The Futility Infielder

The Florida Marlins came to the hallowed ground of Yankee Stadium on Saturday night clearly unfazed by the task at hand. Behind brash ace Josh Beckett, they strangled whatever life remained out of the New York Yankees, beating them 2-0 to win the World Series, four games to two. The Marlins' victory will go down as one of the bigger upsets in Series history -- the Yanks had a 3-1 payroll advantage, a huge experience edge, and those 26 World Championships banners -- but the team playing the better baseball over the past week won the title. Fair game to the Fish, and no shame to the Yankees for coming up short.

Pitching on three days' rest, Beckett was magnificent, scattering only five hits and two walks while striking out nine. Only once, in the third inning, did the Yanks have more than one runner on base, and they were a combined 0-for-12 with runners on, grounding into two double plays in the process. Andy Pettitte again pitched admirably for the Yanks, but he faltered in the fifth, as the Marlins strung together three two-out singles by Alex Gonzalez, Juan Pierre, and Luis Castillo. Mired in an 0-for-14 slump, Castillo poked a single to rightfield and while Karim Garcia made an excellent peg to Jorge Posada, Gonzalez executed a perfect slide around the outside of the plate, touching home with his hand.

The Marlins added another run in the sixth thanks to a couple of defensive breakdowns by the Yanks. Derek Jeter bobbled and then misfired Jeff Conine's grounder, and after Mike Lowell walked, Pettitte hesitated while fielding Derek Lee's bunt, throwing to second for a forceout when he might have had a play on the lead runner at third. I must admit that as much as Tim McCarver and Joe Buck harped on this, not once did I see a replay showing Aaron Boone's position relative to the bag or the runner. Juan Encarnacion followed with a sacrifice fly to score Conine. Gonzalez reached on a bunt single which put Lee in scoring position, but Pettitte recovered to strike out Pierre and keep the margin at two.

Those two runs were too much for the Yanks. A leadoff double in the seventh by Jorge Posada got the Stadium crowd revved up, but Posada's hit fell by the wayside, as did a leadoff single by Alfonso Soriano in the eighth. Moved down to the #9 spot, Soriano was the only Yankee with two hits on the night, a case of too little, too late. Jeter, who'd gotten the Yanks' only three hits against Beckett in Game Three, went 0-for-4; Bernie Williams, the Yanks hottest hitter, went 1-for-4 with a critical GIDP, and Hideki Matsui, who'd powered the Yanks to an early lead in the Series, disappeared into the Federal Witness Protection program amid an 0-for-10 funk.

So this Marlins team, who stood 16-22 on May 11 before being taken over by a 72-year-old lifer who'd never won anything, are the World Champions. Revile their short and sordid history, which includes only two winning seasons, and their fickle fans, who stayed away in droves as their team nabbed the NL Wild Card. Stifle the urge to vomit when you see Bad Rug Bud handing over the World Series trophy to Bag Job Jeff. Cringe when you imagine the way this team might be dismembered over the next year. But tip your cap to this scrappy young ballclub, their crusty, hunch-playing manager, and the anachronistic little-ball strategies which enabled them to squeeze out runs when they desperately needed them. And prepare to keep an eye on Beckett, whose clinching performance was one for the annals.

Really, this Series turned on two critical moments. The first was Joe Torre's choice of pitchers in the late innings of Game Four, culminating with Jeff Weaver, who yielded the twelfth-inning home run to Gonzalez. The decision to use the Yanks' 14th best pitcher instead of Mariano Rivera or even lefty Chris Hammond (whose reverse platoon split makes him more effective against righties) is a black mark against Torre, and it cost the Yanks their shot at a 3-1 series lead. The second was the implosion of David Wells' back and Jose Contreras' subsequent meltdown. With all pregame signs pointing to Wells's infirmity, Torre and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre should have done a better job preparing Contreras for the admittedly unenviable task of emergency long relief. With the pitcher's split-fingered fastballs kicking up clouds of dust instead of slithering through the strike zone, Contreras looked panicked, and nothing Posada or Stottlemyre seemed to say could prevent the ballgame from slipping away from the Yanks.

