New York Yankees, World Champions
Congratulations to the New York Yankees – the World Champions of the 2009 season.
They earned it. They were the best team in baseball, and it wasn’t particularly close. The Phillies are a good team that ran into a great team. The better team won.
Some Game Six thoughts:
1. Obviously, the big topic of discussion will be Charlie Manuel’s decision to stick with Pedro Martinez in the third inning. He was obviously pitching without his best stuff early in the game, though his velocity had picked up a little bit in the third. However, at best, he’s an average pitcher, and was already halfway through the line-up for the second time. He wasn’t going to last very long, regardless of the outcome of that inning.
However, with the bases loaded, a LH hitter coming up, and an LHP ready in the bullpen, Manuel stuck with Pedro. JA Happ isn’t an all-star or anything, but he’s clearly the better option to get Matsui out in that situation and keep the game within a single run. That was absolutely a critical, game-turning at-bat (the LI was 2.56), and Manuel chose to go with an inferior match-up in order to get an extra inning out of Martinez.
That’s just bad managing, but it continued the trend that Manuel established early. He over-trusted Pedro’s personality, choosing to give him two starts in a six game series when he was the Phillies’ fourth or fifth best starting pitcher. You could argue that he over-trusted Brad Lidge as well. Manuel went with two guys who had been great previously but were currently less than their former selves, and he got burned.
2. Perhaps the more head scratching move, however, was to go to Chad Durbin in the 5th inning. Chad Durbin is terrible. He’s essentially a replacement level reliever, and he had no business on the mound in a lose-and-your-season-is-over ballgame. Worse, he was sent to the mound to face the top of the Yankee order. In the middle of July, it wouldn’t be a good idea to send Chad Durbin to the mound to face Jeter, Rodriguez, and Teixeira. In the World Series, it’s malpractice.
3. If that was Hideki Matsui’s final game as a Yankee, that’s going down as one of the best finishes to a career in the history of the game. Hats off, Godzilla – you’ll be telling your grandkids about this one a few hundred times.
4. Mariano Rivera is incredible. I know he’s 40, but he’s better now than he’s ever been. When we talk about how fungible relief pitchers are, we mean all of them except for him. He’s amazing.
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Fuck the Yankees.
Now, let’s do this off season thing.
“Mariano Rivera is incredible. I know he’s 40, but he’s better now than he’s ever been. When we talk about how fungible relief pitchers are, we mean all of them except for him. He’s amazing.” — DC
As much as I hate the Yankees, I truly believe that Mariano Rivera has by far the biggest gap between best ever at his position and second-best ever. Truly a phenomenal player, and his cutter is going to be a pitch I tell my grandchildren about. One of the most dominant pitches of my lifetime.
Indeed. I cannot tolerate the Yankees, but watching Rivera will be something I remember for a very long time.
did anyone else notice how tim mccarver talked about small sample size issues with starting pitchers on three days rest?
Yes. If McCarver could be paired with a good announcer, he wouldn’t get the flak he does, but Joe Buck is just god-awful. The only reason he has a job is because of his father, who was legitimately a legend.
Yeah, and then he ruined by choosing wins to exemplify how it belied true talent. I was so disappointed…
I had this same exact sentiment/discussion with a friend. I was proud of McCarver for citing small sample sizes, but then disappointed when he went to wins.
He did the same thing the other day in Game 5. He loves building up to let down. I forget the exact scenario but he was talking about a hitter in a 3-1 count and it seemed like a good analysis, but instead of citing his batting average in different counts, he just made some general empty statement. I’m not expecting him to be a regular on Fangraphs or something, but that’s a readily available stat that lots of announcers would have no problem checking up on.
it was amazing.
i almost fainted from shock.
McCarver is not, and I realize I’m going to be in the minority here but I’ll express the sentiment anyway, an idiot. He’s actually a fairly solid interviewer, for instance.
I actually think that if we could kidnap him and put him through an intensive two-week sabermetric boot camp experience, he would become a fairly good announcer (albeit one still prone to bad puns and weird metaphors– I don’t think that’s ever going away).
Mark Wohlberg fastball! Catch me if you can.
Congratulations to the Yankees, they earned it.
Charlie..Well. Whatever. Once Cole blew up, the Phillies lost it. Say whatever you want about our rotation depth, but with Cole pitching at the level of a 4, you really Have a 1, followed by four 4s.
