THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

MGL’s pre-game thoughts for Game 6

1) If the Yankees start to significantly alter their pitching approach against Utley, as Buster Olney from ESPN suggests they should and will do, that will be a big mistake.  That goes for either team and against any player on either team.

2) Despite Girardi’s supposed lack of confidence in his bullpen (at least according to the media), the Yankees have one of the best bullpens in baseball and hopefully for Yankee fans, Girardi will use them optimally if and when needed.  If he rides Pettitte longer than appropriate because he has little faith in the bullpen, he will be making a big mistake.  Pettitte the 3rd and 4th times through the order is significantly worse than almost any reliever in the pen that the Yankees have.  And that is not to mention that he is pitching on 3 days rest.  If I were Girardi, I would let him know that I was looking for 2 times through the order (6 innings or so) and that’s it.

3) I have no idea how the 3 days rest will affect Pettitte and I don’t think anyone else does either.  Regardless, Pettitte is just not that great of a pitcher anymore (IMO) and I don’t buy into the “great post-season, big-game pitcher” mystique for a second.

4) For that matter, I don’t buy into the Rivera post-season mystique either.  He is a great reliever, regular or post-season.  That is why he has had such phenomenal success in the post-season - because he is a great pitcher!  However, there is no such thing as “magic” for any player.  There is nothing a player can do about the “Lady Luck” regardless of how good they are.  Mariano does not throw every pitch exactly where he wants to and he does not strike every batter out.  Sooner or later he is going to implode as any pitcher can on any given day, even when he has his best “stuff” (he seems to have the same stuff every outing).  One bad pitch, one bad call by an umpire, one batted ball that does not get caught or falls into the right spot, one batter that happens up square up a pitch, etc.

That being said, look for Girardi to use him for 6 outs tonight. I don’t see why he wouldn’t.  7 outs, like Olney was talking about in his article? I doubt it.

5) I am a big fan of Pedro.  By that I mean that I think he is still a good pitcher (a little above-average if I had to guess, but with a lot of uncertainty), and I love his style of pitching, which is to use all of his pitches in roughly equal proportions in almost any count and against almost any batter.

6) The Yankees are now around a 65/35 favorite I Vegas and I agree with that number more or less.

7) What do I think the Phillies chances are of coming back to win the series?  .35 * .32 (tomorrow’s likely Vegas line) = 12%. That is what I “think.”

7) I am glad to see Manuel going with Madson as their ace reliever (at least he did last game).  He was better than Lidge before the season stated, according to my projections, and he is much better now.  One of the reasons that Lidge is not nearly as good as he was last year and in previous years is that his velocity is down.  If a pitcher loses velocity and it is not by choice, he becomes less effective, especially if he doesn’t do anything else differently.  And of course if your fastball loses value, you have to throw it less frequently, thus making your other pitches less valuable as well.  Plus chances are that if you lose velocity, your other pitches will be less effective even in a vacuum.

8) Hopefully for fans of both teams, neither the umpires nor the managers will make any egregious errors as they are prone to do and we have seen many times during this post-season.  I have much more faith in Manuel’s ability not to make errors than Girardi.  As most of you know, I am not a big fan of Girardi, even compared to my usual opinion of managers in general.

May the best team win, which is only going to happen less than 2/3 of the time, at least tonight that is!