Be It Ever So Humble . . . It’s Still A Damn Dome
Posted on Jul 9, 2009 10:54 am
By Cliff Corcoran
Barring a moderately unlikely post-season matchup against the Twins, the Yankees will play their last game at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome this afternoon. The first came back on May 28, 1982, when Ron Guidry matched up against a similarly diminutive and mustachioed righty named Bobby Castillo.
Giving early credence to the new stadium’s “Homer Dome” nickname, the two starters combined to give up seven home runs as the lead changed hands four times in the first six innings. Rookie third baseman Gary Gaetti, future Yankee Gary Ward, and rookie right-fielder Tom Brunansky (twice) all connected for solo shots off Gator. Lou Piniella, Oscar Gamble, and Roy Smalley, who had been acquired from Minnesota for reliever Ron Davis and shortstop Greg Gagne that April, went deep off Castillo.
With the game knotted at 4-4, Gaetti led off the top of the seventh with a double, prompting Yankee manager Gene Michael to go to his bullpen. George Frazier, the 1981 World Series goat, retired the next three batters, stranding Gaetti, after which the Yankees pushed across a fifth run in the top of the eighth on an Oscar Gamble triple that bounced Castillo and a two-out RBI single by Bobby Murcer.
With a 5-4 lead, Michael went straight to Goose Gossage in the eighth, but Goose blew the save, starting with a lead-off walk to Larry Milbourne, who had been traded from the Yankees to the Twins earlier that month in the deal that netted catcher Butch Wynegar. Milbourne was singled to third by Brunansky and scored on a sac fly by pinch-hitter Randy Johnson (not that one, or even the other one, this one).
In the ninth, Twins skipper Billy Gardner turned to Gossage’s former set-up man, Ron Davis, who came over in the Smalley trade the previous month. With one out, Willie Randolph and Dave Collins singled. Randolph then stole third and scored on Gamble’s subsequent single. After getting John Mayberry to fly out for the second out, Davis walked Bobby Murcer to load the bases, then gave up a back-breaking grand slam to Graig Nettles.
Given a reprieve, Gossage retired Gaetti, Ward, and Tim Laudner in order in the bottom of the ninth, punctuating a wild game with a strikeout of Laudner to give the Yankees a 10-5 win.
The loss ran the last-place Twins’ losing streak to nine games, which explained why just 18,854 showed up to see the Yankees’ first visit to the new building. Despite all that scoring, the game took just 2 hours and 29 minutes to play.
That was the first game the Yankees played in the Metrodome. The most significant were the four playoff games they won in the dome in 2003 and 2004:
2003 ALDS: After splitting the first two games in the Bronx, the Yankees win Games 3 and 4 at the Metrodome to defeat the Twins in the series. The combined score of the two games in the dome is 11-2. Jason Giambi, Bernie Williams, Hideki Matsui, and Nick Johnson all double off Johan Santana in the fourth inning of Game 4 as the Yankees score six runs and bounce Santana from the game.
2004 ALDS: Repeating the previous year’s pattern exactly, the Yankees win Games 3 and 4 at the Metrodome to defeat the Twins in the series. The Yankees enter the top of the eighth down 5-1, then score four runs to tie the game, the key hit being a game-tying three-run home run by Ruben Sierra off Juan Rincon. The game goes into the 11th inning, when Alex Rodriguez doubles, steals third, then scores on a wild pitch with what proves to be the winning run of the series.
Today, the Yankees send spot-starter Alfredo Aceves to the mound against lefty Francisco Liriano. Liriano, who made the All-Star game as a rookie in 2006 then missed all of 2007 due to Tommy John surgery, came on strong at the end of last year, but got off to a rocky start this year, going 2-7 with a 6.60 ERA through the end of May. Since then, however, he has turned in four quality starts in six tries, and the Twins have gone 5-1 in his starts. Over those six starts, Liriano has struck out a man per inning and posted a 3.79 ERA and a 1.23 WHIP, not quite the performance of a pitcher who was supposed to replace Johan Santana as the team’s left-handed ace, but just fine from a 25-year-old lefty once again moving in the right direction.
This will be Liriano’s second start against the Yankees this season. In his first, he walked six Yankees in six innings, but only allowed one run, on a Derek Jeter solo homer. The Yankees ultimately won that game via a three-run ninth-inning rally against Joe Nathan capped off by a walk-off single by Melky Cabrera.
Aceves is making his first start since being called up–he went 2-0 with a 3.80 ERA in four starts for Scranton in April–and will be limited to 60 pitches. He has averaged 14.4 pitches per inning in his 21 relief appearances, so don’t expect him to last much past the fourth inning. That could mean lesser relievers such as Jonathan Albaladejo, Brett Tomko, and the struggling Brian Bruney could yet play an important part in this game, which might render Aceves’s performace moot if Liriano is on is game.
Fortunately, the Yankees have already won the series, and have gone 6-0 against the Twins on the season. If they finish the season series 6-1, I won’t be complaining.
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Nice article on fangraphs up on Gardy: http://tinyurl.com/kk9yno . Apparently the stats show he’s got one of the best arms in baseball (I do not see how this has occurred). While I was one of the Gardner supporters in ST, he’s surprised even me with his play recently. Did you know he already has like 30 stolen bases?!
