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Posted: Tuesday June 01, 1999 03:39 PM

Pulling Up the Red Sox  

With two studs, a use-'em-all roster and gut feel, skipper Jimy Williams has Boston on top

By Stephen Cannella

Garciaparra is as slick at short as he is at the plate, where he has produced 10 homers and 40 RBIs. Damian Strohmeyer

The Red Sox trailed the Indians 1-0 in the eighth at Jacobs Field last Saturday with their number 9 hitter, rookie Trot Nixon, at the plate, a runner at first and no outs. Boston had touched starter Bartolo Colon for only three hits, and conventional wisdom, coupled with Nixon's .243 average, dictated that Red Sox manager Jimy Williams scream, "Bunt!" from the dugout. Asked after the game why he let Nixon swing away, Williams drawled, "Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't."

It was a typical Williams hunch play -- "He manages from his heart," says Boston first baseman Mike Stanley -- and like most of the moves he has made this year, it worked: Nixon doubled and, four batters later, scored on Nomar Garciaparra's three-run homer, which would give Boston a 4-2 victory. Another 4-2 win on Sunday completed a three-game Sox sweep and a 17-day stretch during which Boston went 12-4 against the Blue Jays, Yankees and Indians and emerged with a half-game lead in the American League East.

The Red Sox, who were expected to have tumbled by now into the power and leadership hole left by Mo Vaughn's departure, have ascended behind a dominating rotation and solid defense. Led by ace righthander Pedro Martinez (10-1, 2.01 ERA through Sunday), Boston's starters led the league in wins, ERA, strikeouts and fewest walks allowed. The Red Sox had hit only 45 homers, the league's second-lowest total, but they had pecked away at opposing pitchers by putting the ball in play -- Boston had at least 10 hits in 21 of its 28 games in May.

Mostly, though, the Red Sox have thrived because Williams has coaxed as much out of a largely starless lineup as any skipper east of Dusty Baker. He has shuffled a roster full of role players in and out of the lineup around Garciaparra (5 for 11 with four homers and eight RBIs in Cleveland), getting everyone enough at bats to stay sharp. "Some are going to play more than others, but I don't think we have utility players," Williams says. "I'm going to play them all."

Sounds simple, unless your team features three DH-first basemen, three weak-hitting outfielders for two spots and no reliable power source apart from Garciaparra. Williams rotates lefthanded-hitting Brian Daubach and Reggie Jefferson and righty Mike Stanley in the first base and DH spots; through Sunday that trio was hitting a combined .304 with 11 homers and 51 RBIs. Williams had gotten respectable production -- 55 runs and 37 RBIs -- plus excellent defense from various permutations of Nixon, Darren Lewis and Damon Buford in center and right. "Nobody here can say they go very long without at bats," says Stanley.

Williams also keeps everyone awake by managing more by feel than by computer, as he did in letting Nixon swing away against Colon. On May 17 he let Daubach, a rookie with two career at bats against lefthanders at the time, hit against Blue Jays southpaw Graeme Lloyd with two outs and two men on in the ninth inning of a 4-4 game. Daubach hit a three-run homer to key Boston's 8-7 win. "I'm slowly learning that Jimy's not afraid to surprise you with a few things," says Nixon.

Like having the Red Sox in first place.

Coaching Tool:  
Electronic Surveillance

When Mets lefthander Al Leiter won his start against the Brewers on May 20, it was his first victory in a month -- but something still wasn't right. Pitching for weeks with strained ligaments in his left knee, Leiter, a 17-game winner in 1998, had struggled to a 2-4 record with a 6.38 ERA, and now he felt pain in his left biceps. Leiter told manager Bobby Valentine, who responded by settling down for a Blockbuster night with his ace and pitching coach Bob Apodaca. "Video is huge," says Apodaca. "It's a set of eyes that can see all."

Leiter's case is a perfect illustration of why videotape has become as helpful to managers as it long has been to their football and basketball counterparts. By studying tape of Leiter's starts this year and comparing it with clips of outings he made last August, when Leiter was mechanically sound and in the middle of a stretch during which he won seven out of eight starts, Valentine caught a potentially disastrous flaw. Instead of kicking up his left leg on his follow-through, as he did last year, Leiter was favoring his pained knee and dragging his left leg, thus placing undue strain on his arm.

