Bronx, N.Y., September 22, 2002 — It’s a distressing concept baseball fans talk about all the time. Games drag on, they become marathons, battles of attrition, where more often than not the first entity to cry “uncle” is not either team, but the people in the stands. Yankees/Orioles battles in 1996 and 1997 became legendary, as it seemed it was never a question of whether or not their games would blow past 3.5 hours, but how far. As a radio announcer, Michael Kay was obsessed with whether or not a game was “manageable,” shorthand for less than three hours long, a feature I’m sure he still tracks on TV (but I have Cablevision, so I don’t know).
People blame TV commercial timeouts (between innings and other interruptions in play); managers having their catchers and position players visit the mound, visiting it themselves, and replacing pitchers; players who emulate Mike Hargrove, current Orioles manager and former Cleveland Indian ballplayer affectionately (not!) and accurately referred to in his playing days as The Human Rain Delay. He led the way in developing an extensive litany of nervous tics and adjustments that needed to be made at the plate in between each and every pitch. Nomar and Derek are both disciples (as was Chuck), though even the most hardened Sox fan would agree that Garciaparra is much more infected.
Another factor is what Tim McCarver likes to sum up with the following ironic phrase: “Speed slows down the game.” Stolen base specialists, of which the ageless Rickey Henderson was once the classic example, get inside pitchers’ heads, causing them to throw repeatedly to first base and not to the plate, the only helpful location if the goal is to move the game along.
But not all pitchers who pepper the first baseman with throws are focusing on the speed of the baserunner. I’m sure we all have our favorite example and terminology, but many are suffering from what my father-in-law likes to call, “Ron Darling Syndrome.” Sometimes they’re passive (e.g., Steve Trachsel), sometimes active. They will step off the rubber, and back on. They will throw to first, repeatedly. They meet with the catcher, then call him out again. They will even deliver a pitch or two to the plate, often as an intentional pitchout, even more often off the plate (supposedly) unintentionally. Perhaps suffering from whiplash from trying to follow the trajectory of too may balls rocketed deep over their heads, they are intent on one thing and one thing only: taking any action that avoids throwing a baseball over home plate.
The total flip side of this coin is peopled by pitchers like David Wells. For fans of games moving along, he’s an answer to their prayers. And usually he’s quite effective. For enthusiasts like myself for whom the bottom line is winning the ballgame, the lively pace is a plus, but I have also become painfully aware that the loveable David is going to continue to deliver balls over the plate whether he is effective or not. But Yankee fans have been blessed this year, because, except for a few glitches along the way, David has been on. Thus he has won six of his last seven decisions (among his 18 wins), averaging almost eight innings a start. His high for strike outs over that period has been six, the low three. And he has only walked two batters over the entire seven games, both during his 7-6 loss to Toronto on September 1.
In the loss to Toronto, David pitched well for five innings, but the Jays came back to beat him in two late, ugly frames. Shannon Stewart seemed to toy with his pitches all night, fouling off 14 of them during his second, third and fourth at bats. He outlasted David to start a four-run sixth with a walk, apparently enraging Wells enough that he threw 15 of the next 17 pitches for strikes. During that time he whiffed Dan Berg and Chris Woodward, but Vernion Wells, Carlos Delgado, Travis Phelps, and Orlando Hudson each jumped on one of the first few pitches and drilled it for a base hit (with two doubles mixed in). Vernon Wells got to David for three hits on only six pitches for the night, and the Jays repeated their pattern in the seventh, when Stewart interrupted three straight hits with another eight-pitch walk, sending David to the showers with six of their seven runs on his ledger.
But more often than not the opposition has not been getting to Boomer’s pitches, and although Andy Pettitte has been lights-out during the season’s second half, I think most would agree that David has been the best starter we’ve had all year on a day-in, day-out basis. The city of Detroit gambled on him today, starting a downtown baseball game almost four hours before the first NFL game in their brand-new downtown football stadium, a venue that shares parking facilities with Comerica Park. Both the Yanks and the city of Detroit won on that toss of the dice, as David and Mike Maroth collaborated on a game that spanned a scant two hours and 40 minutes, and David handed a lead over to Mike Stanton after tossing 101 pitches over eight innings. His strike/ball ratio was almost three to one, even better than his first strike count (19/11).
Joe used what I’m sure is only the first of six or seven very unconventional lineups, perhaps eight if you count the guys penciled in for the second half of the day/night double dip we played with the Orioles back on the 10th. I suspect he’ll actually start the September 29 (last) game with the real deal, anticipating Game One of the ALDS two days later. Alfonso and Juan got on base to start the game (via a hit-by-pitch and single, respectively) and from that point on, the offense was entirely driven by the two doubles to left by Mondesi and the two two-baggers to right center by White in the first and third innings, staking us to an early 4-1 lead. Mondesi made a couple of fine plays subbing for Bernie in center and Alfonso continued to sparkle at second.
I like to say that David takes the Lazy Man’s Load approach to starting. For those of you unfamiliar with that colloquial term, it can be defined as “an unmanageably large load carried to avoid making more than one trip.” I know I was taken to task more than once by my parents for falling into that trap when carrying groceries and such, hearing the strains of “I told you so” as bags leaking from broken bottles and cracked eggs once I had dropped them lay there as undeniable evidence of my crime. Part of the Boomer’s charm is certainly his unconventional approach, enjoying continued success contrasted with his unathletic appearance and life-style. To me, this is just another aspect of the same tendency. David seems to be saying with his pitches, “If it’s going to take 70-75 strikes to subdue these guys, why not toss that many strikes in the first 100 throws, rather than spreading them out over 120 pitches or more?”
I sure wish he lived across the street when I tried that shuffle-the-three-bags-as-you-spin-the-doorknob trick.
Look, Ma. No Hands!
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!