Somehow, someway, they won a hundred. Don't forget that.
"Everybody keeps saying the Yankees really struggled this year," said Minnesota Twins manager Ron Gardenhire with a laugh. "I wish we could have won a hundred games and struggled."
Of course, once you get to the postseason, it no longer matters whether you won 90, 100, 110 or, like the 2001 Mariners, 116 games in the regular season. Right now, the Yankees and Twins are both 0-0 in a five-game American League Division Series, and history tells us the winner is usually the team that pitches better. A standard playoff score is far more likely to be 3-2 than 11-10. The Yankees do not have their normal killer starting rotation. What passes for conventional wisdom in this sport maintains that they are exceptionally vulnerable this time, especially with Minnesota sitting here with the Koufaxian Johan Santana and the never-better Brad Radke as their 1-2 punch. Another thing history has taught us is that you really can win a championship with two exceptional starters, and not much else (see Minnesota '87 and Arizona '01).
All they're talking about here is pitching, pitching, pitching and how the Yankees don't have it. The local doomsayers maintain that if the Yankees don't win tonight behind Mike Mussina, it's all over. Jon Lieber can't beat Radke, they say. Then the Yankees are a mess beyond that, and even if they do somehow win Games 3 and 4, they won't beat Santana in Sunday's Game 5.
It's all so simple. Why are we playing?
Here's why: 1906, 1914, 1954, 1960, 1963, 1966, 1971, 1979, 1988, 1990, and 2001. And those are just the World Series in which the things conventional wisdom said would happen did not happen. We could also throw in a few Division Series and League Championship Series that raised an eyebrow or two.
As a rule, it's better if we just let 'em play.
That brings us back to the original premise, which, in case you've forgotten, is that the Yankees were resourceful enough to win 101 games during a season when a whole lot of things went wrong. So they must be bringing something to the table.
"When I look back to see we won 100 games," said Joe Torre, "the fact that we were without Moose [Mussina] for a period of time and without Brownie [Kevin Brown] for a long period of time and [Javier] Vazquez for a period of time, and El Duque [Orlando Hernandez] didn't come 'til the All-Star break, you wonder how you won a hundred games. But I think that's saying something about how this ball club performs."
Pitching is important, but it isn't absolutely, positively everything 100 percent of the time. A lot has changed in the game of baseball over the last century and a half, but one thing remains true: No team ever won a game, 0-0. Offense has its place. Sometimes good hitting beats good pitching.
The Yankees can hit, all right, and they can hit when it matters. They broke their club record with 242 home runs, two more than the hallowed '61 bunch compiled. They had three guys with 30 or more homers, six with 20 or more, and eight with 15 or more. The key is that none of them are just grip-it-and-rip-it bashers. They are all good situational hitters who also have impressive power. It is a very tough lineup to wade through four or five times a night.
That's why it comes as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention that the 2004 Yankees are the greatest comeback team of all-time. They came from behind at some point in a game 61 times, a major league record. They overcame deficits of at least four runs nine times and came back from a five-run deficit four times. They have been the personification of Yogi's most famous law.
In the nine years of the Joe Torre Era, the biggest Yankee calling card has been starting pitching. But Torre never has taken a team into the postseason with his starting pitching in such a precarious state, and he freely acknowledges that.
But it's not as if the Yankees enter the postseason without weapons. They have an MVP candidate in Gary Sheffield. They have Alex Rodriguez. They have Hideki Matsui. They have Tom Gordon. And they have Mariano Rivera. The lineup is stacked with thorough professionals. If they have to win, 11-10, they just might be able to do it.
If Santana beats them tonight, they will not panic. If Radke beats them tomorrow night, they will not panic. Whoever winds up pitching Game 3, be it El Duque, Vazquez, or Brown, will not be asked to throw a three-hit shutout. He'll be asked to give his team five or six decent innings. The bullpen and the bats can do the rest.
The Yankees have something else going for them. They have a guy at shortstop who inspires confidence.
"I'm telling you," said Gardenhire, "this guy, he is baseball in New York. He sets some kind of tone for this team and you know they are not going to ever quit because of this guy. He'll keep the team battling for nine innings, and I think they do it because of Derek Jeter, and that's saying a lot because they've got a lot of great baseball players on this team."
That's not rhetoric. That's the truth. Look around the American League. No one else won a hundred games.
By Bob Ryan.
From Boston.Com on October 5, 2004.