Daily Archives: May 17, 2006

Tuesday night’s epic triple-comeback classic lasted three hours and 49 minutes and saw six Yankee pitchers throw a total of 165 pitches. Last night, Chien-Ming Wang and Mariano Rivera set the Rangers down with a mere 95 tosses in a mere two hours and 34 minutes. If not for a two bad pitches by Chien-Ming Wang in the eighth and a trio of errors by the right side of the Yankee infield earlier in the game, the 4-3 win would have been about as tidy a game as one could ask for after Tuesday night’s glorious mess.

The Yanks took an early lead in the bottom of the first when Derek Jeter reached on an infield single, was pushed to second by an eight-pitch walk to DH Jason Giambi, moved to third on an Alex Rodriguez fly out to right and was plated by Tuesday night’s hero, Jorge Posada.

Working with alarming efficiency, Wang managed to get into and out of a third inning jam on nine pitches (single, single, line-out, double play), but ran into trouble in the fourth when Robinson Cano botched a play at second base for the first of his two errors on the night. After Mark Teixeira grounded out to Cano to start the inning, Phil Nevin drew a five-pitch walk. Hank Blalock then hit a sharp grounder to Alex Rodriguez’s left that the Yankee third baseman managed to stab and shovel to second to force out Nevin. Cano, thinking of turning another inning-ending double play, took the throw coming across the bag, but dropped the ball while making the transfer to his throwing hand. Not only that, but in his haste to turn the DP, came too far across the bag to get the neighborhood call, a situation likely exacerbated by his flubbing the transfer. Nevin was called safe and Kevin Mench followed with an RBI single on the next pitch before Wang struck out Brad Wilkerson on three more throws.

Cano literally booted another ball in the top of the fifth, but another DP grounder erased his baserunner and Wang pounced on a Gary Matthews Jr. bunt to get out of the inning on just seven pitches. The Yanks then sprung into action with two outs in the fifth when another eight-pitch Giambi at-bat ended in a flared double to left center. Alex Rodriguez followed with his second infield single of the game, this one ticking off the end of Hank Blalock’s glove in the shortstop hole (the first was a Baltimore chop Alex beat out). That brought up Posada, who again delivered an RBI single. Cano and Bernie Williams followed with RBI singles past Mark DeRosa into right before Andy Phillips threw his bat at a 2-2 pitch to ground into an inning-ending fielder’s choice.

Wang continued to cruise from there, needing eight pitches in the sixth–with Cano narrowly avoiding another error on the first out (as in the fifth, he didn’t stay down on a grounder right to him), before turning yet another inning-ending double play–and eight more in the seventh, thanks to a terrific spin play by Jeter ranging behind second. Incidentally, Andy Phillips, who committed the first error of the game in the first, made difficult picks at first on both the sixth-inning double play and Jeter’s spin-throw in the seventh.

In the eighth, Wang got DeRosa to ground out on his second pitch, but then gave up a double to Gerald Laird and a two-run homer to Matthews on his next two offerings to bring the Rangers within a run. He then needed just seven more pitches to get Michael Young and Teixeira to ground out to end the inning, ending his night having thrown 68 percent of a mere 81 pitches for strikes across eight innings of work. Mariano Rivera, pitched a 1-2-3 ninth to wrap things up.

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Had last night’s historic comeback come in the penultimate game of a playoff series, tonight’s affair would be a foregone conclusion. It seems everytime a team is on its way to winning a series only to be interrupted by a dramatic comeback that forces a double-elimination game, the team that was mere innings from a series win is unable to recover and staggers, zombie-like to defeat. Some quick examples: The Cubs in the 2003 NLCS, the Giants in the 2001 World Series, the Red Sox in the 1986 World Series, on a larger scale the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS and the Angels in the 1986 ALCS (two notable exceptions being the Diamondbacks and Reds in the 2001 and 1975 World Series respectively).