The bullpen had nothing. Lidge was awful, Madson was awful in any high leverage situation.
Matsui better win the MVP. He deserves it, he delivered the 6th game all on his own
The Yankees earned it? Actually, it felt to me like they bought it, then tried to give it away, but the Phillies were prepared to fail much harder.
The Yankee players earned it. Happy? The team bought it, the players earned their salaries by winning.
Oy, here we go.
I’ll tell you what, though, the growing resentment against New York’s spending is probably going to be at it’s peak now. Before, people laughed at it because New York couldn’t win with a 150+ million budget. Now it’s not going to be funny anymore. I still doubt anything comes of it.
Well, here’s to an off season of insufferable Yankee fans and even more insufferable non Yankee fans demanding salary caps.
Every team buys their results. The Yankees simply place a higher premium on winning.
The Phillies had an offense and… Cliff Lee. Not enough.
Cry about money all you want, but cry to your owner.
“Every team buys their results. The Yankees simply place a higher premium on winning.”
No, the Yankees have a cash influx greater than any team can dream of.
Listen, enjoy your WS. It’s well-earned, but the salary cap issue is always a valid point of debate.
@ Logan: They will always have that cash influx, especially with a cap. They will just find other ways to outspend teams and abuse loopholes within the cap (see: NFL). I prefer one tyrant over 30.
waaahhhh!!!!
Wait, what are these other ways to outspend teams and abuse loopholes in the NFL?
Last time I checked, the best teams in the NFL were from Indianapolis and New Orleans. Not exactly your huge markets.
Winning in the NFL is actually about finding talent and coaching well, not just about how many dollars you throw at free agents.
Sandy Kazmir- First off, your name is blasphemous. SK I and SK II should never be compared. :-)
You know what I see in the NFL? Parity. Yes, there are teams that are exceptionally well-managed and stay playoff fixtures, but no team can just outspend the next closest competitor by a gap larger than the entire rest of the spread.
the yankees haven’t won for 8 years, now you cry about parity? lol… such a sad, sad argument.
It seems to me that a salary cap might not be the answer, but we already have a luxury tax that could be used more effectively. Right now the Yankees don’t care that they blow through the luxury tax cutoff, and they are usually one of the only teams that pays the tax. I think the threshold should be lowered, and perhaps the rate should be increased. This would make it so that all of the top spending (and presumably top earning as well) teams would pay, further distributing baseball’s wealth, and perhaps cause the Yankees to think twice before signing all of the top free agents in an off season.
and where do these players go when there are no yankees to pay their $30million salaries? you basically want to cut their contracts and screw the superstars?
Wait, you’re using an 8 year (it’s actually 9, but w.e.) gap as evidence for parity? The fact that a sub-decade gap seems like a long time to any team is evidence that the system isn’t fair.
Such a brilliant, brilliant argument.
/sarcasm.
they had the highest payroll in the league every one of those seasons, and didn’t win shit? that tells me that you can’t just buy it, and making that statement just makes you look stupid.
And they’ve missed only one post-season. They’ve had a playoff spot purchased for them every single year. Using championships as a metric for parity when Baseball playoff series are incredibly crapshooty just makes you look stupid. Well, that and pretty much everything else you say.
Do continue!
FUCK.
Happ looked scared the entire postseason, especially when coming in with men on base. You saw what happened when he faced Matsui later. Not putting Happ in during the 3rd inning was not a mistake.
CC = WS MVP
I was hoping they were going to play game seven in OLD Yankee Stadium.
You gotta have a quicker leash with pedro when he’s throwing 84 mph fastballs in the middle of the plate
Rivera is so fucking good. Yankees World CHAMPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
DAMN.,,,,,,, the Phillies blew this one….. they should have won game 4 after they tied it 4-4… opportunity missed………..
i’m confused, exactly how “should” they have won that game?
by not using their closer, who happens to suck donkeys.
that would only have left the game tied. it’s not like the yankee’s were losing and scored the tie/winning runs off him…
The anti-KC bias here is palpable………..
Not as much as if Carruth had written it.
The flood gates are open: here come all the “salary cap” and “best team money can by” posts, blogs, columns..
Regardless of their recent FA aquisitions, the Yankees wouldn’t have won the series w/o their original pinstripers: Jeter, Posada and Rivera. You may even add Pettite to the mix since was originally a Yankee. When these guys hang ‘em up, they’ll be tougher to replace the upper management may think.
