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April 21, 2007
BOSTON -- Bunting for a base hit.
It’s a lost art. Very few hitters in the big leagues in this day and age try to bunt their way on base.
Maybe it’s because it’s the type of hit that doesn’t wow anybody at the arbitration table. Or maybe it’s because, as the advertisement slogan said in a commercial a few years ago, "Chicks digs the long ball."
But Coco Crisp, and to a lesser degree, Alex Cora, have been showing over the last few days that the bunt can be a major offensive weapon. They made the point clearly yesterday.
Crisp racked up another bunt single yesterday, his third bunt single in his last three games. Crisp had a pair of them in Thursday’s come-from-beind victory in Toronto. All three of them have come from the left side of the plate for the switch hitter.
He hasn’t done it in the traditional sense. He doesn’t drag bunt. He doesn’t try to place it perfectly down the third-base line. He has pushed all three of them out in front of the plate, deadening them nicely, and then using his blazing speed to beat a throw.
Cora, meanwhile, used a bunt attempt to pull in the third baseman in Toronto and then lofted a bloop single over his head.
Today, Crisp and Cora dropped down successful back-to-back bunt singles in the second inning, leading to a two-run uprising that enabled Boston to pull even, at 2-2.
That’s right. The Red Sox. Back-to-back bunt singles.
Sure, David Ortiz’s sixth homer of the year, a two-run blast inside the right-field foul pole, expanded the Red Sox’ advantage to 7-4 in the fourth and seemed to take the wind out of the Yankees’ sails.
But those beautiful bunts by Crisp and Cora helped to inflict the same amount of damage on New York.
Battle of the titans
Sometimes you get the bear. Sometimes the bear gets you.
Such was the case between Boston starter Josh Beckett and red-hot Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez.
In the first inning, Beckett threw a total of 12 pitches to the first three hitters. Of those pitches, 11 were fastballs.
He changed his pattern when Rodriguez got to the plate. Beckett threw a changeup and two curves. But with a 1-and-2 count on A-Rod, he froze the Yankee third baseman with a 96-mile-an-hour inside-corner fastball for a called strike three.
In their second matchup, two curves and a changeup produced a 2-and-1 count. Beckett again tried to slip a fastball past A-Rod. He wasn’t successful. Rodriguez turned on it and drilled a double over the head of left fielder Manny Ramirez.
A fastball and a curve had A-Rod down, 0-and-2, in the fifth. And with catcher Jason Varitek calling for a high, hard one out of the zone for a waste pitch, Beckett delivered one at 97 miles an hour. Rodriguez swung at it, but couldn’t get on top of it. He popped it up to second base.
But in the seventh, with runners at first and second and two outs, Beckett’s pitch count up 102, faced A-Rod one last time, holding a 7-4 advantage. He knew it would be his last hitter, a message imparted by pitching coach John Farrell.
The radar-gun readings on his first three pitches of the at-bat were 98, 98 and 95. The count was 2-and-1. The next pitch, Beckett’s 106th, came in at 96 miles an hour, and Rodriguez took a smooth swing and zipped a liner over the head of first baseman Kevin Youkilis for an RBI single, trimming the Yanks’ deficit to 7-5.
Slide, Papi, slide!
It’s a harrowing sight for manager Terry Francona and his teammates when David Ortiz has to slide. Apparently, he never mastered Sliding 101.
On Friday night, crash-landing was a better way to describe how Ortiz "slid" into second base. He was safe, but how he didn’t get hurt was a miracle.
Today, for the good of the team, Big Papi had to slide in the first inning. He tagged up on Manny Ramirez’s fly ball to right and rumbled from second to third, sliding in safely and looking this time as if he almost knew what he was doing as he got down.
He then pushed his luck, trying to score from third on J.D. Drew’s grounder to second baseman Robinson Cano.
Cano threw home and nailed Oritz, who again made a good slide, and might have been safe, though replays weren’t conclusive.
There were two reasons the Yanks were able to throw him out. Number one, of course, is that Ortiz is a slow runner. But manager Joe Torre also had his infielders playing halfway, even though it was a tie game and just the first inning, in an effort to choke off that run.
That defensive alignment helped out rookie right-hander Jeff Karstens.
Strange strategy
Why, why why?
Why would Torre have Wil Nieves bunt after Kevin Thompson’s leadoff double in a 2-2 game in the first?
Granted, Nieves is a rookie, and it would be nice to move the go-ahead run to third with less than two outs. But did Torre think that Karstens, who had looked shaky in coughing up two runs in his first big-league inning of the year, was primed to blank Boston the rest of the way? Why give up an out?
New York got a break when Nieves fouled off two bunt attempts and third basmean Mike Lowell threw away his weak grounder, trying to throw out Thompson retreating to second. Having Nieves bunt, though, didn’t seem to make a lot of sense.
New York did get two runs in its half of the second, but the Yanks’ 4-2 lead after 1 1/2 innings turned into a 4-4 tie by the time Karstens escaped the bottom of the second.
Posted by Art Martone 
at 8:22 PM | Permalink