Still, the men in pinstripes finished with a 2.13 Series ERA -- the lowest for a losing team in 59 years -- compared to the Marlins' 3.21, outscored the Fish 23-17, and outhit them by a considerable margin:

         AVG   OBP   SLG   OPS

Yanks   .261  .338  .406  .743

Fish    .232  .276  .300  .576

But the Yanks were only 7-for-50 (.140) with runners in scoring position, and only 17-for-86 (.198) with runners on base [I'd supply more detailed stats, but the usually reliable stat services' postseason splits are sadly lacking]. The disappearance of their plate discipline late in the Series was another huge factor. B-Pro's Joe Sheehan points to David Dellucci's bunt in the bottom of the 11th inning of Game Four -- "They had their single greatest probability of winning the World Series at the moment Hideki Matsui walked. It's decreased in almost a straight line since that point to right now. That bunt is the dividing line in this series..." -- and notes that prior to the bunt, the Yanks were averaging 4.06 pitches per at-bat (compared to 3.8 on the regular season), while from there on they averaged only 3.44. For all of the Yanks' oft-mentioned experience, that subsequent performance (17-for-71 with five walks, one intentional) smacks of a team slipping into desperation.

None of this will come as news to George Steinbrenner, whose high-pressure personality and joyless proclamations continue to choke much of the spirit out of the Yankees, though not their class. The pending eruption of Mount George, as inevitable as the day is long, will reap untold carnage, perhaps extending as far as general manager Brian Cashman and second baseman Soriano. Kiss Don Zimmer goodbye, and posssibly Stottlemyre, hitting coach Rick Down, and first base coach Lee Mazzilli as well. But those are issues for another day. At least Steinbrenner didn't repeat his tactless apology to the Yankee Stadium fans like he did the last time an opponent -- the 1981 L.A. Dodgers -- celebrated on their field, and no reports of the Boss' elevator scuffles with unruly Marlins fans have surfaced, either.

This was a frustrating moment to watch for Yankees fans. As my friend Ben put it, "The Yankees have now lost the World Series twice in three years to expansion teams with teal uniforms and swimming pools in their outfield. God, give me any curse but that... We just got smoked by a guy named Pudge and a kid who learned how to throw a breaking ball from Sony Playstation." Arrgh.

But rather than shedding tears or throwing chairs, we Yank fans should feel grateful that this ultimately flawed team gave us such an exciting run, including that exhilirating come-from-behind win over the Red Sox in the ALCS that we'll be able to lord over any Boston fans in our midst until the Curse of the Bambino is finally lifted. We've been exceptionally lucky to have a team that consistently provides a championship run, and should expect no sympathy from those whose ballclubs produce only the occasional contender. As William Rhoden of the New York Times writes: "let today be a day of introspection and humility."

That's not to say the players should feel the same way we fans do. They're upset, and rightfully so, driven to expect more of themselves. For all of the good-to-great players it takes to win a championship, it takes the brazenly great ones who are satisfied with nothing less than total victory to keep that spirit going, from Michael Jordan to Derek Jeter to Josh Beckett. As Bernie Williams put it, "The front office and the people in charge designed this team not to play in the postseason, but to win. When that didn't happen, obviously a lot of people are going to be very upset, including the players. I don't think anybody is more upset than we are." Jeter joined the chorus: "It never sets in. You start in the middle of February with one goal, to win a championship. We didn't do it."

On the Yankees' singular position, Rhoden writes:

Being the Yankees is like being king of the United States: a grand but incongruent distinction. The Yankees have sealed themselves in a lucrative but suffocating archive. The manager, the general manager and even the owner, for that matter, operate in the long shadow of history. They work in a museum filled with black-and-white photos of men wearing pinstripes from eras long past.

The reality is that nobody else in baseball is trying to build a dynasty. Most try to assemble a winning team for the short run. They unload high salaries and reload with hungry, young and cheap talent. The formula has worked: just look at the Yankees' most recent postseason tormentors: Arizona in 2001, Anaheim in 2002 and Florida this year.

For the Yankees, the lesson is that money is a powerful tool that buys strong arms and legs.

Money can't buy the one thing the Yankees need the most, however; it can't buy time.

Speaking of time, with the final out of the Series, the cold, cruel offseason is now upon us. I've had an exhilarating time covering this season from spring training to the bitter end, and I've enjoyed watching this incredible postseason, one of the best in memory even if, in my eyes, the wrong team ended up on top. I want to thank each and every reader who has stopped by here during the past season -- my readership has doubled over last year -- as well as the other bloggers without whom this would be a lot less fun. Particular shoutouts are in order for my pals on the Yankee beat, Alex Belth, Larry Mahnken, and Steven Goldman -- wait 'til next year, eh guys? And a great big hug to my gal Andra for sharing the highs and lows of the entire season, from encouraging me to head to spring training to heal my wintry soul to flopping down on the couch beside me for damn near every playoff and World Series game to heading to the Yanks' most important game of the season to cheer them on in my place. Y'all should be so lucky to have a girlfriend who, along with her myriad other gifts, appreciates baseball as mine does.

I'll conclude by reminding you that just because the ballgames are over doesn't mean this space will be lacking for baseball content over the winter months. After all, there are 112 days until Pitchers and Catchers, and we have much to discuss.