That may be true, but the fact they are were originally Yankees doesn’t really nullify the payroll issue, since all of them are currently signed at hefty free agent salaries that only a few teams could afford to pay. Most teams are forced to let players like that walk — at least some of them.
you are confused, there is a difference between “forced to let walk” and “decide to profit, instead of win”
Right, and like most of those teams, which neither profit nor win, it is absolutely as simple a binary choice as you make it out to be.
if you are not winning or profitting, there’s an easy solution. shut down your baseball team. you don’t have to run a team just because you can and then cry that other teams are better off than you.
So Tom, you want a league that only has teams in about 10 markets? I’m not going to argue for a salary cap, but this “profit, instead of win” things is complete BS. We have teams that both profit and win, some that win but don’t profit, some that profit but don’t win, and some that don’t do either. There are some clubs that choose to profit over winning, and abuse the revenue sharing, but those are the exception, not the rule.
The answer to this problem could be to allow the owners more freedoms (like closing their doors as you suggest or moving to where ever they want), but MLB wouldn’t like that. The very first thing that would have to happen for this to work is to completely abolish the territorial rights. So what you’d end up seeing the Royals moving to LA, the Marlins moving to NY, the A’s finally moving SJC, etc. Some of that would probably be just fine for the game, but I suspect we’d have a lot of fans and MLB itself opposed to that.
“and Manuel chose to go with an inferior match-up in order to get an extra inning out of Martinez.”
And Matsui hits left handers just as well as right handers, you should know that. In fact, he’s better. And Happ isn’t exactly a premium pitcher yet, you might as well just let the old guy get the innings instead of wasting the bullpen to attempt to stop the inevitable.
Well, I don’t think you worry about wasting the bullpen there at all. But as you and another commenter both pointed out, Happ did come in for Matsui’s next at bat and proceeded to give up a two-run double off the wall. The combination of Happ’s less-than-deadly stuff and Matsui’s lack of a platoon split makes the non-move in the third inning hard to criticize. If they’d had a better alternative — and one who could’ve gotten warm in the space of couple of batters — then maybe they make a move there.
That said, I wasn’t at all surprised when Matsui hit the homer or the single, because he just kept fouling off pitches — many of them very hard foul balls.
Kind of interesting stat as Matsui traditionally hit similarly versus both, but had better power against righties. This year, however, it reversed and it wasn’t even close with a slugging against lefties well over 100 points higher.
Well, Matsui’s OPS is about .040 points lower against LHP than RHP. That isn’t much, but for the love of god, any hit in that spot basically wins the game, why do you not make that move? In a do or die situation like that, get the right match up. You had an off day yesterday and you are very likely to not play until April if Matsui gets a hit, so pitcher’s being available isn’t a problem. Sure Matsui hitting a double off Happ later looks like it wouldn’t have mattered, but you don’t know that. All you know is that Pedro allows a .030 higher OPS against LHB this year (~.800 OPS vs. LHB), Matsui hits .040 higher (OPS) against RHP and Happ allows about a .090 lower OPS against LHP (~.643 OPS vs. LHB).
You simply had to make this switch. Pedro wasn’t pitching much longer and he simply isn’t good enough to matter either. Both Pedro and Happ had essentially identical FIPs this year, though Pedro’s SSS and his 2008 performance should lead you to think Happ is better.
Unfortunately J.A. Happ had an oblique inury in spring training or sometime prior to the season starting. He re-injured it again a few weeks or a month before the end of the regular season. His performance steadily nose dived for the rest of the season. This decline continued into the postseason with a short start against the Rox and dreadful relief outings. He’s a step away from a Sportsman’s Hernia that unlike Ibanez’s where the torn abdominal muscle is near the groin area, Happ’s would be where the oblique attaches to the rib cage. It wouldn’t suprise me if he went under the knife this off season. Manuel eventually had to use him when it when it was 7 -1 when it didn’t matter. Just about the all the reliever in the Phillies WS BP but Madson and Lidge was on the DL close to the end of the regular season. Myers rushed his recovery from the surgery to repair his severely damaged hip labrum, Park tore his hamstring a week or two before the NL play-offs, Durbin had just come off the DL the last month of the season I believe as did Condrey. Condrey having strained his an abdominal muscle and again right after coming off the DL had like Happ performed worse depsite the appropriate rest and rehab. Condrey wasn’t on the post season roster however. Eyre was on the DL at one point in time but pressed on with bone chips in his elbow.
