It’s win or go home for the Baltimore Orioles after losing for the first time all year when leading after the seventh inning (76-1). New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi chose, what I thought was a boneheaded decision, to pinch hit for Alex Rodriguez in the bottom of the ninth and send Raul Ibanez up to the plate to face closer Jim Johnson.
Here’s my initial reaction on twitter when I first saw what Girardi was doing:
Lance Rinker (@burndowntheyard)
I’m going to say wrong move by Girardi pinch hitting for A-Rod. The man can still hit and come through in the clutch.
Even though Rodriguez has been struggling offensively in this series as well as his previous three playoff series, he’s still a dangerous hitters; he’s still someone you have to be careful where you locate your pitches to. Even though he had gone 73 consecutive at-bats without a postseason homer, and he was 7-for-51 with 17 strikeouts and two extra-base hits in his past three playoff series Alex Rodriguez is still one of the greatest hitters of all-time and a near lock for the Hall of Fame.
Never in a million years would I have thought that Girardi would do something nearly as hurtful to A-Rod then what former Yankee manager Joe Torre did when he batted him eighth in the lineup during the 2006 divisional series against the Detroit Tigers – something that Rodriguez to this day has not forgiven Torre for. In this particular case though it worked, there are no hard feelings, and if the Yankees do go on to win it all then this is the kind of decision – the most difficult decision many managers never get the opportunity to have to make – that will cement Girardi’s legacy as a manager of the New York Yankees in a very good way.
When Ibanez stepped up to the plate I thought that Girardi had lost it – I thought that something must be wrong with A-Rod for him to be pinch-hit for, but there wasn’t anything wrong with him at all – health wise that is. If you followed along on twitter many Oriole fans thought that the team had this one in the bag. Many felt that Jim Johnson was going to own Ibanez, who had hit just .240 with a .308 on-base-percentage during the regular season, because how many of us actually believed the guy had anything left last season when he was 39 years old – let alone this season at the age of 40?
We all know what we thought would happen, which was that Ibanez would swing weakly at a couple of sinkers before grounding out to shortstop J.J. Hardy and the Orioles would have been just one out away from leading this series two games to one.
What really happened though was that Ibanez came through in a big, big way – something that even I still cannot believe, but can still appreciate for what it is – a monumental baseball moment. One of those things that only the baseball Gods can write up as perfectly as it happened, thus creating one of those moments that will live on in baseball history for all eternity – Ibanez blasted the second pitch he saw from Johnson, a sinker that stayed up in the zone, 403 feet to right-center and tied the game – saving the New York Yankees, and manager Joe Girardi, from the firestorm the media would rain down on them for another close defeat and the decision to pinch-hit for A-Rod.
Here is my immediate reaction on twitter following the Ibanez homerun:
Lance Rinker (@burndowntheyard)
Alright…apparently Joe Girardi made the right call and I’m just a bumbling idiot.
One minute. That’s all it took for the future history books of this postseason to possibly be re-written because Joe Girardi had the guts to make one of the riskiest decisions of his managerial career; a decision that has caused other managers in this game to lose their jobs because it didn’t work out so well for them in the end.
Even though the decision by Girardi to pinch-hit for A-Rod in the bottom of the ninth paid off, something that none of us were really expecting but still had that feeling in the pits of our stomachs that this could be bad, the Orioles were still in a good spot. After all, they haven’t lost a game in extra innings since April 11 when they lost back-to-back extra-inning games to the, you guessed it, New York Yankees.
The starting pitching on each side was phenomenal, the bullpens each performed very well into extras but all it takes is one pitch to turn it all around for your team – or in this case just two pitches for Raul Ibanez. If he already wasn’t the unlikeliest of hero’s coming off the bench to send this game into extra-innings he was even more unlikely to do it again in the bottom of the 12th inning against our new-found left-handed specialist Brian Matusz.
Matusz has been a revelation coming out of the bullpen since he was put in that role towards the end of the regular season and was putting left-handed batters away like it was nothing for him. Left-handed batters were batting just .175 against Matusz during the regular season and with Ibanez up, who was batting just .197 with zero homeruns against lefties during the regular season, this game sure seemed like it was headed to a 13th inning.
Instead, Ibanez launched the first pitch he saw from Matusz – a fastball right over the plate – 390 feet into the right field and that was it. The Yankees were celebrating as the Orioles were left to watch and wonder what in the hell just happened – they don’t lose when leading after the seventh inning and they certainly don’t lose in extra-innings.
Orioles skipper Buck Showalter will do what he’s done all season long and that is to get his team prepared to play game four of this ALDS. The team will do something they’ve done all season long and that is to bounce back from a tough loss and try to keep this magical season of theirs rolling along to force a game five against C.C. Sabathia.
I’m not even sure the baseball gods themselves could have drawn this up any better.
