It Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Often, a great playoff series – and that’s what this weekend’s Red Sox-Yankees set will be – sees a matchup of opposing strengths or differing philosophies. Hitting against pitching, speed against power, patience against aggressiveness – these are the scenarios that can drive a manager mad, especially if he finds that each of his team’s strengths is balanced by one of his opponent’s weaknesses, and that his every weakness can be exploited by one of his opponent’s strengths.
This is not such a series.
Yankees fans are rightly afraid of the Red Sox, who are quite capable of sweeping this series, but Boston is badly damaged, vulnerable, and probably a lot weaker than the Yankees right now. The flaws in the Sox’ pitching staff are well known, but the pitching isn’t the problem right now. That would be the offense.
This team was built to bludgeon its opponents into submission, but it hasn’t been doing so. In September, the Sox have averaged 4.7 runs per game, against the 5.8 they’d been scoring through the end of August; subtract a 15-run thrashing they dealt the Devil Rays on September 20, and that number drops to 4.3. Aside from David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, and the first-base platoon of Kevin Millar and John Olerud, no one has been hitting much.
In some cases, like those of Johnny Damon and Jason Varitek, that’s due to injury or end-of-season fatigue; in others, like those of second basemen Tony Graffanino and Alex Cora, it’s because the Sox are running out players who aren’t all that good. This flawed team is exactly like the Yankees, but its aged ace hasn’t put it all together down the stretch and its offense isn’t clicking. Joe Torre’s men are ripe for a takedown, but the Red Sox may not be the team to do it.
Tonight’s game is, in theory, one the Yankees should win. Chien-Ming Wang has pitched reasonably well lately, but the key is his 2.91 groundball-to-fly-ball ratio. The Sox are a team full of uppercut hitters who swing for home runs, and Wang probably isn’t going to serve them anything they can golf over the Green Monster; he also isn’t going to serve them anything they can hit toward his team’s porous outfield defense.
David Wells, on the other hand, hasn’t pitched well in the past against key Yankee hitters like Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Gary Sheffield, and while his home ERA of 3.00 is around half his road ERA this year, he remains a lefty in Fenway, historically a bad combination because of the park’s odd dimensions.
Tomorrow’s game is the key for the Red Sox. Knuckleballer Tim Wakefield has been Terry Francona’s best pitcher of late, putting up a 1.99 ERA and averaging eight innings per start in September, including a memorable 1-0 loss in which he surrendered one run to the Yanks in eight innings. Aside from being their hottest pitcher, Wakefield offers two advantages to his team.
The first is that, despite a few memorable pastings at the hands of the Bombers, Wakefield’s knuckler has befuddled most Yankees save role players Tino Martinez (.958 OPS in 48 at-bats) and Matt Lawton (.950 in 26).The second is that because he’s so durable, he can be expected to avoid putting the ball in the hands of any of the weak Boston relievers. The advantage the Yankees have is that their patience makes them uniquely suited to wait Wakefield out. With a knuckleballer, the whole key is to wait until he throws a meatball; if the Yankees do that, they can beat him.
Should the teams split the first two, we’d have a scene out of some horrible Kevin Costner movie. Curt Schilling, the wounded veteran gunslinger, arguably the great big-game pitcher of his generation, against Mike Mussina, the crafty wounded veteran coming off one start in which he pitched abominably and one in which he pitched brilliantly, with up-from-nowhere underdog Shawn Chacon waiting for the call in the bullpen, and the playoffs and bragging rights on the line. Not being a horrible Costner movie, this would actually make for a hell of a ballgame, and seems to me likely to happen.
There’s no sense in trying to predict what Schilling and Mussina are going to do. Both have serious Cooperstown credentials, both have come up huge under pressure in the past, and both are old and hurt. They could both throw shutouts; they could both get knocked out in the first inning. It should be baseball at its best.
What could save Sox manager Terry Francona is his secret weapon, Jon Papelbon. A top pitching prospect, Papelbon has been great in a setup role this month, giving up two runs in nine games and striking out more than a man per inning. He can hit 98 mph with his fastball, and the Yankees have only seen him once. He’s awfully prone to walking lefties, but he could make a difference in front of semi-useful closer Mike Timlin.
If the Yankees have one problem likely to bite them, it’s Joe Torre’s tendency to over manage in the big games. This won’t be such a problem with the offense – it’s not going to do anyone any harm if Torre is tempted to send up a lot of pinch-hitters to deal with Boston’s interchangeable scrub relievers – Chad Harville, Chad Bradford, Mike Myers – as the Yanks have a good bench boasting the likes of Martinez, Lawton, and Mark Bellhorn.
The problem will be with the pitching. Aside from the game-ending tandem of Mariano Rivera and Tom Gordon, the only vaguely effective situational guy Torre has is lefty Wayne Franklin, who isn’t much better than Myers. The more pitchers Torre goes through, the more likely he is to hit on someone who’s going to give up the game.
Torre, however, could wind up being saved from himself by the Red Sox’ bench, which is pretty useless. Aside from whichever of their first and second basemen aren’t starting, they don’t have anyone who’s at all dangerous. Japanese league veteran Roberto Petagine is the best of the bunch, and he doesn’t have the confidence of the manager.
Add all this up and the Yankees have the edge. On paper. That doesn’t mean a thing, of course. So many factors can come into play – Damon’s weak throwing arm, the winds in Fenway, a fastball missing the mark by half an inch, a rookie choking or finding that the biggest stage of all doesn’t bother him – that it’s almost certain something I didn’t even mention here will decide the AL East. It should be spectacular.