I have to admit, as a Yankee fan, I was kind of spiritually uplifted when Chad Durbin entered the game. It’s potentially your last game of the season and you’re relying on Chad Durbin? It struck me as Manuel going through the motions in a situation where the motions won’t cut it. I’m pretty sure Cliff Lee could have thrown an inning or two without dying on the mound and he’d clearly have been a better option than anyone in the bullpen.
I agree with that, seeing Chad Durbin out there like that was strange.
I DON’T SLEEP MOTHERFUCKER OFF THAT YAK AND THAT DURBIN
As a phillies season ticket holder, I am not that upset about Pedro pitching game 6 along with game 2. Say Hamels pitches game 2 and 6 and splits them. You still have to have pedro pitch game 7.
I guess you coulda made that the bullpen game that was talked about on an earlier thread where Happ, Pedro, Blanton etc all go through the phillies lineup once. I dont know. That might be a valid criticism of having pedro go 2 and 6 instead of 3 and half of 7.
But still, I am not upset about the yankee payroll, or the fact that they won. Game 4 made me much angrier (and i dont really get angry watching the phillies). The exciting thing is, rereading all the predictions for the phillies to miss the playoffs and win85 games. Some for good reasons (lidge regression, Ibanez on the downside), and some laughable ones, (sorry Dave Cameron, Werth is really that good, and for the most part the injuries he suffered were not that of a “chronically” injured person, broken bones are kind of “equal opportunity”, and unlike backs, and sore knees, are not great predictors of future injuries)
So yes, I can’t wait for next year. I cant wait for the phillies to make the postseason again, and have a 3rd straight year of having every single ESPN talking head NOT pick the phillies to win it all.
I can’t wait to have my annual ticket draft with 9 of my buddies to see which games I get to go to this year.
I can’t wait to see who gets added, etc etc.
As a serious aside, If anyone wants to do a reverse fantasy league next year, drafting the worst team possible, with no day to day management, talk to me. I will work out something in February and we will go from there.
Count me in.
I’m down. This is from SAS, right?
The more I read of Cameron, the more I’m convinced that he likes to assume his conclusions and then cherry pick his evidence, or sometimes not provide any at all.
Now that the Postseason is over, I would like to recognize Joe Buck with my “You Said Waah?” Award.
I do not remember which series it was, but Joe Buck began talking about Chapman and how he’s officially a FA now. According to Joe, Chapman has established residency in Andorra.
Joe: “For those of you that don’t know, Andorra is a small island…”
Winner! I can imagine someone screaming into Joe’s ear “No you flipping moron, it isn’t” because he never mentioned Andorra again. In fact, he sorta trailed off and pretended like he’d never said it in the first place.
Thanks from some of the Yankee fans here as well, Mr. Cameron. Your allegiances are known, but in writing here, you have separated that really well, and mostly provided dispassionate analyses that nonetheless have gotten people passionate.
And thank you to the rest of the crew as well for providing great content and initiating stimulating conversation.
Is this an awards ceremony? You forgot to thank the little people…
Sorry about that. Thank you, little people, whatever your allegiances may be. I also thank my imaginary dog and the computer in my mother’s imaginary basement.
Two notes about the announcers.
1. I believe it was Tim McCarver, but one announcer stated that there wasn’t a large enough sample size to compare Pettitte on short rest to Pettitte on full rest. Then he preceded to spend the rest of the night talking about how hitters were doing in the World Series and basing performance off of that.
2. Again I think McCarver argued that the only American team that it made sense for Matsui to play for other than the Yankees was the Mariners, because Ichiro plays there. Apparently Japanese players can now only play on teams that already have Japanese players.
The thing is, it does make a ton of sense. Seattle has a team of young, athletic fielders, but they have some offensive issues. There is no incumbent player who needs to DH regularly (the issue that will unfortunately force Matsui from New York). The park plays pretty fair for lefty power hitters. The team has solid resources (including $16 million in found money from Johjima opting out). Ownership has made strong efforts to increase its ties to Japan. When a move makes sense from baseball, financial and marketing standpoints, even Tim McCarver can see it as obvious.
plus, being west coast they have a huge japanese fan base, which was part of the reason ichiro went there in the first place.
Still, I don’t get it, could someone explain to me why he’s so sure that Matsui couldn’t, wouldn’t, or shouldn’t sign with any other team except NYY or the M’s?
