TEAMS WANT TO SET THE TONE EARLY IN A BALL GAME. WINNING a game often means being ready to play the first three innings, and while people usually think of this as applying to the offensive side of the game, it actually works both ways. Defensive readiness is just as important. The efforts in the top of the first inning by Yadi and Carp were as important to the eventual outcome as any other play in the game.
Game 1 began with Carp falling behind the Rangers’ leadoff hitter, Ian Kinsler, 2-0. Early in the game, you might be tempted to take a strike or work a walk, but Kinsler, just like we would have tried to do, remained aggressive. It paid off for him on an infield hit after he really hustled down the line. The Rangers got even more aggressive when, with the count 1-0, Kinsler broke for second on a hit-and-run. Andrus swung through a tough pitch to hit, a cutter down and away, and Yadi made a great transition to throwing and nailed Kinsler. We’d countered their aggressive move with a great defensive play. Then, with nobody on, Andrus grounded a ball to Albert Pujols behind first, and Albert fed Carp at the bag. But Carp had to reach for the throw and ended up diving face-first, glove-first, into the bag for the out. If there was a signature defensive play in the World Series, that was it.
Not the way you usually think of setting the tone, but that depends on what kind of song you want to play. The lyrics to this particular refrain were: “You want it. We want it. Who’s going to get it?”
On that attempted hit-and-run, I hadn’t pitched out. Carp is quick to the plate and doesn’t need a slide step. This was just pure outstanding execution by two top-tier players. Much was made in the first game about the chess match between Ron Washington and me, but that analogy falls far short. In chess the pieces are restricted in the movements they can make. They have no minds, no will, no capabilities of their own. Sure, as managers we make moves, but then we have to sit back and watch the players determine the outcome. If I was enjoying a good run as a manager into and through the postseason, that was because of what the players did. I frequently rolled the dice, and the guys came up with the 7 or the 11 that made us winners.
Thanks to Yadi, Carp got out of the inning, despite falling behind each of the first three hitters he faced. In the second, he worked carefully around the white-hot Nelson Cruz to issue a walk and then retired the next seven in a row to get us to our half of the fourth in a scoreless game. That inning, we caught a couple of breaks. Albert got hit on the foot on a C. J. Wilson breaking ball to lead off the inning. Matt Holliday went the other way and doubled to right field. Berkman punched a fastball away that snuck past Michael Young at first, and we were up 2–0.
Taking the mound after taking the lead, Carp is usually outstanding at executing one of the basics of winning pitching—the shutdown inning right after your team scores. The teaching key is to concentrate completely on getting that leadoff hitter. This time, though, the credit went to the Rangers. In the top of the fifth, they also got their leadoff man on, and after Carp struck out Cruz, Mike Napoli hit a fastball up and out over the plate deep to right. The score was tied.
I can’t say for certain that Yadi’s throw in the top of the first or Carp’s quick delivery times to the plate influenced the Rangers’ strategy, but in their half of the sixth, with the score still tied, Kinsler was on first again with nobody out. They elected to lay down a sacrifice bunt rather than try the straight steal or the hit-and-run. The sacrifice worked to get Kinsler to second base, and with Hamilton coming up, we knew this was going to be a crucial test.
If you’re looking for a classic example of Tom Seaver’s belief that not all outs are the same and that a few in each game are more crucial than the rest, then Carp facing Hamilton and Young with the go-ahead run on second base is one of the better ones. First, Carp retired Hamilton on a fly-out, and then he stranded Kinsler at third to preserve the tie. Albert’s diving play to snare Michael Young’s sharp grounder with two outs once again proved why he is such a fine athlete. When the ball left the bat, you could feel the atmosphere change in our dugout, with all the guys thinking the tie was broken. Seeing Albert laid out in full extension had me thinking of his wrist, but I knew he wasn’t thinking about his health at all—just getting the out. Having taken away one of their chances made us even more eager to push one across ourselves and grab momentum by the throat. By retiring their number three and four hitters, Carp had put himself in a position to earn the win, as long as we could hold on.
As they had for weeks, our players found a way to make something good happen at the plate. With one out, David Freese continued his hot streak, doubling off the wall in deep right-center to extend his postseason hitting streak to eleven games. During Yadi’s at-bat, Freese advanced to third on a wild pitch; after Yadi’s strikeout, Nick Punto, our eighth-place hitter, stepped to the plate. We had Carp take his place in the on-deck circle. The inning before, I’d done my “what-ifs” and decided that if we had runners on, I’d pinch-hit with Craig when Carp’s spot came up. Allen is a very patient and smart hitter, and against the left-hander Wilson, he was one of several righties we had available coming off the bench. As he had proven in the deciding NLCS game against the Brewers, Allen is also a good pinch hitter, especially in an RBI situation—equally dangerous against pitchers throwing from either side. Craig executed the two-strikes-against approach very well.
