Saturday, October 31, 2009
FoxSports.com - Rosenthal: Pitching Gaudin could be right move for Yankees
"I've got no chance against lefties," the Yankees' CC Sabathia said Friday, talking about his hitting, not his pitching.
Well, the Phillies are starting right-hander Joe Blanton in Game 4 and lefty Cliff Lee in Game 5, making the decision easy for Yankees manager Joe Girardi, right?
Uh, not exactly.
Girardi needs to figure out how to deploy Sabathia in his World Series rotation, not his lineup.
Sabathia will be a lock to start Game 4 on three days' rest if the Yankees fall behind the Phillies, two games to one.
He might even be a lock to start if the Yankees win, considering Chad Gaudin has pitched one inning in the past 28 days.
The latter choice, though, is not as clear-cut as it appears. If the Yankees led the Series, I'm not sure pitching Gaudin would be the wrong move.
Let's assume Sabathia is a lock to start Game 4, but Game 5 is dependent on the outcomes of Games 3 and 4, which I think is fair.
Gaudin doesn't look like a good matchup vs. the Phillies because he doesn't handle lefties well. However, if by some miracle the Yankees did win Games 3 and 4 (which I'd estimate has about a -100.0% chance of happening), you'd set up the following two scenarios.
| Scenario 1 | Scenario 2 | |||||
| Date | Gm | Pitcher | DR | Pitcher | DR | |
| 28-Oct | 1 | Sabathia | Sabathia | |||
| 29-Oct | 2 | Burnett | Burnett | |||
| 30-Oct | ||||||
| 31-Oct | 3 | Pettitte | Pettitte | |||
| 1-Nov | 4 | Sabathia | 3 | Sabathia | 3 | |
| 2-Nov | 5 | Gaudin | Burnett | 3 | ||
| 3-Nov | ||||||
| 4-Nov | 6 | Burnett | 5 | Pettitte | 3 | |
| 5-Nov | 7 | Pettitte | 5 | Sabathia | 3 |
DR: Days rest.
Do you take the risk of punting Game 5 to set yourself up for a stronger Burnett and Pettitte in Games 6 and 7? I'm not going to run through win probabilities for each scenario now, because of the karmic risk of assuming the Yankees would win Games 3 and 4. Weather may also make all of this moot.
For the hell of it, I'll run 1000 simulations of Gaudin vs. the Phillies in Philly with revised projections and see how ugly it looks and post it sometime later today or tomorrow.
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