McCarver didn’t say it would make sense. He said it wouldn’t seem right for Matsui to play with any other American team except the Mariners because he could have Ichiro as a teammate.
It’s probably one of the dumbest comments I’ve ever heard a major sports broadcaster make, and they make many.
Matsui is a solid hitter, and has been throughout his career. His numbers have dropped a bit the past few years but he or any other japanese player doesn’t need a japanese teammate or a japanese fanbase to be successful, you just need to perform. Any team in the MLB could use him and he could be successful, the fact that he is japanese has nothing to do with where he should go.
It’s like saying that Tony Gonzalez should only play with the Jets so that he could be teammates with Mark Sanchez.
JP, good point on the semantics. It does make sense that the M’s would look for a DH similar to Matsui, but it also ‘feels’ fine for him to play for the A’s.
The Game 4 blow-up by Lidge was the crucial one in this series. Seemed like the Phillies were going to get to the ninth and face one of the Yankee’s relatively crappy relievers, and maybe come out with a victory. That Damon steal and then hitting Teixeira (who had been pretty much unable to hit anything that series) sealed it.
yup. huge turning point. if A-Rod makes an out there, i have to think the Phillies win that game.
Pedro had nothing to get Matsui out in the first AB. There was no reason to leave him in the second time around. He didn’t need to go deep, this was a win or go home situation. The whole time like Charlie was managing for the next game without throwing anything out there to win the game at hand. The pen was just managed poorly the whole series but last night was so bad the Phils did not deserve to win.
I don’t mean to whine, I just had to vent. The fashion in which the Phils lost was worseike that. Congrats to Yankees fans, you clearly had the better team (certainly in terms of pitching).
The best team won, congrats.
how come the payroll thing wasn’t an issue when the Phillies or Red Sox were playing the Rays last year?
Boston had a $90M edge on Tampa, same as the Yankees vs. the Phillies or Angels….
Personally, as a Phillies fan and I think that payroll disparity had a lot less to do with the outcome of the Series than did the disparity between the 2008 and 2009 performances of Cole Hamels and Brad Lidge. Also, I’m not so sure that it is primarily Phillies fans who are making the payroll disparity an issue. I think it is a mix of baseball fans (or Yankee haters) that are making it an issue.
i hear you. obviously i can’t back this up with stats, and this is the wrong site to try to do that, but in a way i think they “paid” for their 2008 title with Hamels’ and maybe Lidge’s diminished stuff in 2009. i know Hamels’ peripherals were basically unchanged, but he just didn’t look like the same guy. he’s a young guy who pitched a LOT of innings last year and i think it caught up with him a little.
if i were a Phillies fan, i think i could live with that trade-off.
and you know what? they’re still the NL favorites for next year. they’ll return almost the entire team, and the Lidge problem is not a hard one to fix.
I think the people you’re referring to are whining about the MLB system in general (not having a salary cap) rather than the Yankees. Sure it sucks for baseball that the Yankees spent half a billion on the 3 best free agents in the game because no other team can do that, but they have the resources, so it’s hard to blame them. As a Red Sox fan, I think it’s absurdly unfair that my team gets to bid $50 million for a chance to speak to an international FA. I would love a salary cap, even if it mitigated my favorite team’s recent success. The NFL should really be the model for all pro leagues.
Why? So we can get a 24 mediocre-team middle class? People whining about baseball needing to be more like football fail to understand that the organizational structure of the league is far more conducive to its salary cap than baseball’s. In football, such a significant portion of revenue is generated on the national level, it’s easier to chop it up “fairly.” In football, a hard-cap is feasible because contracts are not guaranteed. In football, small-market teams can compete in attendance because it’s easier to get 80,000 people to come from far away for eight more or less alternating Sundays on which they’re going to make a day out of tailgating and watching the relatively-infrequent event of a home game than it is to fill a 50,000 seat stadium six days a week for six months.
But… we already have a large mediocre-team middle class. Look at this year: 4 very good-to-elite teams: Yankees, Dodgers, Angels, Red Sox; and a handful of awful teams: Orioles, Pirates, Nats, Royals. Is this so different from football? And re the size of schedule point – which is a good one – don’t you think it’d be easier for a team like the Pirates, with a gorgeous park and a talented GM, to attract fans if there were competitive balance and they had a better chance to sign/re-sign on-field talent? It’s not impossible for a small-market team to draw good crowds, but when they spend 1/10 of what the Yankees spend and don’t have a chance in the FA market, it’s very nearly so.
