Westbrook gets agressive; Dice-K's late collapse

Jake Westbrook had a shutout through six innings in leading the Indians to a 2-1 lead in the ALCS. AP

Taking my cuts ...

1. Give credit to Cleveland starter Jake Westbrook for pounding the strike zone early in the count against Boston in Game 3 of the ALCS. Westbrook threw first-pitch strikes to each of the first 11 batters he faced, and 21 of 27 overall -- this after C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona did not pitch aggressively enough in Boston in the first two games. "It makes you think it was the [postseason] atmosphere more than anything," Indians pitching coach Carl Willis said, explaining the Games 1 and 2 starts. And get this about Westbrook: he is the first pitcher in baseball history to throw three double-play grounders in a postseason game twice, having also done it in ALDS Game 3 in New York. "That makes me happy," Willis said, "because it means Jake, who can throw different pitches, is going to his bread-and-butter sinker."

2. Memo to pitching coaches out there who take a cookie-cutter approach: don't watch ALCS Game 4 Tuesday. It's a celebration of the non-conformists: knuckleballer Tim Wakefield against old-school windmilller Paul Byrd, who saved his career by adopting the exaggerated arm swing he remembered watching from old black-and-white films of pitchers such as Walter Johnson and Warren Spahn. "I'd love to see a young power pitcher do something different, give hitters a different look," Byrd said, "but everybody would say, 'Don't do that. That's not how you're supposed to pitch." And if you're wondering why the Red Sox aren't skipping Wakefield and pitching Josh Beckett on short rest, one reason is that the move would force them to start Curt Schilling on his fifth day in Game 5, and the Red Sox are convinced Schilling needs an extra day at this point in the season to get the best out of him. And there is this, too: in the wild-card era pitchers on short rest are 30-41 in the postseason, with the teams winning only 41 percent of those gambles.

3. ALCS Game 3 left no doubt: Diasuke Matsuzaka hit the wall hard in his first major league season. With more starts, less rest and deeper lineups to contend with than he did in Japan, Matsuzaka has been a collosal late-season failure. Here is one way to measure his severe crash, postseason included, with Aug. 15 as the dividing line:

4. The Rockies might just wind up with a week off before the World Series, but the inactivity is not exactly the sure-thing momentum killer many people would have you believe. Sure, everyone remembers how last year's Detroit pitchers forgot how to field. But nine teams have had five or more days off between the LCS and World Series, yet six of them wound up winning the world championship. The record for off days between the LCS and World Series is six, done by three clubs. Two of them won the World Series (1995 Braves and 1996 Yankees) and one lost (2006 Tigers).

5. OK, you've probably heard too much already about those infamous sacrifice flies of Cleveland, the mighty midges that, unlike almost all AL hitters, knocked Yankees phenom Joba Chamberlain off his game. But this is too good not to pass on: When the bugs started swarming Chamberlain, a local insect expert in Cleveland telephoned the Indians with an urgent message -- those bugs are called midges, and whatever you do, do NOT use insect repellent; midges are attracted to the stuff. The Yankees practically bathed in bug spray; the more Chamberlain put on, the more the bugs swarmed him. So there you go. The Yankees can spend $190 million on payroll and still leave a blatant weakness: no, not their middle relief -- their lack of an entymology expert.