BOSTON – Mike Mussina walked gingerly through the Yankee dugout en route to the clubhouse, his night’s work complete. Joe Torre was erring toward caution, since the 37-year-old righty felt a tightness in his groin on yet another long night in what feels like this never-ending Rivalry series.
However, there was no caution again with the bullpen. Torre could have accepted that the Yanks had won the first three games of this set decisively and, with Mussina gone after just four innings, asked, say, Jeff Karstens to simply get as many outs as possible. That is not Torre’s way, though.
His belief is that when his team has a chance to win he will attack the game vigorously, and this game was tied after 4 ½ innings. So when the bullpen swung open in the bottom of the fifth, Ron Villone came out. Again.
It marked the sixth time in the last eight days he had pitched and the 13th time in the first 20 days of August. Which makes you wonder if David Ortiz’s tie-breaking homer off Villone in the fifth was just a matter of a great hitter delivering yet another substantial blow or whether Villone’s onerous workload is beginning to erode his stuff?
The Yankees won 8-5 in 10 innings, in part, because Torre did not quit on this game and ended up getting 5 2/3 innings from the dogged Villone, Scott Proctor and Mariano Rivera. It was yet another thrilling, meaningful win. But if there was bad news at all, it is that Torre asked another 5 2/3 innings from Villone, Proctor and Rivera. The Yankee lead is 5 ½ games. However, if you are figuring out ways that they can fail to hold on to win the AL East, then start in the end. Look to the pen, where the Yanks have four of the most used arms in the game, and remember a quarter season still remains.
“Managing a bullpen is not easy,” Brian Cashman said. “And managing a bullpen vs. the AL East is even more difficult, especially playing Boston 19 times.”
Torre has a well-established track record now. He has worked in a cauldron of 162 must-win games for 11 years, and the imperative heightens against Boston. Sure he can go with lesser, rested options. But when that fails will talk-show New York understand? How about a certain fellow named George Steinbrenner?
“In theory you want to do a lot of things,” Cashman said. “But then the game dictates otherwise.”
And, to Torre, last night’s game dictated that he use Villone, Proctor and ultimately Rivera again, adding more pitches to their arms in pursuit of adding more nails to Boston’s coffin. Proctor leads the majors in games pitched and relief innings, and not by a little. Kyle Farnsworth is second to Proctor in the AL in appearances and Rivera is ninth. Proctor is joined in the top four in AL relief innings pitched by Villone and Rivera, who is en route to working his most innings since he was a set-up man in 1996. Proctor has thrown more pitches this year than Roger Clemens or Jered Weaver. Yet, just like Villone, he insisted that he feels sound.
“Everybody on the team has played hurt this year,” Proctor said. “We are playing for a ring. That’s what I’m thinking about, not being tired.”
However, are the Yanks jeopardizing a ring in October by what they are asking the main components of their pen to do now? Or do these arms have to be used over and over and over simply to assure October in the competitive AL? We have seen relievers such as Paul Quantrill and Tanyon Sturtze and, to some degree, Tom Gordon wilt under Torre’s past heavy reliance on just a few relievers.
“I don’t want to be teammates with guys who want to pitch some of the time,” Villone said.
It is the kind of noble, team-oriented sentiment that has scored the key relievers so many points in their own clubhouse. But all the machismo and motivation will not save the Yanks if the significant bullpen figures go from burning brightly to burning out.
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Call to the bullpen
One glaring difference between the Yankees and Red Sox through the first four games of this weekend’s five-game series at Fenway Park was the performance of the teams’ bullpens. The Yanks’ pen has been mostly solid, while Boston’s relief corps, on the other hand, was a nightmare. Here’s a look at the numbers:
IP H R ER BB SO NP ERA
Yankees 15 18 7 7 9 11 341 4.20
Red Sox 16.1 28 24 23 16 18 394 12.67