Sunday, November 1, 2009
Yankees.com: Johnny lately: Yanks’ 9th makes it a 3-1 Series
PHILADELPHIA—Johnny Damon and Alex Rodriguez stunned Brad Lidge and the Citizens Bank Park crowd with a memorable rally in the top of the ninth inning on Sunday, stealing a 7-4 victory in Game 4 of the World Series and taking a commanding 3-1 advantage.
After Pedro Feliz put the Phillies back in the game with a game-tying home run off Joba Chamberlain in the eighth inning, Damon rose to the occasion by working a nine-pitch at-bat off Lidge before reaching with a two-out single.
In the span of three outs, this game went from awesome to crappy to super awesome.
CC Sabathia pitched pretty well on three days rest again, although his night ended when he gave up a HR to Chase Utley that cut the Yankee lead to 4-3 in the bottom of the seventh. With Phil Hughes’s playoff struggles, Joe Girardi went with Joba Chamberlain to try and hold the 4-3 lead, and after Joba struck out Jayson Werth and Raul Ibanez swinging with 97 mph fastballs, it sure seemed smart. Then Feliz took a 97 mph fastball out for a game tying HR. So instead of being three outs away from taking a commanding 3 games to 1 lead, the possibility of Philadelphia tying the series and heading into a Game 5 with their best pitcher going was very real, and very scary.
Brad Lidge was incredibly good last year, and this year he’s been incredibly bad. Of course he’s probably neither as good as he was in 2008 or as bad as he was in 2009. Lidge was able to retire Hideki Matsui and Derek Jeter in the top of the ninth, which brought up Damon with two outs and none on. Damon singled on the ninth pitch of the AB, bringing up Mark Teixeira.
The Phillies, like most teams, play a defensive shift when Teixeira is hitting lefty, like he was against the righty Lidge. So when Damon attempted a steal of second base and slid in, the third baseman Feliz was the one who received the throw from Carlos Ruiz in the attempt to catch Damon. As Damon slid into 3B, he noticed this and also noticed that Lidge was not covering 3B so he took off for third in a foot race with Feliz that he won handily.
With two outs, that didn’t mean that Damon would be able to score on an out, but it did mean he could score on a passed ball or a wild pitch. Whether that changed Lidge’s approach or not, we don’t really know, but it was a smart, heads-up play.
Lidge followed up by hitting Teixeira, which brought up Mr. October, Alex Rodriguez. Rodriguez smacked an RBI double, and the Yankees were back on top. Jorge Posada followed with a 2 run single to expand the lead to three, and then Mariano Rivera sliced through the Phillies on eight pitches to close out the win.
As Yankee fans, we know that no lead in a seven game series is insurmountable, but now the Yankees are set up about as well as they could hope to be. All they have to do is win one of three games, two of which would be at home, behind one of A.J. Burnett, Andy Pettitte, or CC Sabathia.
You’ve got to like their chances of pulling that off, right?
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