As for the pitching matchup, if its close after 4 innings, I’d love to see the Yankees go straight to Hughes for 2+. It won’t happen, but I’d love to see it.
[0] With a 5-4 lead, Michael went straight to Goose Gossage in the eighth, but Goose blew the save…
What was Stick thinking? Why didn’t he go to the eighth inning guy??
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.
.
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Yeah, I know, low hanging fruit…
[2] Dave Righetti was only available for 3 pitches? ;)
[1] Yes, there’s some discussion in the previous thread.
[2] [3] Tony LaRussa hadn’t yet become a bullpen genius in 1982.
[2] I think a week or so ago the issue of blown saves came up. Goose leads for career blown saves for a reason. While I think we glorify the old time closers who went 3 innings, their ability to successfully close out a win was remarkably lower than today’s closers. Same theory should apply to 8th inning. One guy who can do it at a very high rate is better than stretching a closer or not having that guy. Closing to me has become a 2-3 pitcher duty. You ideally have 3 guys who can finish the last 3 innings plus the occasional lefty on lefty matchup or whatever.
It’s amazing how many “Yankee fans” seem to have forgotten how well Alex performed in the 2004 ALDS.
[6] Ahh, but the purpose is to win the game, not to get one pitcher to accumulate saves. In this example (an anecdote, of course), the Yankees won the game: Goose, gave up the tie, but pitched well in the ninth. Now, had the Yankees gone saved Goose as a “closer” he no doubt would have had a higher save rate, but they might well have lost this game by throwing a lesser pitcher in the 8th who may have given up several runs.
It is also a bit unfair to compare save rates. When the Save was introduced as a stat, relievers more commonly pitched multiple innings, or came in with the bases loaded, etc. In other words, the stat broadly reflected usage. But now even very poor closers have high save rates because a significant percentage of saves are of the bases empty, two or three run lead, pitch the ninth variety. Just because Mo (for example) saves 90% of the games he closes, this does not mean that the Yankees win more games than they would if he were occasionally stretched to two or three innings, or used in higher leverage mid-game situations (probably costing him some saves), or not used in every technical save situation in the ninth.
I have yet to see any evidence that teams leading after 7 or 8 or 9 innings since, say, 1990 have a significantly higher percentage chance of winning than they did in 1970 or 1980.
I would have to see some hard evidence that contemporary BP usage really does “shorten the game.”
[6] But Goose was put in more situations where he could blow a save, no? And so of course he blew more saves. Today’s closers are almost never the ones used in those tricky situations in the 7th or the 8th, with the game within a run. Rather, those blown saves get handed off to the 7th and 8th Inning Guys of the world. In fact, to me, this is exactly why closers should be used more like Goose was – better to have the closer (in theory the best reliever) in the high-leverage situation than waiting around for a three-run lead in the 9th.
I want to say Joe Sheehan wrote an article about this at BP a few years ago, but a quick search on my part didn’t turn it up. I do feel pretty sure that I read a study about save opportunities and usage now versus then, though.
[5] Oh right, I forgot about that. We are blessed to live in these more enlightened times!
: )
That ‘04 ALDS was pretty damn memorable for a 4 game first round series.
-Great 12 inning game 2 at The Stadium
-Kevin Brown (!!) getting the win in the dome in game 3
-a classic game 4
And then the 2004 postseason immediately ended…nothing else happened after that Saturday afternoon in Minneapolis.
[9] no. he wasn’t. He simply blew a lot more saves.
[8] Did I say anything about accumulation of saves being the goal? I totally missed that. You miss the point. One game is just a stat. Overall, take two seemingly equivalent talents and have one throw one inning and have the other throw three and the former will be more successful. So the only reason to have a guy go two or three innings, instead of having two or three guys go one inning each, would be due to disparity in talent.
I can elaborat emore later. right now i hvae to work.
[6] In fact, I would argue that closing has become a three man job (as you put it) *because* the closer is being misused. Since he is now largely restricted to ninth inning save situations, many of which are not particularly threatening, teams must find a couple of other pitchers to use every day in the 7th and 8th. This in turn leads to 12 and 13 man pitching staffs, more pitching changes, and shorter benches. I’m not sure the game is better for it (that is an aesthetic argument), nor am I convinced that it provides teams with a competitive advantage. Of course, this is hard to test since everyone uses their BP the same way.
I have yet to see any evidence that teams leading after 7 or 8 or 9 innings since, say, 1990 have a significantly higher percentage chance of winning than they did in 1970 or 1980.
I remember somebody doing a study that showed % of games won when leading going into the 9th essentially hadn’t changed during the duration they looked at (which IIRC, was something like 50’s – present). I can’t exactly remember if they only looked at the 9th, or extended it to the earlier innings as well, though I think it was only the 9th.
I’ll poke about and see if I can find it.
[14] I thought I’d read that once before as well. Of course, one could posit that in the old days, everyone was blowing games in the 9th because they didn’t have a “closer,” so it all leveled out.
