehand exactly who would pour the gas and light the flames, and it was of course Eric Gagne who did the damage. In manager Terry Francona’s defense, he went to all his better pitchers before Gagne, but the one-time Cy Young winner has shown by now that he simply can’t be trusted with the game on the line. And with Schilling looking awfully tired himself, giving up nine hits in 4.2 innings, suddenly Beckett looks like the team’s only reliable starter. Dodgy starts and key relievers who guarantee loss are a horrific combination. Sabathia may just be done; maybe the same is true of Carmona. The Indians, though, have more than enough offense of their own, and they now have homefield advantage. This series may end up being twice the shootout anyone thought it would be, but that’s a game both teams can win. This really is anyone’s to take.
tmarchman@nysun.com