Yankees-Phillies World Series is baseball paradise
PHILADELPHIA --- The Yankees and Phillies are both ready for tonight, and so are we. With the entire 2009 season coming down to a game or two in the Bronx, preparation is key, especially for fans ducking verbal heaters thrown high and tight by their Turnpike counterparts.
If you're a Yankee fan, of course, you can brag that you only have to win one, and it will be where your team has the best home field record in all of baseball. Andy Pettitte has already won 4 World Series games in his illustrious career and 17 altogether in postseason play.
His lefty delivery was made for the Stadium, or perhaps the Stadium was made for it. C.C. Sabathia is waiting in the wings for a Game 7 if necessary, and you've already seen how effective he is on three days' rest.
You Phanatic phools can gloat all you want about knocking out A.J. Burnett in the third inning, but the fact is the outing was a fluke and having thrown only 53 pitches Monday night, he's available for long relief in the unlikely event that becomes necessary. Cliff Lee, on the other hand, threw 112 pitches in a less-than-stellar performance and is done for the series other than as a Code Red emergency reliever.
We'll take our chances.
The truth is, you Philly phreaks, our team has dominated your team with Mark Teixeira hitting a little over a buck. What happens when his bat shows up? In the meantime, how many more times can you plunk A-Rod before sending your starting pitcher -- that is, whomever you select by lottery -- to the showers for the winter?
A-Rod has your number, and so do the umpires. You're going to have to pitch to Alex, and please, enough with the choke talk. Rodriguez got over his postseason jitters a month ago, and you know it. So does Brad Lidge.
And did we mention that Mariano Rivera is the greatest postseason closer of all time and is incredibly well rested? Or that you can't steal signs in our house?
If you're a Phillies fan, you don't have to take it. Naturally, you can shout from the rafters that your team is still the reigning World Champion and has yet to be knocked from that perch. The Phillies may have struggled at home at times during the season, but guess where they made up for it?
And please, send Andy Pettitte back to the '90s, where he belongs. Pedro Martinez is a World Series Champion in this decade and has the Yankees dialed in. No one could be less intimidated by the Bombers and their over-inflated mystique. Ask Don Zimmer.
When it comes time for Game 7, we'll take that Lee-Burnett, all-Arkansas reprise in the sixth, seventh, or whenever you want it. Unless you'd like to serve us Phil Coke again. Phillies go better with Coke.
Send Tex back to Texas. When the real Ryan Howard shows up, which will be any minute now, you'll finally understand why his first four full seasons have caused Ruthian comparisons, and right in the house that A-Rod built.
Chase Utley owns the Yankees pitching staff. He's already passed the Babe and that Gehrig dude and will surpass Reggie Jackson's World Series record without hot-dogging it at home plate.
So as you get scalped, enjoy the three thousand dollars you paid a scalper. The Phillies will see to it that you get your money's Werth.
Okay, everyone, listen up. Before we continue hurling cheesesteaks and Yankee Franks, we need to stop for a moment and remember how lucky we really are.
At least if you live within a hundred-mile radius of Trenton, no one could have scripted the 2009 season better than a final showdown in the Bronx between the National League's best team and the American League's best team separated by an hour-and-a-half Amtrak ride.
While we're busy searching the crowd for navy blue or bright red pinstripes to pour beer on, let us recall that in this inaugural season at the new Yankee Stadium, history will look back kindly on this match-up of titans.
The Yankees have three sure Hall of Famers -- Jeter, Rivera, and Rodriguez -- and possibly as many as four more one day -- Pettitte, Posada, Sabathia, and Teixeira. The Phillies have first-ballot inductee Pedro Martinez and enough Hall prospects to fill an aisle of their own -- Howard, Utley, Rollins, and Lee.
As the Reverend Jesse Jackson might say, ''If they are great, don't hate.''
Looking more to the here and now, the two teams have played largely errorless baseball and have both lived up to their reputations of never quitting. They are gutsy players who leave their big contracts with
their accountants and on the field serve as role models for Little Leaguers everywhere. Even if global warming continues to cooperate, November baseball may not see the likes of two so evenly matched and fiercely competitive teams for a long, long time to come.
Now resume chanting obscenities. And play ball!
(c) 2009 The Trentonian, a Journal Register Property. All rights reserved.
Postseason pressure can bite baseball's best
NEW YORK --- Mark Teixeira swings at a pitch near his eyes for strike three. Chase Utley makes a wild throw into the stands. Hideki Matsui freezes on a popup and gets doubled off first base. Sometimes it's hard to fathom: the dropped balls, the baserunning blunders, the embarrassing at-bats. Hey, this is the postseason, these guys are supposed to be baseball's best!
