The shell of A-Rod

Swing and a miss: Rodriguez struck out in
this eighth-inning at-bat with two on against
low-angle righty Darren O'Day.

Alex Rodriguez is far from the only Yankee struggling at the plate in this fascinating division series with Baltimore.

Cleanup hitter Robinson Cano is 2 for 18. Curtis Granderson is 1 for 16 with nine strikeouts.

But it's A-Rod who has been pinch-hit for in consecutive games against Orioles closer Jim Johnson. It worked sensationally well in Game 3, when Raul Ibanez created a legend with back-to-back jacks to first tie then win the game. It didn't work in Game 4.

Rodriguez did draw a walk and line a single off Joe Saunders on Thursday, but once the Orioles replaced the lefty and Rodriguez had to face right-handers, he was lost again.

Pinch-hitting for the 647-homer man on Wednesday created quite a stir; when it happened again on Thursday, TBS' Ernie Johnson could barely be bothered to mention who Eric Chavez was hitting for. And the question was less why Joe Girardi was hitting for A-Rod with two outs in the 13th and down a run than why he didn't hit for A-Rod in the eighth with two men on.

This morning, the question is: Will Girardi start Rodriguez in today's Game 5 against the right-handed Jason Hammel, or will he fit another left-handed bat into his lineup at Rodriguez's expense?

And the deeper question is: Is this just a slump, or have age and injury dissolved Rodriguez's talents to the point that he's no longer usable against right-handed pitching? This year, he hit .308/.410/.514 against southpaws, but just .256/.326/.391 against righties.

One season's platoon split is not conclusive evidence, but it's increasingly clear that he has trouble catching up to fastballs.

The promised land in sight

The two league championship series are taking rather parallel paths.

In both, the favored team (Phillies in the National, Yankees in the American) split the first two games, then lost Games Three and Four — and then, with elimination looking them in the eye, won Game Five.

In one of the key plays of the game, Raul Ibanez beat
Pedro Sandoval to third base on a force play on a bunt
Thursday night.

There are differences, of course, most notably that the Phillies get to fight out the rest of the series in their home park, while the Yankees have to go to Texas.

But the fact remains that both are still breathing, still dangerous. And in fact, I rather expect the Phillies will pull this one out.

Back in 1985 — so long ago that I not only hadn't started writing the print column yet, I hadn't been with The Free Press a full 12 months — I predicted that the Kansas City Royals would win the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cards took a 3-1 series lead, and I continued to believe that the Royals would win. My logic: as I saw it, K.C. had the better of every pitching matchup the rest of the way.

Kansas City did win (with a little help from a blown call). And I see a lot of similarities between their win and the Phillies current situation. The Phillies will be at home, they have Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels lined up — and it doesn't hurt any, either, that they are clearly the best team in the National League.

The Giants might have had their best chance to wrap this up last night. Tim Lincecum was better than Roy Halladay. But the defensive liabilities in the San Francisco lineup — the Giants have a lot of them — emerged at the wrong time, and the Phillies are alive. Alive and, in this corner of the world, favored.

The Yankees are another matter. They have the slight disadvantage of going on the road, and this bigger disadvantage: Cliff Lee awaits in a Game Seven. Texas would rather wrap it up tonight, but that trump ace is a comfort.

A poor slide by Nelson Cruz

Nelson Cruz makes a poor sliding decison.

The TBS booth has two old pitchers and a "real" broadcaster, none of whom noted the real problem with Nelson Cruz' failed attempt to score on a CC Sabathia pitch to the backstop to end the first inning.

Cruz slid to the inside of the plate, not to the outside. Had he executed what Twins fans of a certain age will always think of as the Randy Bush slide -- sliding far to the outside and reaching out with the fingers to touch the plate -- there's no way Captain Cheeseburger can make the tag. Even with the bad slide, Sabathia barely got there in time.

Postscript: That run Cruz didn't score mattered. The Yankees win 6-5.

Getting some stuff on the ball

If Mariano Rivera wasn't spitting on the ball here, what was he doing?

Update: I just threw up the link this morning and took off to run some errands.

Since then, MLB (according to the New York Post) has declared the scanty evidence of Fox's video to be inaccurate, that Rivera was not spitting directly on the ball. 

My thoughts:

1) I do wish Fox had stuck with this camera shot a bit longer. It's not like nobody knows that Mike Scoscia's in the dugout. But their production values are similar to Joe Girardi handling his relief corps — hyperactive. We don't get to see what followed Rivera's spit — or even where it landed.

2) I really doubt that Rivera has made a habit of doctoring the ball. If he does, he doesn't do it so blatantly.  

3) There are far fewer pitchers suspected now of doctoring the ball — by scuffing it or applying a "foreign substance" — than there were 20, 25, 30 years ago. Why? The very reason this is a subject today — there are dozens of video cameras recording virtually every move a pitcher makes. A cheating pitcher is far more likely to be caught on tape now than in Gaylord Perry's heyday.

4) If Rivera was loading one up, it was an odd time to do it — the no. 9 hitter up in a bunt situation. Throwing a spitter in those circumstances just increases the chances for a fielding misplay.