Of course, in that situation you’re not going to give your opposition a “tell” by sending a pinch hitter out there to the on-deck circle. Ron Washington was prepared for the possibility of us hitting for Carp. He had Alexi Ogando, their fireballing starter-turned-reliever, up and ready. Possibly they hoped to force Carp out of the game because Wilson seemed to unintentionally intentionally walk Punto. Four straight were well wide of the plate, including a couple of curveballs that bounced and came dangerously close to getting away and bringing home the lead run. If that was one of those kinds of walks, then they were treading a fine line.
In any case, when Craig was announced as the pinch hitter, Ron Washington went out to get Wilson and to bring in his right-hander with the live arm who’d been sensational in their series against Detroit and Tampa Bay. In those two series combined, Ogando had pitched 10.1 innings and given up only one run on four hits. He’s one of those guys with explosive stuff. With him in the game, we could have gone with a left-handed hitter off the bench, Descalso or Schumaker, but I believed Craig was the right man in the right spot. As hard as Ogando throws, and with the kind of movement he has, there’s not as much of a “percentage” advantage in having a left-hander up there as there is with a guy who might come after you with breaking balls or change-of-speed pitches. Besides, Allen was our guy; we were going to stick with him and ignore the book. He’d hit .315 in the regular season with a .555 slugging percentage. In the postseason, he was only 4-for-18 (.222), but numbers don’t tell the whole story.
Allen, anticipating that he might be used, had gone into the batting cage inside Busch to take swings. Mike Aldrete was preparing him for his potential at-bat. He was already thinking along with us, getting himself prepared. That’s what a professional hitter does. While he was certainly cheerleading on the bench, he wasn’t just sitting there getting caught up in what was happening in the moment. He was thinking about how he could make something happen.
And then he went out and did.
He fell behind 1-2 and switched to his two-strike approach. He got his lead foot down sooner, shortened his stroke, and took a ninety-eight-mile-an-hour fastball into right field, just in front of Nelson Cruz, for a base hit. Allen’s fist pumps at first were trumped by the buzz in the dugout. Later we’d learn that this was the first game-winning RBI pinch-hit in the World Series since Gibson’s home run against the A’s in 1988. It was also Allen’s second consecutive run-producing pinch-hit. But who cared about history right then? We still had nine outs to get.
Since we were young in the bullpen, with the exception of the veterans Dotel, Rhodes, and Westbrook, I was hoping our first bullpen challenge would have included a lead of several runs and just a few outs to get. This being the World Series, I wanted them to get an introductory appearance before the real pressure began. I should have known better. All year long the pressure had been unrelenting—just because we were at the end didn’t mean that would stop. And so our bullpen was tasked with protecting a one-run lead through the final three innings.
I chose Salas to start the seventh with two right-handers in Beltre and Cruz coming up. He got Beltre, but the still-sizzling Cruz singled, and after a walk to Napoli, Salas was done. Time for “Scrabble,” as the alphabetically complex Rzepczynski was sometimes referred to. This was an easy one. R-zep wasn’t likely to face Murphy, their left-handed-hitting outfielder, who I figured they’d pinch-hit for. That was okay with me. As I’ve pointed out before, that’s the plus-value of R-zep. He can get the righties out just as effectively. They countered with Craig Gentry, with runners on first and second. R-zep struck him out.
Esteban German, who’d seen limited action with only eleven at-bats in the regular season, came up to hit for Ogando. We had faced him in Kansas City and knew he had a good base-hit stroke to all fields. R-zep put him away on three quality pitches down and in and out of the zone.
Six outs to go. Six very tough outs. Dotel faced the top of the lineup and retired Kinsler and Andrus; then Rhodes came in to get Hamilton to end the eighth inning. The ninth belonged to Motte, who technically still hadn’t been named our closer, though he’d been playing that role for quite a while. The way Dunc and I figured it, Motte was in a groove and distracting him by asking him or complimenting him about that pivotal role was taking an unnecessary risk. At this point, it was academic. Having a one-run lead and needing three outs to close out your team’s win is a distraction no matter what the job title. Motte joined his bullpen mates and worked a hitless inning. We were up 1–0 in the World Series. What better early-Series message could we send than this: our bullpen was going to be a weapon again.
We couldn’t have known it then, but a tone was in the process of being set. Good pitching will get out good hitting. We’d seen an excellent example of that in the first game, one that solidified the impression that despite how talented the two clubs were offensively, we might be in for a low-scoring series if the pitchers were sharp.