But playoff pressure can create all sorts of jitters. And even at this level, elite players make the most elementary mistakes.
"Sometimes even on the biggest stage you tend to lose it," New York Yankees outfielder Johnny Damon said. "It's tough. We've been playing this game a long time and we understand what is at stake. The focus can get lost."
With players pressing so hard to succeed in October, desperate for that championship ring, sometimes it seems they try to do too much out there.
Never has that been more evident than this season. The first two playoff rounds produced enough bad baseball to fill a blooper reel. Sometimes, major league All-Stars looked as though they could use a couple of primers on the game's fundamentals from those 12-year-olds at the Little League World Series.
"When you're in the postseason, you get a little extra click of adrenaline. There's more on the line, and it can either help you or hurt you," said Phillies closer Brad Lidge, who's had his share of success -- and failure -- in October. "I think with our guys, it ends up helping them because they're very confident and relaxed and use that extra boost to help their ability."
Not so for everyone.
Earlier this postseason, Minnesota's Carlos Gomez and Nick Punto made costly mistakes on the bases. Bobby Abreu had a similar miscue in the AL championship series for Los Angeles. Thinking triple, he went too far around second and was thrown out in a crucial situation.
In fact, Abreu and the Angels committed a slew of ugly errors in the field and on the bases during their six-game loss to New York. And they're considered one of the sharpest teams in the game.
"You just have to move on, be strong about it because mistakes happen. That's not the whole reason of why teams lose. I think just because it's the magnitude of a game, it gets the headline of the front page," Angels third baseman Chone Figgins said. "Guys come and give you a pat on the back, but that's just being good teammates. That's all you can do about it."
National Leaguers had their playoff troubles, too.
Matt Holliday dropped a sinking liner in left field, costing the Cardinals a victory. Colorado closer Huston Street and Los Angeles' Jonathan Broxton squandered save chances. Utley threw away a pair of double-play balls for Philadelphia in the first two games of the NLCS.
"You really have to have a 'so-what' attitude," Phillies Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt explained in an e-mail. "You have to believe you gave it your best and that was all you had. You must learn from the failure and figure out a way to relax."
Schmidt knows both sides. He was the World Series MVP in 1980 against Kansas City, then went 1 for 20 when the Phillies lost the '83 Series to Baltimore.
"If you hit early it steamrolls into bigger things, relaxes you. You feel a part of it all, you want the big-stage at-bat," he wrote. "The opposite is failing in key at-bats, reading and hearing about it and trying to make up for it with every swing. The pressure builds with each failure. You feel uneasy, like you're letting the team and town down."
Umpires haven't been immune this postseason, either. A string of blown calls led Major League Baseball to assign only umps with previous World Series experience to this year's Fall Classic.
Usually, however, it's the gaffes by players that get remembered.
"There's a lot of emotions that go into these games. Can players try to do too much? Absolutely," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said Thursday. "You have to learn how to bounce back. Sometimes the more a guy has experienced, he'll bounce back maybe a little bit easier. But then you have those free spirits that are able to always put yesterday behind them."
Indeed, the ability to overcome mistakes in October -- quickly -- can be the key to success.
Utley is a perfect example. He went 0 for 4 with four strikeouts in his first postseason game two years ago. But he reached base safely in the next 26, setting a big league record, and his two home runs Wednesday night helped Philadelphia beat the Yankees 6-1 in the Series opener.
"Failure is a part of this game. You have to learn how to deal with it at a young age if you want to stay sane," Utley said. "For me, as big of a game as these games are, you try to really treat it like just another game."
Isn't that difficult to do?
"Not really. I guess it could be at times. But it is just another game," he said. "You're going to get another chance, whether it's in the field or whether it's at the plate. So you always want to stay positive. And the more positive you are, the more confident you are, I think the better you do."
(c) 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Yankees can win AL pennant tonight vs. Angels
ANAHEIM, Calif. --- After an off day, the Yankees will try to close out the Angels with a Game 5 win in the American League Championship Series tonight at Angel Stadium. New York has a commanding 3-games-to-1 advantage following Tuesday night's 10-1 victory in Anaheim. The Yanks will send out A.J. Burnett against John Lackey. A Yankee victory would mean their 40th American League pennant.
Last night, the Philadelphia Phillies swatted four home runs in their clinching 10-4 rout of the L.A. Dodgers that closed out the National League Championship Series in five games last night. That gives the Phillies a chance for back-to-back World Series titles.