Steve,
There’s no doubt that, similar peripheral stats aside, Hamels was not the same following the combination of (a) the number of innings he threw last year and (b) having one less month to prepare after playing into November for the first time. I kept reading how his BABIP was the only difference between the 2008 and 2009 versions and hoping for an appearance by the 2008 one. I think what happened in many of his starts – and I haven’t done the research to back this up – is that Hamels was great in the first 3 innings this year or the first time through the order, but he hit the wall sooner and harder. I can only hope that fewer IP’s this year will allow him to rebound and the Phils can head into 2010 with a true ace in Lee and a quality #2 in Hamels.
Here’s a breakdown of how the Yankees and Phillies acquired their players:
http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2009/10/world_class_tal.php
The NFLs cap is paired with a floor. The NFL has a floor of about 82 million and a cap of about 110.
The problem is baseball has a much higher distribution of money going to players versus going to owners. (In the NFL its 40/60 and in MLB its about 50/50). The players would never agree to a salary cap that diminished this distribution. In order to keep the same revenue distribution, you would need a significantly high salary floor. Such a system would hurt the teams its designed to protect.
Uh, say what? In the NFL, players are guaranteed between 55 and 60 percent of revenues. In baseball, players get 45%.
During the Series, Yankee hitters drew 18 walks while striking out 56 times and hitting 6 home runs.
Philly hitters drew 26 walks while striking out 50 times and hitting 11 home runs.
I think that’s interesting – I expected basically the opposite to occur. Yankees won with timely hitting rather than just flooding the basepaths.
You leave Chad Durbin alone.
Does anybody else love the fact that Jeter had a much better series than A-Rod, but didn’t perform particularly well in the clutch, while A-Rod had a sub-par series but came up fantastically well in high-leverage situations?
Yeah that’s nice cherry on top. A-rod now had a .302/.409/.568 line for the postseason. Compare that to Jeter’s .313/.383/.479. If we never hear about how Jeter is Cap’n Clutch and A-rod is Cap’n Choke again, I will die a happy man.
I wouldn’t call A-Rod’s performance “sub-par.”
Alex: .250/.423/.550
Jeter: .407/.429/.519
Philly Phanatic is still the best mascot in baseball. His WAR has to be 10-point something. Yankees’ old mascot, Dandy, is below replacement value.
Unfortunately J.A. Happ had an oblique inury in spring training or sometime prior to the season starting. He re-injured it again a few weeks or a month before the end of the regular season. His performance steadily nose dived for the rest of the season. This decline continued into the postseason with a short start against the Rox and dreadful relief outings. The only other left handed reliever was Scott Eyre who I think was being saved in case Pedro pitched out of the jam or limited the damage. In the end it was just a 3 run deficit which they were more than capable making up but did not. Also Eyre will have surgey on Monday to remove bone chips in his elbow. Durbin pitched well in the NL playoffs and gave up 1 run in the WS until that inning. Having returned from the DL a few weeks before the regular season ended, I think he ran out of gas. The other option was Myers however he rushed the recovery from what should have been season ending hip surgery to repair a severely frayed labrum. That’s a question mark and struggle in his one appearance inwhich he yield a HR to Matsui no less. So that left Park and Madson, with Park more suited for longman duty than Madson. However, if at 4-1 the Phillies did catch up to the Yankees and the scored remained close, it would be best to have Park in to protect a lead or keep the Phillies in striking distance. Park it should be noted also suffered a hamstring tear a week or two before the end of the regular season and rushed him DL recovery. I don’t think he would have been able to pitch more than an inning so that would have meant Durbin at some point anyway. Madson might give two innings but then that would mean Lidge at the end had the game gotten close.
Let’s not overstate the superiority of the Yankees. One could argue that the Phillies outplayed the Yankees in this series. In fact, the Phillies lost despite hitting 5 more HRs, walking 8 more times, and striking out 6 fewer times than the Yankees.
If I added things up right, in 52 innings, the Phillies pitchers gave up 49 hits, 18 walks, and 6 HRs while striking out 56. In 53 innings, the Yankees gave up 44 hits, 26 walks, and 11 HRs, while striking out 50.
I agree that the Yankees were the better team, as shown in the regular season. However, the Phillies were quite unlucky in this series in terms of BABIP (.430 vs. .215) and hitting with runners on.