The trend continued the next night when Jaime Garcia returned to his early-season form in a precision performance, going seven innings and allowing only three hits and one walk while striking out seven. The only problem was that, up until the bottom of the seventh, Colby Lewis was matching him pitch for pitch. I was thrilled to see Jaime enjoying that kind of success. I knew that it had been hard on him to get the early hook and not perform up to his level of expectation.
In the lead-up to the game, I’d sought him out a couple of times, just to check in with him to see how he was doing. Jaime’s from Reynosa, Mexico, but grew up in Texas. As we talked, we slipped into and out of Spanish and English. I’m not completely calculating when I do this, it just comes naturally to someone who’s bilingual. Having these shared languages helps with personalizing—it establishes another point of commonality with some of the players, just as anyone would look for in getting to know another person. I knew Jaime was disappointed in himself at times and feeling like he was disappointing the club. But he also knew that we would not have gotten there without him.
I’d seen that a television crew from Mexico had been interviewing him, focusing on the fact that he was the first Mexican-born pitcher to start a World Series game since Fernando Valenzuela had done that for the Dodgers. In fact, I’d been able to speak Spanish to Mexican radio and TV to praise Jaime’s first two years. All the attention on him was especially stressful because he had a country full of fans pulling for him and watching intently. In today’s public climate, any player with a story is subject to excessive praise or criticism, and that makes our emphasis on embracing pressure and focusing on process particularly important ways of dealing with the extra attention. Everyone has to tune out fans, country, family, and friends. No one is immune. Work the process—that’s the key to coping.
In Game 2, Jaime was firmly planted back in the place he’d been at the beginning of the year. A walk and a hit in the fourth were the first runners he allowed, after two were out (a case of a pitcher maybe relaxing a bit after cruising through several innings and getting one out away from being back in the dugout). This was the only real trouble he’d been in all night.
As Yogi Berra once famously said, it was déjà vu all over again in our half of the seventh. With one out, Freese singled, and after another out, Punto came to bat and also singled. I went with Craig again in place of Garcia, knowing that we couldn’t wait for another scoring opportunity. In came Ogando for Colby Lewis. Craig was on Ogando’s first fastball, but fouled it off. Ogando rushed another one up there, and same as before, Craig got that foot down early, went with a fastball low and on the outside corner, and lined it into right-center field.
The score was 1–0 as we went into the eighth. Salas and R-zep did their thing in the top of the inning, each striking out one and R-zep getting a ground ball out. To that point, we’d had some outstanding pitching in the game. The bottom of the eighth brought the other element of the low-scoring pitchers’ game into focus. With one out, Albert smoked a Mike Adams pitch into deep right field. Nelson Cruz made a fine running catch with his back against the wall to prevent an extra-base hit.
That catch was just one of several nice defensive plays the Rangers made that night. In the bottom of the fifth, we’d had a two-out rally going after Punto singled to right and Jaime walked. Furcal came up in that spot and did his job, hitting a screamer up the middle that bounced once and was actually going past a diving Elvis Andrus, who caught the ball behind him. He then flipped the ball out of his glove to Kinsler, covering second, to end the inning. It was a tremendous play, one that I reviewed after the game as I looked at a few of the things the Rangers had done earlier in the game to stop us from scoring.
None of that would have mattered if we’d done our job perfectly in the ninth. That’s the thing about 1–0 games—you have no margin for error. Ian Kinsler, down 0-2, hit a Motte pitch that was down but tailed back over the plate too much, off the end of the bat, blooping one just barely out of the reach of Furcal and the outfielders. Then, with Andrus at the plate and the count 1-1, Kinsler stole second base. Yadi delivered a laser right on the bag, but Kinsler was in there by a microsecond. I use that measurement intentionally.
Both our side and theirs had Jason Motte on the clock to measure the time it took him to get the ball to home plate—from the time he went into his delivery after having set to the moment when the ball reached Yadi’s glove. A delivery time of 1.3 seconds is usually fast enough to prevent a steal. Motte has two deliveries from the stretch. One is a tick slower than acceptable at 1.4 seconds. He uses that delivery when he needs more stuff and command. He also has a 1.2 time that is excellent; combined with his excellent quick pickoff move, it makes him hard to run on. On the first pitch he delivered to Andrus, a high fastball, he was at 1.4. Andrus was bunting, but took ball one.
We knew that Texas had to put on some kind of play. Hit-and-run. Bunt. Bunt-and-run. Straight steal. If the guy’s going to bunt, you want the ball up in the zone. Great bunters will always get the bat above the ball and kind of catch it with the bat, not jabbing at it but bringing the bat back toward the catcher. That’s harder to do on a high pitch, and you can get a lot of popped-up bunts, bunts fouled off, or bunts missed because of a high pitch. That’s also a great pitch for a catcher to throw on. More frequently, that poor bunt attempt occurs when the pitch is out of the zone. The other danger is that some umpires won’t give you the high strike, so anything up might result in the pitch being called a ball.