Jayson Werth hit an opposite-field three-run home run in the first inning and added a solo shot in the seventh. Pedro Feliz and Shane Victorino also went deep.
Werth got the Phils off to a fast start when he connected on his three-run shot in the first inning off Dodgers starter Vicente Padilla, who didn't make it out of the fourth inning. Chase Utley and Ryan Howard walked before Werth sent the Citizens Bank Park crowd into a tizzy with his long home run. Utley tied a postseason record by reaching base in 25 straight games.
Andre Ethier, James Loney and pinch-hitter Orlando Hudson hit solo homers off Phils starter Cole Hamels, who lasted four and a-third innings. J.A. Happ, Chad Durbin, Chan Ho Park and Ryan Madson pitched three and two-thirds innings of one-run relief for the Phils. After closer Brad Lidge retired the Dodgers in order in the ninth, the Phils began their champagne-filled celebration.
When Derek Jeter recalls the last time the New York Yankees got this close to the World Series, he gets chills down his spine that have nothing to do with the cold he's fighting.
"If you have the opportunity to get something over with, you'd like to do it," the New York captain said. "It's not always going to happen."
Although the Yankees have a strong record in potential closeout playoff games over their peerless history, the 2004 AL championship series is a prodigious hole in their reputation that only a record 40th AL pennant could begin to cover. Up 3-0, New York lost four straight to the Boston Red Sox in an unprecedented collapse, and the Yankees hadn't been that close to the World Series since -- until now.
They get the first of three shots at a closeout victory over the struggling Angels in Game 5 of the ALCS on Thursday night, with A.J. Burnett facing Los Angeles ace John Lackey.
After half a decade and several hundred million dollars' worth of premium free-agent shopping, most of the Yankees who have rolled through six wins in their first seven postseason games this fall don't share Jeter's memories of 2004.
Manager Joe Girardi understands the history, but prefers to focus on the future.
"There's a lot of different faces," Girardi said. "You look at our rotation, CC (Sabathia) wasn't here, A.J. wasn't here. You look at the bullpen, and I believe Mo (Mariano Rivera) was the only guy that was here. It's a different scenario, but we understand who the Angels are."
Before a light workout at sun-kissed Angel Stadium on Wednesday, Girardi and the Yankees were modest about their chances of getting that last win and steaming back onto baseball's biggest stage after a six-year absence. Their play in this postseason so far has done all their bragging for them.
With big-money newcomers Sabathia and Burnett joining Andy Pettitte in a dynamite three-man rotation, backed by 2004 survivor Alex Rodriguez leading the offense, the current Yankees have shown no indication of slowing down.
After they missed the playoffs last fall for the first time in Jeter's era, the Yankees have racked up baseball's best record before rolling to the brink of a pennant against the Angels, who were second-best behind New York in the regular-season standings as well.
"Well, any time you can add the top three free agents, it's going to be better," outfielder Johnny Damon deadpanned. "(Sabathia, Burnett and Mark Teixeira) took us from missing the playoffs by six games last year to being pretty dominant."
The Yankees have held a 3-1 lead in an ALCS six times since Jeter, Rivera, Pettitte and Jorge Posada joined the roster in the mid-1990s. New York closed it out immediately three times, waited for the sixth game once -- and then there was 2004.
But these Yankees are well positioned to capitalize on their three chances to finish off Los Angeles. Nothing in the ALCS to date suggests the Yankees' pitchers will have much trouble with the Angels, whose normally productive lineup is batting .201 against New York.
After a 10-1 rout in Game 4, it's also tough to imagine New York's sluggers slowing down. Rodriguez, Jeter and Posada are in the midst of outstanding postseasons, and the Yankees have 14 homers among their 67 hits in seven playoff games.
"It's like every day, you're looking to somebody to your right or left and saying, 'Do you believe this guy?'" Burnett said. "'I mean, have you ever seen a guy like this guy?' That's a handful of guys on this team. I've played with some good players, but it's like the guys on this squad, when the stage gets bigger and the situation gets bigger, they perform better. It never ceases to amaze me what can happen."
Six of 28 teams in the Angels' position have rallied from a 3-1 deficit in a league championship series -- most recently in 2007, when the Boston Red Sox came back against Sabathia and Cleveland on the way to a title. Including the World Series, 11 of 69 teams that fell into a 3-1 hole have made the comeback.
