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NEW YORK – Five games in, the 2009 World Series has been reduced to a series of medical reports, gut-checks and pointed questions posed to both teams’ weary pitching staffs: How much is left in the tank? How many innings can you give me? How many pitches? How sore is it? Can you battle through it? Look me in the eye and tell me: Do you want the ball, or not?
It has come to this, for better or worse, because the Philadelphia Phillies held on, 8-6, to beat the New York Yankees in Game 5 on Monday night, bringing the World Series to a Game 6 for the first time in six years.
That game will be tonight at Yankee Stadium, with Philadelphia’s Pedro Martinez facing New York’s Andy Pettitte, two aging stars who first squared off 11 years ago in their primes.
On Tuesday, before the Yankees worked out on their home field, New York manager Joe Girardi brought Pettitte into his office to make sure the big lefty, whose 37-year-old arm the Yankees have taken great pains to protect this season, was up for the assignment of facing the Phillies on short rest.
“I feel great,” Pettitte told him, and if Girardi was looking for a sign Pettitte was lying to him, he didn’t see one.
“It doesn’t take more than that,” Girardi said of that conversation.
“This is something we talked about, and we’re still very comfortable doing it, and he’s our guy tomorrow.”
Pettitte’s 219 2/3 innings this season, regular and postseason combined, is his most in four years, and he hasn’t pitched on three days’ rest in more than three years. This season, he has pitched as many times on extra rest (18 times, including postseason) as he has on regular rest, putting up an ERA (3.52) on extra rest that was more than a full run better than what he did on normal rest (4.57).
“For me, it’s not even a concern,” Pettitte said Tuesday. “I don’t know how I’ll feel. I know I felt terrible the other day (in Game 3), and I was on six days’ rest. I’m just going to go as hard as I can for as long as I can.”
Before the postseason began, the Yankees decided as an organization on an aggressive strategy of concentrating all the meaningful innings in the hands of four pitchers: starters CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Pettitte in a three-man rotation, and closer Mariano Rivera.
“I talked with A.J. and CC when we went into the postseason, and we talked about this,” Pettitte said.
“We talked about a commitment, that we were all prepared for this.”
And the Yankees stuck to their strategy even after building a 3-1 lead in the World Series, which afforded them the opportunity to ease up. Together, those four pitchers have accounted for 103 – or 78.2 percent – of the 131 2/3 innings the Yankees have played in this postseason.
If the World Series goes the distance, Games 4 through 7 will all have been started by pitchers on short rest.
“To me,” Girardi said, “there are no games where you don’t keep the pedal to the metal, and that’s what we tried to do with our starters.”
If Pettitte loses tonight, it would fall to Sabathia, their $161 million offseason prize, starting for the second consecutive time on short rest, to rescue the Yankees’ season.
Meantime, despite sticking faithfully to a four-man rotation, the Phillies, too, face pitching questions of depth, durability and desire.
Martinez, 38, will try to defy the odds in Game 6 and repeat the performance he gave the Phillies in Game 2, when he pitched six strong innings in an eventual loss. If Martinez manages to deliver a lead to the Phillies’ bullpen, it is anyone’s guess as to how the final outs will be doled out amongst their bullpen-in-crisis, with Brad Lidge suddenly back in the Closer Protection Program.
“I’m probably going to use (Lidge) the way I want to, when we get there,” Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said cryptically.
