I know I’m not the first person to bring this up in a blog post today—everyone from Jon Heyman to Drew Carey thinks that Wedge’s decision to pitch Paul Byrd tonight could end up costing the Indians the game, and possibly the series—but I would like to point out that I saw this moment coming, before the series even began, when the Indians announced the starters for all five games before playing a single inning.
Throwing Sabathia and Carmona in the first two games was, of course, a no-brainer. Having Jake Westbrook pitch Game 3, in Yankee Stadium? That, I’m not so sure about. During two regular season meetings, Yankees hitters crushed just about everything Westbrook threw in their direction, piling up 17 hits (including five home runs) and 12 runs in just 8 2/3 innings. But, as the other possible starter Paul Byrd was also ripped apart by the Yanks in his only start against them (2 IP 7 H 7 R), and the Indians won the first two games of the series after going winless against New York during the regular season, let’s disregard past history and just think about this strategically.
In Game 1, the Tribe threw out Sabathia, a prototypical left-handed power-pitching ace. In Game 2, they pitched Fausto Carmona, a righty sinkerball pitcher who relies on keeping the ball down and off the plate to induce hitters into hitting weak groundballs. 2-0 Indians: So far, so good. Then it gets a little tricky. Normally you would want to start your third best starting pitcher in Game 3 of a playoff series, but you also need to consider the match-ups and your other personnel. Enter Jake Westbrook, another sinkerball pitcher, but with weaker velocity and less control than Carmona. Why would you pitch Carmona Lite after pitching Carmona? It makes no sense to me. The Yankees saw nine innings of hard sinkers in Game 2, and were able to have their plate approach from that game carry over into the next game. When the same pitch that they were looking for in Game 2 was slower and more hittable, the Yankees were, predictably, very successful hitting the ball against Westbrook in Game 3. Why not throw Byrd, a control pitcher who relies on a wide array of off-speed pitches, in Game 3 instead of Westbrook? I’m not saying he’s a Cy Young candidate, or even more than an average pitcher, but he would have at least given the Yankees a different look. And Byrd’s numbers during the regular season (15-8 4.59 ERA 1.39 WHIP) were comparable to Westbrook’s (6-9 4.32 ERA 1.41 WHIP). It’s not like I’m suggesting you not throw Sandy Koufax and vintage Randy Johnson back-to-back (on my all-time fantasy team) just because they’re both left-handed power pitchers. There is little to no drop-off in pitching ability between Westbrook and Byrd, but when Wedge started Westbrook after Carmona, it put Westbrook at an unnecessary disadvantage against a team whose collective batting eyes were already adjusted to hitting his only effective pitch.
Even though I KNEW Westbrook was going to get rocked in Game 3 before the series even began, I would be willing to give Eric Wedge a pass if he would just, even for a moment, consider changing his starter for Game 4. Wedge picking Westbrook over Byrd suggests a blind belief in groundball pitching over flyball pitching (Byrd’s career ground ball to fly ball ratio is less than 1) hindered Wedge’s ability to effectively analyze his team's match-ups, which leads me to believe that he is, despite reports to the contrary, capable of intelligent thought, because in many situations, this would be a sound strategy to follow. But by picking Byrd over Sabathia (and having Carmona as a fall-back plan for Game 5) for Game 4 Wedge has indicated to me that he is a) incapable of distinguishing between talent and mediocrity, b) stubbornly sticking with the game-plan he came up with before the series even started because he’s a republican and hates change, or c) is THAT guy at the poker table who has pocket aces but refuses to bet anyone out because he wants a bigger payoff (i.e. having the optimum setup of Carmona and Sabathia for the first two games of the ALCS). As I can’t come up with any other reasonable excuse for not using your best pitchers to close out a series with a potentially dangerous opponent, I’ll give Wedge the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is looking ahead to the next series. In that case, I see what he’s doing, but I don’t like it. “THAT guy at the poker table” does come away with a big pot about half of the time; the other half of the time, though, he loses big, and often loses it all. I would rather save the roulette strategies for $5 buy-in games with my suitemates, and play the odds when dealing with the fate of a $70 million baseball team, but maybe that’s just me. Of course, this could be a moot point if the Indians “break out the boom sticks” (thanks, Sportscenter) again against Yankees starter Chien-Ming Wang (they torched him for 9 hits and 8 runs in 4 2/3 innings in Game 1), but as a fan of this talented, young Indians squad, I’m not feeling very confident at the moment.
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