Major League Baseball

Yanks leaving fate in Pettitte's hands

Published Oct. 17, 2010 1:00 a.m. ET

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Bob Klapisch

The mission is as simple as it monstrous. Some would say it’s close to impossible in October: beat Cliff Lee, the man who toys with hitters the way a whale flips a seal in the air before swallowing it whole. Just for sport.

That’s Andy Pettitte’s job description for Game 3 Monday — no small burden considering what’s just around the corner for the Yankees. Joe Girardi announced that win or lose, he plans to stay on rotation and hand A.J. Burnett the ball in Game 4, a decision that will shape the manager’s legacy, at least for the short term.

Girardi will be remembered as a genius or a fool, either stubborn or blindly loyal, or for a testy take-that to the doubters who are convinced Burnett will crash the Yankees’ season. If the Yankees are down 2-1 on Tuesday, the pressure won’t just be bearing down on Burnett, it’ll be the manager himself whose credibility is on the line.

But that depends on your view of what’s about to transpire at the Stadium. Hand on their hearts, the Yankees say they’re not intimidated by Lee, and that if there’s anyone who emotionally and professionally equipped to go to battle against a robot, it’s Pettitte.

No doubt, his resume reeks of brilliance: with 19 career postseason wins, Pettitte is a history-maker. He’s first on an all-time list that includes runners-up John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux and Roger Clemens.

Once upon a time, Pettitte used to watch tapes of himself in Game 5 of the 1996 World Series — 8.1 shutout innings against Smoltz — but he’s long since learned how to access that confidence gene on his own. Actually, it’s a steady accumulation of real-time experience that’s turned Pettitte into an October success story.

When he says, “I’ve been in so many situations like this before,” he says so without arrogance and certainly without anxiety. No, Pettitte is not afraid of pitching against Lee, even if the Rangers’ lefty poses some unique challenges to the Yankees’ lineup.

Lee is unlike many of the other elite pitchers in that he throws strikes without necessarily looking for strikeouts. This year, the American League made contact against Lee on 84 percent of his pitches, which is actually four percentage points higher than the industry average.

The other important metric is how often Lee gets ahead in the count 0-1: nearly 70 percent of the time, 11 points better than this peers. That means he’s coming at hitters from the moment they step in the box. There’s no point trying to work the count — that’s a near-guarantee of a three or four-pitch strikeout, and it’s almost as hopeless as waiting for a middle of the plate mistake.

One Yankee veteran explained it this way: Lee "wants you to hit the ball, but it’s going to be off the end off the bat or on your hands. That’s the thing.”

It’s bad contact that Lee is looking for, a disciple of the three laws that makes good pitchers great. To get a hitter out, you must go up and down (change eye level), in and out (work both sides of the plate) and back and forth (changing speeds).

Lee does all of that to near-maddening perfection. He walked only 18 batters in 212.1 innings, which forced the Elias Sports Bureau to comb its data bases to find similar examples of super-human precision. Since 1900 only two hurlers have exceeded 200 innings with under 20 walks: Babe Adams of the 1920 Pirates and Red Lucas of the 1933 Reds.

The numbers are breathtaking even to future Hall of Famers like Smoltz, currently working in the TBS broadcast booth.

“I’m in awe (of Lee),” Smoltz told the New York Times. “I’m not in awe of a lot of things, but I’m in awe. He makes it look pretty easy.”

Smoltz went on to say, “with all the things that go on within a game, you almost have to pitch around somebody. He won’t. I go back to Roger Clemens being the most dominant strike-zone pitcher I can remember, along with Pedro Martinez. I cannot think of another guy who dominated guys with no fear at all of walking guys.”

Throw in the fact that Lee loves the big moment, loves the big stage and it becomes obvious why the Yankees could be at the vanishing point in Game 3. If even Pettitte falls short ... well, it’s a scenario that Girardi didn’t want to discuss with reporters on Sunday.

He’s refusing to use CC Sabathia on short rest, and closed off all conversational roads on that subject. Over and over, Girardi said, stiffly, “we have faith in A.J.” But a 2-1 possibility was openly addressed by the Rangers, including Lee himself.

“Hopefully we can get first (of the three games in New York) and then close it out,” he said.

It would be a stunning turnaround if the Rangers did, indeed, win the Series in five games. Spotting the world champs Game 1 and then nuking them in four straight? Unthinkable, at least to those in the Yankees family who believe their talent, experience and winning pedigree far exceeds that of the Rangers.

Probably so, but theory and the street are two separate creatures right now. What’s real is the Yankees are staring at Lee in Game 3 and Burnett in Game 4. Hey, you’d be sweating, too.

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