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Masterpiece Theater Dramatic pitching helped the Indians beat the Red Sox in their Division Series, but Cleveland will have to be perfect to upstage a Yankees rotation that dropped the curtain on the Rangers By Tom Verducci
Posted: Wed October 7, 1998 You might have better luck turning up artifacts from Atlantis than evidence that the Texas Rangers actually appeared in the 1998 postseason. They left behind just a single run—like some unearthed shard of pottery—as the only proof that they played the New York Yankees in the American League Division Series. Otherwise they were as lost as their manager, Johnny Oates, was two hours before the last of their three games. Oates was talking on the telephone in his windowless office last Friday when a power outage hit The Ballpark in Arlington. "The room went completely black," he said later. "It was so dark I couldn't hang up the phone. I couldn't find it."
Veteran starters David Wells, Andy Pettitte and David Cone, who've been through the wringer more than a George Steinbrenner turtleneck, accounted for all but 61/3 innings of the three-game sweep in which more Texas fans dashed for home plate (two during a Biblical rain delay last Friday) than did Texas players. "If they keep pitching the way they did against us, it'll be very difficult for anybody to beat them," says general manager Doug Melvin, whose Rangers were also excised from the 1996 playoffs by New York, which went on to win the world championship that year. "From now on I've got to find a way where we don't play the Yankees in the first round. At the general managers' meetings next month I think I'll suggest some changes to the playoff format." After disposing of the woefully thin Boston Red Sox in four games in the other American League Division Series, the Indians faced the unnerving realization that no matter how Cleveland manager Mike Hargrove or New York skipper Joe Torre arrange their rotations, the Indians never will have a clear edge in any matchup of starting pitchers. Cleveland is more comfortable with games decided late, when Hargrove makes like a caffeinated Kasparov with his many bullpen moves. "You do win games this time of year with your bullpen," Indians general manager John Hart says. "We've showed it every year." "I don't see it," Boston pitcher Bret Saberhagen said of Cleveland's chances of beating New York four times in the best-of-seven series. "The Indians have to pitch their ass off and play their ass off and even then.... They can't make a mistake. It can be done. Sometimes magic happens in the playoffs. But you have to hope the Yankees starters are not on top of their game like they are now. I mean, they gave up one run to the best hitting team in the American League—other than themselves, of course." Cleveland is the only team still playing that doesn't have a true No. 1 starting pitcher. Their best starter down the stretch, righthander Dwight Gooden, hasn't made it to the eighth inning all year. Hargrove's choice to open the Division Series, righthander Jaret Wright, couldn't make it through five innings against the Red Sox. But righthanders Charles Nagy and Bartolo Colon put inconsistent seasons behind them to pitch back-to-back gems at Fenway Park. Nagy, pitching his first postseason game since losing Game 7 of the World Series last year, and Colon, 23, pitching his first postseason game, period, allowed one run each over a combined 13 2/3 innings. "To have them put us on their backs and allow our offense time to get going—in a hostile environment—that was huge," Hart says. Nagy won Game 3 (the final score was 4-3) with eight strong innings that confirmed the importance of a midseason change in his mechanics. At the suggestion of pitching coach Mark Wiley, Nagy now begins his delivery with a more pronounced left shoulder turn, which gives him better balance and lends better sink to his pitches. All but six of his 24 outs against Boston were strikeouts or grounders—a convincing retort to the Fenway fans who heckled him during warmups because of his 5.22 ERA. "Guys were getting all over me because they said I killed their Rotisserie teams," Nagy says. "Chuck has always come through in the big games," says Cleveland reliever Paul Assenmacher. "Last year against Baltimore [in the Championship Series] he went toe-to-toe with Mike Mussina. We weren't worried about Chuck at all. But Bartolo—he'd never pitched in a big game."
After giving up two hard hits in the sixth inning, Colon was pulled. He was losing 1-0, and leftfielder David Justice—who hadn't thrown out a runner in his 21 games in the outfield this year—had fired a pea to the plate from short leftfield to nail John Valentin. Third base coach Wendell Kim's blunder in sending Valentin was caused by the panic of knowing the bottom of the Boston lineup was to follow. Vaughn and hitting savant Garciaparra accounted for all but one of the Sox's 19 RBIs in the series. Boston manager Jimy Williams added his own submission to the Anthology of Red Sox Infamy ($19.18, We Press) by having his closer, Tom Gordon, start the eighth inning, instead of reserving Gordon for the ninth, as he had all year. Four batters later the Indians took the lead for good on a two-run double by Justice. Both Nagy and Colon prospered from Boston's lack of discipline at the plate. They needed only 169 pitches while facing 51 batters. Cleveland pitchers don't figure to enjoy the same economy against the Yankees, who look at more pitches than Steven Spielberg. The Texas starter in Game 2, Rick Helling, for instance, was cooked after six innings, having thrown 119 pitches to 27 batters. "The amazing thing about the Yankees is how many pitches they see," Melvin says. "They take these 2-and-2 pitches just off the plate and you go, 'How do they take that?' All of them do it. They have one good at bat after another in that lineup." The Indians will find the New York lineup is even more labor intensive these days because of Shane Spencer, the 26-year-old rookie who after eight years in the minors hit as many grand slams in nine days in September as Torre hit in 18 years as a big leaguer—three. "The reincarnation of Babe Ruth," Texas first baseman Will Clark called him. If it seems Spencer came out of nowhere, you're close: His parents live in Shirley, Ark. (pop. 363). "I know they've got a YIELD sign now," Spencer says. "I'm not kidding." Cable TV? "Recently. Very recently," he says. In his first postseason at bat, against Helling, a pitcher he'd never faced before, Spencer hit a home run into Yankee Stadium's Monument Park. In the sixth inning of Game 3, with two on and the Yankees clinging to a 1-0 lead, thunderclaps rumbling, lightning flashing and an ominous wind whipping empty blue peanut bags and brown napkins around the infield, Spencer walloped another home run—his ninth in his past 33 at bats. Minutes later, the heavens opened with torrents of rain. (Interested, Mr. Spielberg?) "The kid's as cool as a cucumber," Cone says. "Before the game [coach] Chris Chambliss asked him if he wanted to take batting practice, and he said, 'Nah.' Didn't take a swing until he got in the batter's box. This is the playoffs! Amazing." Of course, the same adjective is applicable to Cone and his pitching mates. No staff had ever allowed just one run in a postseason series, and only four clubs had allowed fewer runs than games played. "Wells set the tone," Cone said. Wells threw eight shutout innings in Game 1, after which Steinbrenner squeezed Wells's cheeks and gushed, "You're a f——— warrior, that's what you are!" Wells celebrated by pulling on a Van Halen cap and a Metallica jersey and chatting up Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins in the locker room.
Every day the Yankees send a starter to the mound who has a vast reservoir of big-game experience. Only the Atlanta Braves can also make that claim. In their careers Wells, Pettitte and Cone combined are 70-51 with a 3.45 ERA after Aug. 31, including 13-7 with a 3.92 ERA in the postseason. Each has won the clinching game of a postseason series. And fourth starter Orlando Hernandez, with his international experience playing for the national team of baseball-mad Cuba, may have pitched under more pressure than any of them. No club with the best regular-season record has won a World Series this decade, but the Yankees, buoyed rather than burdened by their 114 wins, were off to the sort of table-running postseason the Braves had in 1995. That year Atlanta allowed only 43 runs in an 11-3 surge to the world championship. "Let's see what happens," Hart says. "I've always thought the American League championship has to go through Cleveland." Historians and archaeologists are standing by.
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