The A.J. Burnett who makes you reach for the meds and maybe the couch? He wasn't anywhere within 40 nautical miles of the south Bronx Thursday night. In his place was the A.J. Burnett who makes you think that if you blink, he can shut you out without your bats getting off your shoulders. Those pesky first-pitch strikes to the first 11 Phillies he faced had a lot to do with that impression.
The Pedro Martinez who knows in his heart he isn't the Pedro Martinez he used to be, but let his brains take over where his repertoire had no firepower, and stifled the team who raised him from a pup in the National League Championship Series? He showed up Thursday night, too. And he flicked off the near-inevitable "Who's your daddy?" chants from the Yankee Stadium crows gave the Phillies the best of the thinking man's junk he now has to offer.
Burnett has been known to implode when things get a little dicey, whether on the mound or on the disabled list. But this time the diciest scrape the Phillies could drop on him did nothing to light the fuse. "This," said an admiring Jimmy Rollins, after the Yankees hung in for a 3-1 Game 2 win to send the World Series tied at one to Philadelphia, "was a big game, and he was big for them. And that's not like him. That's like, wow, he was on."
And the Phillies had their own Game 1 lancer to thank for it. Believe it ... or not.
When Cliff Lee spoke calmly after his masterpiece about calm confidence and faith in his repertoire, Burnett was listening. Several reports indicated he happened to be walking past the clubhouse kitchen when he heard Lee's voice in an on-field postgame interview. He decided to sit and listen. The Phillies probably wish they could have found a way to pull the plug.
Who would have figured that the man who'd waxed the Yankees so authoritatively the night before would have given the Empire Emeritus's Game 2 starter what he needed to pin the Phillies' ears back beneath their helmet flaps? "[A]ll I told myself last night and tonight was the same thing," Burnett said. "I went out with confidence and ... the game just rolled by."
Well, not exactly. Not when the Phillies pried an early 1-0 lead out of him and put five of their first fourteen on base against him. Only it might have seemed as though the game was just rolling by — literally, too. That was some nasty save catcher Jose Molina made on the 0-2 curve ball Burnett threatened to bury in the home plate dirt in the Philadelphia fourth, after Jayson Werth opened with a base hit. That was an even nastier throw up the line to pick Werth off dead.
Molina probably should have been named the game MVP for that one. All he did was wing one up the line that may have done more to keep Burnett from vaporizing than anything any other Yankee could have done short of leaving the television set unmolested the night before. On a night Derek Jeter is striking out thrice and Alex Rodriguez — whose postseason coming-out party has been rudely interrupted by Philadelphia pitching — is becoming an historical figure in the wrong way, going down on strikes for his fourth, fifth, and sixth time over the first two Series games, the Yankees needed something with which to even it up.
They got Mark Teixiera shaking off his .181 postseason average to date by driving a 1-0 pitch into the right center field seats to open the Yankee fourth and tie it up at one. They got Hideki Matsui answering two Martinez swishouts (of Teixiera and A-Rod) with a 1-2 service sent not too far away from where Teixiera's blast landed to break the tie.
They got Jorge Posada — pinch-hitting for Molina with Burnett about to yield to The Mariano and Philadelphia manager Charlie Manuel possibly having left Martinez a little too long for comfort (shades of Grady Little?) and with a pair of Yankees aboard (Brett Gardner, running for leadoff singler Jerry Hairston, Jr.; Melky Cabrera, who'd singled Gardner to second) — singling up the pipe on 1-2 to send home Gardner off reliever Chan-Ho Park, before reliever Scott Eyre got Johnny Damon to line into a double play for the side.
And they got The Mariano in for a six-out save that even he had to earn the hard way, the Phillies finding a way to load up first and second with one out, including Rollins wringing him for an 11-pitch walk that included four straight 2-2 foul-offs against a pitcher whose history of breaking bats en route yet another save seemed to have disappeared into the same ether as had Burnett's history of self-implosion.
But he is still The Mariano, and he is still capable of shaking away a Chase Utley wringing a full count out of him and throwing even the Phillies' guiding force a cutter that has double play stamped on the hide.
Or — after dropping a called third strike in on Ryan Howard with not a single ball in the count, and getting Werth to line out right to Robinson Cano at second on a 2-2 count — shaking away a Raul Ibanez double to the rear end of the yard before teasing Matt Stairs (whose two-out single to left sent Ibanez home with the lone Phillies run in the second) with two strikes, two balls, and a swishout that brought the wind chill factor down to about 15-below for the game.
The Phillies must have been wondering where went that 5-7/4.75 ERA they'd hung on Burnett lifetime before Game 2 disappeared. The Yankees must have been wondering whether Manuel had learned anything from Grady Little, who'd committed to Martinez's heart without bothering to check whether the tank had anything left in 2003.
Except for Teixiera and Matsui, Martinez worked with guile and thought and kept the Yankees at bay until he'd thrown 99 pitches and Manuel — who'd hooked him with a lead after a mere 87 pitches in Dodger Stadium only to see the game escape — let Pedro talk him into going one more inning with the bottom of the Yankee order coming up.
"He said that he was fine," the manager told reporters after the game. "He said that he wanted to go back out and pitch. The bottom of the lineup was up, and I thought he hadn't lost anything."
As in 2003, he hadn't lost his heart but he'd exhausted what was left of his repertoire well enough to notice. And Yankee manager Joe Girardi, whose own decision-making has left more than a few shaking heads in its wake, got to see a decision of his pay off big for a change: he'd decided to bench Nick Swisher, whose postseason slump has become something of a New York anti-legend thus far, in favor of Hairston — who hadn't faced Martinez since Pedro wore the silks of the Olde Towne Team.
"He definitely had that electric fastball then," Hairston mused after the game, "but his command might be even better now. He was spotting pitches on me that I thought were balls when I was at the plate. Then I went back and looked at the film during the game. And they were strikes. They were pitcher's pitches. He got me the first two at-bats and the third at-bat, I was able to fight and claw and do something off him."
It was enough to make Girardi resemble a genius and Manuel a midget. On a night when Burnett shook off his bad side and stayed within his best side, that was the first thing Girardi needed and the last thing Manuel could have wanted.
The Mariano made Girardi look even more like a genius, too, even if Girardi was acting on behalf of three factors that made the move imperative: 1) Lately, Girardi trusts the rest of his bullpen, with reason enough, about as much as a lamb-chop trusts itself to escape a wolf. 2) His main man isn't exactly the three-and-gone finisher type that gives closers a dubious name. ("Even in 1996 when I caught him and he was the setup guy," Girardi recalled, "he would go more than two innings at a time.") And, 3) Everyone had the day off Friday. It wasn't as though he couldn't play the option come Saturday, if need be.
But The Mariano also made Manuel look further like a chump when Manuel held his runners with Utley at the plate. "I don't want Utley to hit into a line-drive double play," Manuel said afterward. "And I don't want Jimmy Rollins to get thrown out at third base. I want Howard hitting in the inning." So, naturally, and after a very dubious strike call on a pitch that left at least a hand width of space between itself and the outside black of the plate, Utley dialed Area Code 4-6-3. Inning over.
"I can't answer it," Jeter said of the Yankee bullpen bellwether when it was over. "Maybe he can answer it."
Don't bet on it. "Everything," The Mariano said coolly enough when it was over, "starts with the starter." But even he didn't realize Game 2's doings started with the other guys' Game 1 starter.