With a 1.4 delivery time, though, you’re in the “stealable” range. The Rangers knew it, and we knew it. To counter their advantage, we had two options: throw over to first or pitch out. For the throw-over, we have a sign for one of two options: the normal throw-over, and the best shot. That move is always followed by a quicker delivery home—about 1.2 seconds. Motte has a very good best-shot move. He’s got quick feet and a quick release. I didn’t want him to show Kinsler that one yet. Picking him off would be great, but we really wanted to shorten his lead or decrease his jump.
I gave Motte the normal throw-over sign.
In this case, you hope to accomplish something else. Often, upon seeing any movement from the pitcher, a hitter who is supposed to bunt will “show” the bunt. He’ll start to square around and bring the bat into bunting position early. Andrus showed, just as he’d done with the first pitch.
On the next pitch, I didn’t flash any sign, and Motte came to the plate. Andrus showed bunt again and fouled off the pitch. The time was 1.4 again.
I had a dilemma.
At this point, Kinsler had seen only the normal throw-over move after the 1-0 pitch. If we had come back with that really good snap throw, there’s no doubt in my mind that that would have shortened Kinsler’s lead. It might even have picked him off—who knows?
The problem with having Motte do that, though, was that I would be telling him, in essence, that he needed to speed up his delivery to the plate. A common bad side effect of the pitcher speeding up his delivery to the plate is that he leaves the ball up in the strike zone. Again, the possibility of that pitch being called a ball comes into play.
So I was thinking to myself, Do I want Motte to speed up his delivery to the plate if they’re trying to give us an out by sacrificing with Andrus? What if the next pitch is a ball, moving the count to 2-1, which is often the best hit-and-run count? Then, if Motte speeds up his delivery to make the count 3-1, he could be in danger of walking Andrus to put two runners on with nobody out.
We had thrown out Kinsler trying to steal in the first inning of the first game, but that was with a release time better than 1.4 seconds. Also, I didn’t think they were going to try to steal second with Kinsler on a 1-1 count. A bunt seemed more likely.
I decided that they wouldn’t risk a steal, so I didn’t flash the sign for Motte’s best-shot pickoff move. I weighed preventing the steal against throwing a strike and taking the out the Rangers were trying to give us. I was wrong.
Kinsler stole second on the next pitch, and now the tying run was in scoring position with nobody out. I don’t know how the inning would have played out if I’d defended that steal better. I do know that I didn’t and it directly impacted the outcome.
At least the pitch was a strike that put Motte ahead 1-2, but he wasn’t able to put Andrus away. He singled to right-center. I was thinking that they would end up with runners on the corners, but Kinsler went to third and came around the bag. He appeared trapped there for an instant, but the throw back in from the outfield ticked off the glove of Pujols, who was in cutoff position, and not only did Kinsler get back to third, but Andrus got to second with nobody out. Our execution on the outfield relay was faulty, and it set them up for the tying and go-ahead runs if they executed.
Now we were in it pretty deep. No one out, runners on second and third. What I said about legitimate closers being your go-to guys in any situation doesn’t apply here. This is no knock on Jason Motte. He’d been closing for us for only a short time. He had all the tools to become that kind of go-to pitcher, but to get there he needed more experience. In the World Series, you can’t use the philosophy of “lose a game now if it will give you the opportunity to win more later.” This is one of those catch-22s we all face in life. How are you going to get experience in these kinds of situations if no one gives you the opportunity? The thing is, Jason did get that experience in Game 1 when he was given another one-run lead to protect.
What I also had to consider was that Josh Hamilton, a left-hander, was coming up next. All things regarding Motte and his experience were trumped by this. I liked the matchup of the lefty Rhodes against the lefty Hamilton. Hamilton handles the fastball well, and that’s Motte’s out pitch. What I was hoping we could do was get an out without that runner on second getting to third. I’d take our chances having a tied game, believing we could score in the ninth.
Things didn’t work out for us, but they worked out exactly right for the Rangers. Hamilton not only hit a sac fly but hit it deep enough into right field that Andrus got to third. Michael Young executed well and drove another fly ball deep enough off Lynn to score Andrus.
It ended 2–1.
Motte and I talked afterward. He needed to hear from me that nothing had changed. The next ninth-inning save situation would be his. The way the inning played out, I felt Rhodes was a better bet to pitch to Hamilton. I just repeated that closing is a tough job. Look around every day and you’ll see that some closers struggle. In the end you need to be tough to handle coming into a situation and dealing with the ups and downs. I had no doubt Motte was tough enough.
In the final analysis, the Rangers executed better than we did a couple of times. Tip your cowboy hat to them. With the Series even, we were headed to Texas.