Dear Joe, Thanks for the Win. - Moose

            "Where are you, dude?"  Acc could hear the cacophony of noise around me.  It was a strange assortment of sounds, certainly.  The chatter of tourists walking the cobblestones, the boom box set up outside of the Brookstone store, the jangling of the silverware from the outdoor cafes and restaurants.  It must have sounded like I was in the middle of a carnival.  "I'm standing outside of the Yankees store at South Street Seaport, peering in through the window, watching the game.  I was inside, but they kicked me out because I was drinking a chai latte [I don't apologize for that - they're delicious]."  It actually wasn't a bad way to watch a game.  I mean it wasn't ideal, but it was a warm enough day in lower Manhattan, if a bit muggy, but with a cool enough breeze and an occasional drizzle to keep it comfortable.  And frankly, it's like anything else.  If the Yankees are winning, everything works.

            Mike Mussina, Seannie's boy, continues to give the Yankees a chance to win.  But today I was struck by what I perceived to be a distinct difference between Joe Girardi's game management in the fifth inning and what Joe Torre would have done.  Mike Mussina had given the Yankees four brilliant innings.  One-hit ball through four is always a good way to get things started for your team.  He sputtered in the fifth.  We have seen this from Mussina over the last few years.  He starts out well, rolling, even.  He hits a bump in the fifth.  Joe Torre, almost always, would yank him out.  Joe Torre always had a notoriously quick hook, and the bigger the game, the quicker the hook.  Many times Torre would pull a guy off the mound with one or two outs in the fifth and a lead, with little or no consideration for that pitcher losing an opportunity to record a win.  Joe Girardi today left Mike Mussina in the game.  Now, you can certainly argue that it backfired.  He coughed up the lead and the inning ended with the game tied at three.  But he let Moose finish the inning, even after giving up the base hit that tied the game.  If Joe Torre hadn't pulled Moose out at the first sign of trouble, he certainly would have after that last single.  If he had done that, even if the Yankees won, the story would have been much different.  Take a look at these few quotes from MLB.com:  "Mike Mussina had to work hard, but managed to pitch five innings to win his fourth straight start and improve to 5-3 with the 255th victory of his career," and ESPN.com:  "Mike Mussina (5-3) won his fourth straight start and earned his 255th career victory, holding on for five innings."  If he had been pulled, it would have been something like, "Yanks win despite Mussina's rocky outing."   It's a tactic, as the BPS pointed out earlier this year, that Terry Francona employs frequently, and successfully, most notably with Dice K.  Francona is extremely conscious of the way the story will be told.  On the ESPN telecast last Monday night, the ESPN broadcasters repeatedly pointed out that Dice K drives Francona crazy with his early high pitch counts and inability to consistently throw strikes, wondering aloud whether he would take the chance of letting him finish the fifth inning just to get him a win, and even at one point wondered if he shouldn't pull him with two outs in the fifth, just to send a message that he needed to stop fooling around nibbling and start throwing strikes if he wanted a win.  Francona left him in to get him the win, as he usually does.  No question about it, Francona gambles when he does that.  As it turned out, Dice K's last pitch was an at'em ball to center field.  A foot to the right or left and he probably loses that lead.  Just like Girardi gambled today.  But the payoff is significant if it works.  Even today, baseball analysts talking about Dice K's 2007 season acknowledge that his ERA was very high, and he had far too many losses for a guy pitching for the eventual champs, but they usually close with, "But he did have 15 wins...."  Funny how easy is to forget how he got those wins.  But it doesn't really matter.  Francona kept the heat off of him, and there's no telling what kind of negative publicity Dice K would have generated if he had been pulled off the mound three or four times last year when he probably should have been and ended up 11-11.  Joe Torre simply never played that card.  He yanked guys early and often, and there were plenty of bruised psyches to go around.  It's a sure confidence killer.  So today, after letting Moose finish the fifth, the Yankees put a run across in the bottom half and Moose got the win.  And as it stands now on May 8^th, the Moose only needs six wins for the rest of the year to equal his 2007 total.  I think Girardi made the right call.       

            So the Tigers just dropped three of four to the Red Sox, and needed a miracle to get even the one.  And now they've got Kei Igawa coming in tomorrow.  What I'm saying is, now might be a good time to pull out whatever high-octane good luck charms you might have.  We're going to need them.

            Mike F, thanks for the comment, my friend.  The only one...  C'mon guys...  One?