Say ... that's what happened, isn't it?

ALDS Game 3: The Genius of Jeter

(Revised on fresh information)

I figured at the moment of the tag exactly what Nick Punto was thinking when he made his baserunning error (above) in the eighth inning Sunday.

He was, I thought, trying to make the same play Denard Span made last year against the Yankees.

The problem was, Derek Jeter remembered it too.

The game was on August 11, 2008. Here's the link to Baseball Reference's box score and play by play.

In the eighth inning, Span was on second base (and Joe Mauer on first) with two outs. Justin Morneau hit a chopper up the middle. Jeter gloved it and looked to first, and while he was doing that, Span — running hard on contact with two outs — steamed home.

The play clearly stuck in Jeter's mind. He was looking for it Tuesday with Punto on second. When he fielded Span's chopper behind second, he clearly had no intention of throwing to first — he knew Punto was going to be aggressive. And had he tried to throw out Span, Punto would have scored.

It could have worked. It probably would have worked on any other shortstop. But Jeter had been burned once by this team on that play. It wasn't going to happen again.

As it turns out, Punto thought, from the crowd's roar, that the ball had gone through the infield. It amounts to the same thing, though — Punto had committed to go home, and Jeter was looking for it.

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So much for the Metrodome. So much for the Twins this postseason. The outcome of this series wasn't surprising; the 2009 Yankees are clearly the best team in the American League. Their major weaknesses during the regular season — the fourth and fifth slots in the starting rotation — are almost meaningless in October.

I'll root for the Angels in the ALCS anyway.

ALDS Game 2: Yankees 4, Twins 3, 11 innings

Ouch. And double ouch.

The bitter part of me jeers that Mark Teixeira's walk-off homer was just as inside the line as Joe Mauer's leadoff "foul ball" in the top half of the 11th inning.

But the fact remains that the Twins had the bases loaded with nobody out in the 11th and did nothing with it. Both Delmon Young and Carlos Gomez went out on the first pitch, although Young did hit a hard liner. Go-Go was fooled but went ahead with his first-pitch hack anyway.

And, of course, Gomez's pratfall early in the game cost the Twins a run.

Bottom line: The Twins found ways, again, to blow an imminently winnable game at Yankee Stadium.

You can blame the umpire if you want. But Phil Cuzzi's missed call — like Randy Marsh's missed calls in Tuesday's Game 163 — had less of an effect on the outcome than the mistakes and blunders of the players.

And now the Twins are down 2-0 in a best of five series.

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One aspect of this year's division series that is jumping out at me is the horrid umpiring. C.B. Bucknor had a brutal game at first base in the Thursday opener of the Angels-Red Sox series. Chuck Meriweather, if the TBS pitch track graphic has any accuracy at all, had no idea where the outside corner was Friday in the Twins game. Cuzzi's mistake in that same game was blatant. Bob Davidson, my personal choice as worst umpire going, has had a plate assignment.

And while Game 163 wasn't actually a playoff game, it was not well umpired either.

Some of these guys, to put it brutally, have little business umping major league games, period, much less playoff games.

As I understand it, the World Series and LCS assignments are based strictly on merit. The playoffs, not so much. Merit counts, but there's a rotation used as well — and let's face it, there aren't enough really top-flight umpires to fill 24 slots.

The more screwups they have in the postseason, the more calls there will be to install instant replay reviews for everything. As if games involving the Yankees, Red Sox and Cardinals aren't too long already.

ALDS Game 1: Yankees 7, Twins 2

No drama to this one. Twins took the early lead, and the Yankees scored the next seven.

I've been skeptical of the way Ron Gardenhire handled his starting pitching the last three games, in part because the choices he made culminated in this game.

Brian Duensing was scheduled to start Sunday, but Gardenhire chose to use Carl Pavano on short rest. Had he started Duensing on Sunday, he could have started Pavano — who has pitched much better against the Tigers than Scott Baker — in Tuesday's game 163. Which, in turn, would have freed Baker, his best starter and one with some success in the past against New York, to pitch Game 1 of the ALDS.

It is true that the Sunday and Tuesday games were essentially elimination games, and Tuesday's wasn't. The Twins had to win those first two games, and they did. And Duensing's previous two starts were unimpressive (a combined 10 1/3 innings with eight earned runs).

But the net effect of putting off Duensing's start was to step up the quality of opposition. Afraid to trust Duensing against weaker teams, Gardenhire found himself forced to start him against the best team in the league.

Duensing did throw strikes — 59 of them in 79 pitches. But during his good run of starts, he kept the ball in the yard, and Derek Jeter took him deep on Wednesday. Which makes three starts in a row with a home run allowed.

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Scattered hits: In a book about the Twins 1991 season, Tom Kelly said he figured that if the Twins got 10 hits in a game they'd score plenty of runs.

The Twins got 10 hits Wednesday, and scored just two runs, one of them on a passed ball. Why so few? Because there was just one extra base hit and one walk. And an inconveniently timed DP in the middle of the Twins two-run inning.

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So the Twins, heavy underdogs, are down 1-0 in the best of five series. At least they might get some sleep before the next game.