That sort of thing is far less likely to occur in the third game of a four-game series in May, but if ever there was a loss that could put a team off its game the following day, it was the one the Rangers suffered last night. Looking to prevent such an occurence will be Kameron Loe, whom the Yankees handled capably in Texas, touching him up for five runs on five hits and three walks in five innings, four of those runs coming on a pair of homers by Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi. No word yet as to whether or not Giambi will be back in the line-up tonight, so in lieu of that useful information I’ll just mention that Loe looks like he could be Scott Brosius’s son, though he’s only 15 years younger than the one-time World Series MVP.

Loe will be opposed by Chien-Ming Wang, who handled the Rangers capably in Texas, limiting them to three runs on seven hits and no walks over six innings. In his one start since then, Wang twirled an eight-inning, three-hit gem against the A’s B-squad. Wang is on a streak of four-straight solid starts in which he’s posted the following line:

26 IP, 19 H, 8 R, 0 HR, 9 BB, 5 K, 1.08 WHIP, 2.77 ERA, 2-0

The issue, of course, is that nasty 5:9 K/BB. In 49 innings this season, Wang has struck out 18 (3.31 K/9) and walked 16 (2.94 BB/9). Before Wang’s first start of the season I wrote about the importance of Wang increasing his strikeout rate:

In his rookie season, Wang struck out just 3.64 men per nine innings, a severe drop from his career minor league rate of 7.06 K/9. In 74 1/3 career triple-A innings between 2004 and 2005, Wang struck out 6.78 men per nine and in 15 1/3 innings this spring he struck out 5.87 men per nine innings. Given that history, it seems fair to expect Wang to increase his strikeout rate to something in the mid-fives this year. As dominating as Chien-Ming can be in terms of keeping his opponents from getting the ball in the air, he’ll need to help himself more often this year if he expects to improve on his freshman campaign.

That hasn’t happened and indeed, Wang hasn’t improved on his 2005 performance. He has managed to repeat it almost exactly, however. For the time being, that will do.

I was there. Yo, I was watching the whole thing next to Steve Lombardi who invited me along on the count of he had an extra ticket. Steve has a season ticket package that he shares with a group of co-workers in the lodge section. He’s been to hundreds of games at the Stadium and it’s safe to say that last night’s will rank amongst the most memorable. Back in 1998, I bailed out on going to a game against the Orioles which saw the lead change numerous times and ended with Jorge Posada hitting his second homer of night. “I can’t believe you didn’t come,” one of my friends said, rubbing it in. But I was able to see that game from home and never felt badly about not being there in person. There would be other nights, I thought. Then, I was at the game where Jason Giambi hit the grand slam in the rain in 2002 but I was sick and left in the fifth inning. When I saw the papers the next morning, my heart sunk briefly when I realized I had missed something special. Now, I’m not going to say I called the comeback last night exactly, but after Shawn Chacon was down 2-0, I turned to Steve and said, “I can see the Yanks getting down 4, 5-0 and coming back.”

It was a happily noisy night at the Stadium yet for the first forty-five minutes the loudest sounds came from the Rangers’ bats. It seemed like they hit everything hard against Chacon. At least everything they hit was loud. But even when the Yanks were down 9-0, the fans still seemed cheery enough. After Johnny Damon–who is playing with a chipped bone in his right foot–singled to start the bottom of the third, the crowd roared when Derek Jeter lined a double over Gary Matthews’ head in center field. Jeter made a huge turn past second and was actually caught between the bag and third. But Michael Young was still way off the bag after making the cut-off throw in the outfield. The cut-off throw had gone to the pitcher John Koronka instead, who looked at Jeter. Both men froze for an instant, then Jeter raced back to second as Koronka ran towards him. Young sprinted to the bag as well. Koronka threw to Young who arrived at the bag just after Jeter. The crowd erupted again. This kind of see-saw play and corresponding reaction from the fans characterized the game.

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