I am convinced that one of these days a team IS going to use their BP differently, probably because some personnel issue will “force” them to. That will be interesting to see,
[15] but that would mean that the winning % would increase as the closer was implemented in baseball strategy.
But it didn’t.
Closer or not, the chances of winning a game entering the 9th, appear not to have changed. (IIRC)
[7] Well what do you expect given his track record since game 4 of that year’s ALCS? Extended ineffectiveness of that order, under the bright lights of playoff baseball, from “the best player in baseball” tends to obscure past success.
[16] Yeah, you’re right.
Ideally, there should be a study done on lead changes after, say, the 7th inning. Did sticking with your starter longer and/or relying on fewer “firemen” (in the old days) mean that teams stood a greater chance of coming back and tying or taking the lead, even if that lead was subsequently squandered by the team’s own stretched starter? Or are there just as many comebacks against the bevy of specialists and one-inning guys employed today?
[17] Especially when it fills a preconceived notion of someone. Ugh, can we please not dredge this debate up again? A-Rod has had some really great playoff series and some really bad ones, this makes him like nearly every other player in baseball. The bad ones just happen to be more recent than the great ones. Hell, I still remember clutchy captain Derek Jeter GIDP to kill a rally in Game 4 in 2007 against the Indians.
It’s not a perfect match, but I wrote this piece for SI.com a couple of months ago. A sample:
[19] Surely you see the irony in following a request not to “dredge up this debate” … with a Jeter comparison!
No Damon or Matsui against lefty Liriano today. Ransom plays third. Rodriguez DHes. Melky in left. Brett “The Gun” Gardner in center.
[21] Not really, I love Jeter, my only point was, even “great clutch” players screw up in big spots sometimes which I hoped would lead to an end of pointing out each time A-Rod has popped up in the 7th inning, with a runner on and the moon full.
[22] The Gun! I love it!
[22] So, does that make Garty a Gritty Gunslinger?
[20] Thanks, Cliff. So basically this implies: contemporary closers’ save rates may be higher than those of the firemen of yore, but in turn more saves are being blown in earlier innings by set-up men and eighth-inning-guys which in the past would have been dealt with by starters (working into later innings) or the firemen.
[12] seamus, if you’ve got some numbers to back you up, I’m very curious to see them. To me, the odds of blowing a save increase the lesser the lead. That is, a 3-run lead is going to be saved (and not blown) more often than a 2-run lead, and a 2-run lead saved more than a 1-run lead. Maybe I did not state this well, but my point is that Goose had far more opportunities to blow saves than today’s closers do because he came into far more 1-run lead situations.
That is, as monkeypants said, back then they managed according to putting the best pitcher in the highest leverage situation, instead of TLR’s managing according to the save rule.
Now maybe the sheer volume usage of closers has gone up, so being used more they can blow more saves – but Cliff’s bit in [20] seems to dispel that.
I could be completely wrong, as I have no data handy to back me up – but this (explained elegantly by monkeypants in [13]) has been sabermetric orthodoxy for so long, I’ll be really surprised if no one has ever shown its true.
[26] Which is what I was saying (or trying to say) in [8].
Why does seamus’s work have to get in the way of a perfectly good baseball discussion? =)
With regards to Gossage’s game described above, the real take-home is don’t walk the damn leadoff man when trying to protect a one-run lead. Sure, there had already been seven homers in the game, but Milbourne had just one tater since the turn of the decade when Gossage was facing him.
[29] The lesson I took from your recap of that game is that you just can’t predict baseball.
Whee, let’s go Vulture, pick their bones clean!
[30] That too.
BTW, am I the only one who wishes YES would include things like that first game at the Metrodome in their Yankee Classics lineup? I mean, Guidry, Goose, eight taters including a ninth-inning salami from Nettles, the seeds of the 1987 Champions on the other side of the field . . . mix it up a little!
inside, outside, mauer’s a monster.
All the more reason to love the Twins getting off the turf: keeping Mauer healthy.
[33] I love watching games from the 70s and 80s–they look so different (the camera view from CF is not usually so tight, the players are smaller and stand farther from the plate, less advertising, a bunch of older parks not yet demolished to make way for HOK, etc.). Those were really my formative years as a baseball fan, and in my mind they represent the “norm.”
they’re just “ducts” Robbie, they’re for the air conditioning …
Blech. Usually Rogers Sports Net carries Yankees day games so long as they do not conflict with Blue Jays games. Today, I get poker.
Yeah Cody!!!
[33] I would love to see that game. I think the issue is actually getting a hold of it. Who knows if the game even exists.
I own a copy of another Yankee-Twin Classic from May 1985: Mattingly’s 3-run walk off HR capping a comeback from down 8-0. Ed Whitson started for the Yankees, but didn’t last too long.
i’ll take it…
2-0
I like 2 out RBI’s.
yay, Cap’n!
Cap’n!
3-0
[43] damn son!
What has happened to Liriano? I saw him pitch a game 2 years ago and I thought he would be better then Santana.
What the HELL was the point of that?
wow, that hit by Jetes was our first…
[46] You saw him before Tommy John surgery, then.
[46] http://www.baseball-intellect.com/Articles/francisco-liriano-injury.html