Monday Matsui Musings
So, yesterday's Chile's Corner (scroll down to the next post if you didn't see it) got me thinking about Pedro Martinez's brushback of Hideki Matsui in Game 5 of the ALCS last year.
As it just so happens, I got the Red Sox 2004 playoff DVD box set in the mail last week. So I opened up the Game 5 DVD late last night and decided to give it a look.
This is a riveting little piece of baseball theater. Fifth inning, Sox are winning 2-1. There are two outs, as Gary Sheffield just hit into a double play. This despite A-Rod's best efforts to be tuff and appear to be going hard to break up Mark Bellhorn's throw while not actually doing anything to break a nail, make any actual contact with Bellhorn, or get his uniform dirty.
So Matsui steps up, at that point 1-for-2 on the night.
Pedro throws a breaking ball inside and Matsui's taking all the way. Strike one.
Fox then runs a graphic with Matsui's stats in the series to that point: .545, 2 homers, 10 freaking RBI.
I watch the next pitch in slo-mo. I'm hoping to see if the camera catches Pedro's and Varitek's signals, but no such luck. Matsui isn't hanging all over the plate in classic Derek Jeter fashion, but he has pulled closer than he was for the first pitch.
Jason Varitek is set up on the outside part of the plate. Matsui's gaze is honed in on Pedro. Pedro is already in his windup when 'Tek suddenly and dramatically hops way over to the other side of the plate. The umpire shifts, too, with his body language suggesting he knows what's about to go down. Matsui doesn't appear aware any of this is happening.
Pedro uncorks his 92 mile-per-hour message pitch, inside and about shoulder high, and Matsui hits the deck. Matsui gets up, and tries to put on a brave face but is visibly rattled and taking deep breaths.
The point of the pitch is so obvious that even Tim McCarver has to concede it. "That's all part of baseball right there, going up and in," he said.
Matsui sets up much further away from the plate. Pedro throws an absolutely nasty fastball on the outside corner for strike two. Exactly the sort of pitch Matsui would have previously hunted down and poked into left over Bill Mueller's head for a single.
Two pitches later, Matsui hits a weak liner to Kevin Millar to end the inning.
Did Pedro's high heat change the series on the spot? Nope. Pedro gave up a bases-clearing triple to Jeter the following inning and the Red Sox had to rally again. But Matsui, who had been just murdering Sox pitching, had four more at-bats the remainder of the 14-inning game and went hitless the rest of the way, leaving seven runners on base for the game, highest on either team. Game six, 0-for-3 with a walk. Game 7: 2-for-4, but he didn't get his first hit until the seventh, by which point the Yankees were already down 8-1.
There are so many little things you can pick apart when you look back at the 2004 ALCS and realize just how many things had to go right for the Red Sox to make their combeack. What if Tony Clark's double in the ninth inning of Game 5 doesn't take a weird hop into the stands? What if Dave Roberts' lead was a step shorter in Game 4? And so on.
But Pedro's brushback of Matsui wasn't a little thing. It was huge. Matsui, New York's cleanup hitter, went from .545 with 10 RBI to outs in 10 straight at-bats (with a walk) right at the time that any little break here or there could have sealed it for the Yankees.
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