All teams now use videos to fine-tune their players' performances and break down their opponents' weaknesses. "This is the Nintendo generation," says Red Sox pitching coach Joe Kerrigan, who earlier this season watched tape of righthander Pat Rapp and noticed that Rapp was tipping his pitches. "Players can digest more of what they can see, and then we bring them out and work on things."

Last week Reds slugger Greg Vaughn, disappointed by the quality of the team's videotaping, shelled out $15,000 for a new video system that he hopes will be similar to what he had access to last year while with the Padres. Says Vaughn, "Just as in school, visual aids can get through to people a lot better than just telling them something."

Urbina's Struggles:  
Back in the Swim?

Expos manager Felipe Alou uncharacteristically lost his cool after his once formidable closer, Ugueth Urbina, was lit up by the Brewers for three runs on two hits and two walks in the eighth inning of a 13-4 Montreal loss on May 23. It was the fourth blown save of the season for Urbina, who failed in just four of his 38 save opportunities last year, and it left him with a 5.85 ERA. The 13 runs Urbina allowed in his first 20 appearances this year were three more than he surrendered in his 64 games in 1998. "I've never seen any closer collapse like that," said Alou at the time. "He has lost his control and his confidence. I don't know how to handle it."

Alou handled it by using a sink-or-swim strategy, tossing the 25-year-old Urbina into the water again and again until he was able to paddle back to shore. Urbina capped a busy six days on Sunday by nailing down a 6-4 Expos' win over the Giants in his fifth appearance of the week. He saved four of those games and won another, yielding no runs and striking out six in 6 2/3 innings. By Sunday it appeared that Urbina, who had shaved his ERA to 4.39 and was fifth in the National League, with 11 saves, was back in form.

Earlier in the season Urbina seemed to be reluctant to use his heater, which has been clocked in the high 90s, and was throwing more breaking pitches. He looked uncomfortable on the mound, too. "He had an air of invincibility," one National League scout said early last week. "Now he's sweating, fidgeting and flipping his hat up and down."

When Urbina did throw the fastball, he had trouble locating it high in the strike zone. By last weekend, however, that command -- and the courage to throw high heat in tight situations -- had returned. Urbina struck out Giants shortstop Rich Aurilia to end last Saturday's game, and on Sunday he blew away Charlie Hayes and Jeff Kent with two runners on to preserve Montreal's victory. "I believe the way to get a stopper back is to show him that you trust him, that he's your guy," Alou said.

In the 15 major league games played last Friday 148 runs were scored, an average of 9.9 a game. Four teams scored in double figures; four others put up at least five runs and lost. There were 40 homers hit, and the Red Sox' Nomar Garciaparra, the White Sox' Greg Norton and the Cubs' Henry Rodriguez each had two dingers -- and Friday wasn't even one of the gaudiest offensive days of the season.

When baseball's owners meet in Pittsburgh on June 9 and 10, several important topics -- the disparity between financial haves and have-nots, revenue sharing, the sorry state of the Expos -- figure to be on the agenda. The bosses should include another subject: the offensive explosion that helped draw fans back to ballparks after the labor strife of four years ago but has now gotten out of hand.

Through Sunday games were producing an average of 10.28 runs, a rate that, if it holds up, would be the highest since 1930. Roughly a third of the way through the season 40.3% of the pitchers who had thrown at least 25 innings had ERAs of 5.00 or higher; during last year's homerfest 28.6% of pitchers with a similar workload -- 80-plus innings over the full season -- had an ERA of 5.00 or more. (Compare those figures with, say, those of '92, when only 9.0% of ERAs were that high.) Already there had been 140 games in which a team had scored in double figures, a rate of 19.1%. There were 390 such games (16.0%) in '98.

"All of the polls that Major League Baseball takes show that fans want to see home runs and fans want to see offense," says Reds general manager Jim Bowden. That may be true in the case of epic home run races or the occasional 8-7 slugfest, but few fans have the stomach to sit through massacres like the Giants' 17-1 bashing of the Cardinals on May 25. If baseball is serious in its search for ways to shorten games, curbing runaway offense is a logical place to start.

Little can be done about two of the forces behind the run-up in runs, namely expansion-diluted pitching and new hitter-friendly ballparks. However, three areas can be addressed: