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November 1, 2009

Prospectus Today

Game Three Recap

by Joe Sheehan

"Momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher." That's one you’ve heard, the great Earl Weaver’s spot-on dismissal of the idea that yesterday’s game matters to the next one’s outcome. I’m not sure it goes far enough, though. How about, "Momentum is the next inning’s starting pitcher" or "Momentum is the next pitch," or perhaps, "Momentum is nonexistent in baseball"?

As Cole Hamels was walking off the mound after the top of the third inning last night, I turned to a colleague and said, "Have you seen anything that indicates the Yankees can get to four runs tonight? To that point, Hamels had been masterful, exceeding even my expectations of what he could in this series. He’d retired nine of the ten men he’d faced with an ease that made it seem like Cliff Lee’s performance from Wednesday night was within his grasp. Hamels threw 25 of his 35 pitches in the first three innings for strikes.

Meanwhile, Andy Pettitte spent the first two innings looking for an answer. He worked deep counts, throwing 51 pitches to 12 batters, allowing three runs on four hits and two walks. The Phillies had him on the ropes in the second inning, when a beautiful Cole Hamels bunt, designed as a sacrifice, rolled to no-man’s land up the third-base line and went for a single, loading the bases. After a five-pitch walk to Jimmy Rollins, the game seemed headed for a blowout, but Pettitte got Shane Victorino—who, after Pettitte had started five hitters in the inning 1-0 and two 3-0, came up swinging on the first pitch—to fly to left on three pitches, plating a run. Pettitte then struck out Chase Utley to keep the game 3-0. Given the spot in the order, his lack of effectiveness to that point, and the way Hamels had looked, the Pettitte/Victorino matchup may have been the one that saved the game for the Yankees. Pettitte would allow just one hit and one walk in his last four innings, throwing 54 pitches in those frames. The first two innings weren’t in any way predictive of the next four.

The same was true for Hamels who, after retiring Johnny Damon to start the fourth, found that pounding the strike zone led not to strikeouts, but to early-count hits. Hamels gave up a homer, two doubles, two singles, and two walks in a ten-batter stretch covering the fourth and fifth that knocked him out of the game. Both walks were to Mark Teixeira, both on 3-2 pitches, and they bookended a sequence in which the Yankees jumped on Hamels, swinging at 14 of 19 pitches and getting four of their hits in the first two pitches of an at-bat. They seemed to adjust, and before Hamels could adjust back, he was in the dugout. His first three innings weren’t in any predictive of his next two.

Game-to-game momentum is hard enough to prove, though any team on a four-game winning streak is deemed to have it. But if a team cannot sustain its momentum from the first three innings to the next six, how can it possibly carry it from one game to the next? Last night’s game was a terrific example of why the idea of momentum, so seductive, is not connected to the objective reality in any way.