Santana Gives Twins Crucial Edge
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The Yankees are in trouble. This team is far too good to ever be called an underdog, but I don’t think they’re better than the Minnesota Twins. The series that starts tonight is a classic match of opposite strengths – the Twins’ pitching and defense against the Yankees’ dominant hitting – and the Yankees don’t have the advantage.
Of the Yankees’ rotation and the Twins’ offense, the less said the better. I can only say that Mike Mussina, Jon Lieber, and whichever Yankee pitcher is healthy enough to take the mound for Game 3, strike me as less unimpressive than the Twins’ offense, which is comprised of a variety of no. 6 hitters and promising young slugger Justin Morneau. At least the Yankees’ staff has the potential to dominate, which cannot be said for the Minnesota hitters.
The overwhelming presence in this series, obviously, is Twins ace Johan Santana, who is coming off a stretch worthy of Sandy Koufax’s best years. The mind reels at what he’s done: After the All-Star break he went 13-0 with a 1.18 ERA. Opposing batters hit only .154 against him, and he struck out 124 against only 22 walks in his final 99 1 /3 innings. He allowed one or no runs in 15 of his last 22 starts, and allowed as many as three only once. Essentially, the Yankees will be facing an Eric Gagne capable of going eight innings tonight.
For the Yankees, the situation is even worse than it might appear. Twins manager Ron Gardenhire shrewdly handled his young ace this year, getting 223 innings out of him despite an average of only 100 pitches per start. Santana responded by pitching his best in September, allowing one run in five starts, including a stellar five-inning performance in the Bronx last week. The best pitcher in the game right now is at his strongest, and there’s not much hope of an off night.
There’s nothing particularly fancy about Santana’s approach; he throws a fastball, change, and a breaking ball, varies his speeds, and locates precisely up and down and on both corners of the plate. Tom Glavine would doubtless nod in approval. Santana’s fastball, though, comes in about 15 miles an hour faster than the one Glavine is throwing these days.
Santana isn’t 10 feet tall, of course. He gave up nine runs in 7 2 /3 innings against the Yankees in last year’s Division Series, and it’s foolish to ignore the impact of the pressure that October can have on a player. But it’s a good bet that for the Yankees to win the series, they’ll have to take the three games Santana doesn’t start, and that’s not going to be easy, either.
The problem for the Yankees isn’t so much that Twins’ no. 2 starter, Brad Radke, had a fine season. He did, and if he had received better run support he would have received some down-ballot Cy Young votes. But it’s more relevant to this series that he poses a difficult matchup for the Yankees.
Radke doesn’t walk anybody – just 26 in 214 1 /3 innings, easily the lowest among AL ERA qualifiers. The Yankees walk more than anybody: They led the league with 667 free passes, nine more than Boston, 60 more than Oakland, 140 more than fifth-place Baltimore. Take those walks away and you have the Chicago White Sox, who tied with the Yankees for the league lead in home runs (241), had a team batting average just two points lower than the Yankees’ mediocre .269, and finished 9 1 /2 games behind the Twins.
In a five-game series, the Yankees should face Santana and Radke twice each, and the similarly walk-averse Carlos Silva (35 in 203 IP) once. Because they don’t hit well for average, because the Twins’ reputation for fine, athletic defense is well deserved, and because the Twins’ control pitchers will take the walk away from them, the key for the Yankees will be to get at the Twins’ overrated bullpen. In order to do that, they’ll have to force the starters out, and the only way they’re going to do that is by hitting the ball out of the yard.
Unfortunately for them, that’s not their game. Despite their huge home run total, the Yankees don’t have a pure home run hitter in their lineup; it’s just not their approach, and it hasn’t been for many years. Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield, and Hideki Matsui all hit home runs for the same reason. They wait for a pitcher to fall behind and then swing for line drives. The best strategy for the Yankees will be to swing at strikes early in counts, and to swing for power.
Whether they’re able to recognize this and execute the plan without damaging their approaches remains to be seen. It’s the sort of thing at which the Paul O’Neill/Tino Martinez Yankees excelled. Many have rightly observed that Sheffield and Matsui would have fit well onto those teams, and those two and Derek Jeter will likely end up being the key Yankees in this series. Whether that’s because they were able to adjust their approaches to attack the Twins at their weak point, or because their failure to do so cost them a chance at a championship, we’ll see starting tonight.