The Yankees will win if...

by WholeCamels on Oct 28, 2009 5:27 PM EDT

We agreed to do a little role reversal with our opposite SBNation blog, and look at the World Series from their team’s perspective. Please see Pinstripe Alley’s "The Phillies will win if…" piece here.

The Yankees will win the Series if…

1. Brad Lidge 2009 shows up for the World Series. Shutdown relief pitching is one of the keys to postseason success. And the Yankees, with Mariano Rivera, are certainly not going to give the Phillies any leeway in that regard. I expect a close Series, and one game blown in the late innings could make all the difference.

2. CC Sabathia continues to dominate. You can deal with an opposing pitcher shutting your team down for one game, maybe two. But if someone can shut you down for three games, you’re basically toast.

3. The Phillies hitters allow the all of the Yankees starters to go deep into ballgames. With a strong front-end of the rotation, and a sterling backend of the bullpen, the Yankees’ erratic middle relief seems to be the closest thing they have to a soft underbelly. You want as many hacks as you can get against the likes of Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain, Phil Coke, etc.

4. Alex Rodriguez keeps impressing Kate Hudson. Rodriguez has been legendary this postseason, all but exorcising the demons of his prior postseason "underperformance." No one has more talent, or more incentive to succeed, than Rodriguez. He could blow this Series wide open.

5. A.J. Burnett pitches to his contract. It was a weird year for Burnett – he certainly wasn’t terrible, but he had more than a few terrible games (including one against the Phillies in May), with the not infrequent masterpiece mixed in. The man is an enigma, but if "Good A.J." shows up for the Series, the Phillies are in big trouble.

6. Chase Utley continues to struggle. The rest of the lineup really picked up the slack for Utley in the NLCS, but you can’t rely on the likes of Carlos Ruiz to bail out your best player when he’s slumping. The uncharacteristic throwing errors seem to have dissipated, but their reappearance could be a huge problem for the Phillies.

The Yankees are by far the best team the Phillies have faced during their 2008-2009 playoff runs. Win or lose, expect the Series to play out that way.

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Comments

I just love these posts by and between the opposing teams. Also, the Yankees will win if:

7. They commit to pitching around Ryan Howard, something the Dodgers and Rockies never figured out.

BUT, it ain’t gonna happen! Phils in 6!!!!!!

by Boundforbeach on Oct 28, 2009 5:34 PM EDT reply actions

it's hard to pitch around Howard when

you have 36 HR and 34 HR hitters behind him, obviously.

by alcatraz0109 on Oct 28, 2009 6:27 PM EDT up reply actions

By the end of the ALCS, Mike Scioscia was giving Rodriguez something close to the Bonds Treatment: whenever he could get away with it, he walked him. I wonder if Manuel will take the same approach. The problem, of course, is that the dropoff to Posada or Matsui or Cano isn’t very big, nor is there a platoon advantage to be gained: like (two of) our lefties, Godzilla and Cano hit southpaws as well or better.

Couldn’t agree more that the challenge in this series is steeper than any the Phils have faced in the last two Octobers. Hopefully that makes the accomplishment that much sweeter if the team can bring it home.

by dajafi on Oct 28, 2009 5:40 PM EDT reply actions

but I was mystified with how the Halos were pitching him. I couldn’t divine a strategy. Now a 1.5whatever OPS will do that, I guess, but if you throw fat fastballs to a real good hitter, you can’t tell me that Ryan Howard or Chase Utley wouldn’t have racked up the same stats with those pitches.

by Wet Luzinski on Oct 28, 2009 5:43 PM EDT up reply actions

I kind of dug how Travis G concluded that there are many factors in the Yankees’ favor that may not, in fact, be sustainable.

by Wet Luzinski on Oct 28, 2009 5:41 PM EDT reply actions

I, for one, am rooting for reversion to norms for both CC and ARod.

by doubleh on Oct 28, 2009 6:31 PM EDT up reply actions

I’m of the opinion that Game 1 in this series is of absolutely monstrous significance. Even more so than usual. I don’t have a strong basis for that, it’s just a gut feeling.

by taco pal on Oct 28, 2009 5:42 PM EDT reply actions

I keep thinking that as well, but am also unable to really put into words why.

*sigh*

by zempf on Oct 28, 2009 5:54 PM EDT up reply actions

i agree, but i’ll give you a reason. The Yanks plan to pitch CC three games in the series if it goes 7, everyone knows that. If we rock him in the first game of the series, that really puts pressure on the yankees to win the next two games to avoid going down 2-1 before sabathia can retake the mound. We all know the Phillies lineup just isn’t scared of power pitching, sinkers are usually what gets the job done against the Phillies.

by packimop on Oct 28, 2009 5:56 PM EDT up reply actions

1 of 2. Just take 1 of 2.

We did it against the Rays, we did it against the Dodgers. Those series turned out well.

by FuquaManuel on Oct 28, 2009 6:06 PM EDT up reply actions

Normally, the smart move is to bet that players on torrid paces will be unable to keep it up and will instead regress to their season averages. I think that’s certainly the case for Sabathia, Lee, and A-Rod.

Lidge, however, might be an exception to that general rule. He has a pretty long track record in MLB, and the 2009 postseason edition is actually closer to the “real” Lidge than the 2009 regular season edition was. Which is a good thing for us. If the weird bizarro version of Brad Lidge hadn’t appeared during the regular season – if we’d gotten, say, the 2007 Astros version of Brad Lidge instead – then our Pythagorean record would have been just about identical to the Yankees’. True fact.

by taco pal on Oct 28, 2009 5:52 PM EDT reply actions

Good point. Every time I see that 93-69 record, part of me thinks, “With even career-average Lidge, we’d have won around 100 games in the regular season.”

by dajafi on Oct 28, 2009 6:12 PM EDT up reply actions

A piece of advice on Sabathia...

…BUNT. Trust me. He hates it when players do that. It throws him off entirely.

The Twins know this, but for some reason didn’t employ it (I blame exhaustion). The Angels must not have known. I hope the Phillies looked back at the old videos of Captain Cheeseburger and figured out that the game plan has to involve getting that fat bastard running off the mound.

BUUUUUUUUUNT.

http://www.realityfish.com

by Robin G on Oct 28, 2009 7:16 PM EDT reply actions