"The mountain is big, period," Angels outfielder Torii Hunter said. "But we know baseball can turn around at any time. ... We've been wanting that since our first game (against the Yankees). We haven't quite got there yet, but it's getting late. That bell is about to ring, so it's time to get it done."
Pitching hasn't been the Angels' biggest woe, even given the Yankees' 10-run outburst in Game 3, which only got out of hand in the late innings. Los Angeles can't hit against the Yankees, scraping the Mendoza Line while scoring just 10 runs in the series' 42 innings.
"We're trying to do too much with runners in scoring position," said Bobby Abreu, who's batting .125 against his former team. "We're trying to drive in runs no matter what, and sometimes we swing at bad pitches. Tomorrow is a tough situation for us."
Burnett is still looking for his first playoff victory despite pitching fairly well in his last two starts. He got a no-decision in Game 2 despite allowing just three hits and two runs while pitching into the seventh inning of a contest that eventually went 310 minutes and 13 innings.
"This is why I signed -- the opportunity to pitch in the postseason," said Burnett, who never pitched in the playoffs for Florida or Toronto. "The first year over here, I have an opportunity, so I'm taking full advantage of it."
(c) 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
For Yankees, home is where the start is
NEW YORK -- Home-field advantage ought to be a significant deal for the New York Yankees in this American League Championship Series. There are even more reasons than usual for them to succeed at home.
The new Yankee Stadium will be the venue for the start of this ALCS on Friday night at 7:57 p.m. ET on FOX -- weather permitting. The Yankees meet the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, the team that has given them more trouble by record than any other in recent history.
It is a compelling matchup of the two teams with the two best records this season. The Yankees have greatly improved their pitching. The Angels have greatly improved their offense. The teams split 10 games in the regular season. You look diligently for a potential edge in one direction or another, and there is not one gigantic factor separating the two clubs. Maybe the ballparks will make a difference.
The Yankees had the best home record in the Majors this season, 57-24, and why not? The mark tied a Major League record for most victories by a club in its first season in a new ballpark. Ironically or not, that record had been set by the Boston Red Sox, in 1912 when they moved into Fenway Park.
Yankee Stadium turned out to be a hitter-friendly facility. Baseballs hit to right-center in particular seemed to get a second wind, carrying for unexpected distances. The Yankees have plenty of left-handed pop, anyway, but they set a franchise record for home runs, home runs at home, and another record with five players who had at least 25 home runs. The three operative words here appear to be boom, boom, boom.
The opposition has taken notice. Many visiting players this season had two areas of astonishment upon playing in the new Stadium. One was that this was such an exact replica of old Yankee Stadium, except that the creature comforts were vastly improved. The second was that the ball appeared to jump out of the place.
Angels catcher Mike Napoli, asked what he found to be the difference between the two Yankee Stadiums, replied: "The ball flies a little better here, definitely. It's not much of a pitchers' ballpark anymore. The ball flies better."
There is no conspiracy theory here, no belief that the Yankees schemed to build a homer haven. They had some of the game's most productive hitters, anyway.
"I think they have some very good ballplayers on this club," said Angels general manager Tony Reagins. "I may be speaking out of turn, but I don't know if they envisioned the ball flying out of here as much as it does. With the power that they have in that lineup, if it continues to play this way, there are going to be a lot of offensive numbers put up that are impressive. Unless something changes, like the dimensions, I think we're going to see that kind of offensive output."
Now comes the ALCS to the Bronx, and the Game 1 forecast includes wet and windy, not to mention somewhat chilly. The Yankees do not need postponements. They do not need to lose off-days. The more often they get to pitch Game 1 starter CC Sabathia, the better off they will be.
But just on being accustomed to playing at least occasionally in crummy weather -- advantage Yankees. The Angels play their home games in one of country's most benign climates (and in a park that is known as "fair," favoring neither pitchers nor hitters in a dramatic way.)
The Angels are not a bad-weather operation. But in this setting, in these postseason circumstances, they say they will not come undone because of an unfriendly climate.
"Your adrenaline and everything will be going," Napoli said. "I mean, it's the playoffs. Yeah, we don't play in it, and you don't like to play in the cold and rainy weather. But we're going to strap it on, go out there and play hard and try to play our game."
Angels manager Mike Scioscia said that bad weather slowing his club's running game would not be as much of a handicap as it would have been in recent seasons because the Angels have developed a more versatile offense.
"If it slows down our running game, I think we still have some things we can do," Scioscia said.
For most of his career, Sabathia pitched in Cleveland. He's worked in the cold before. Angels Game 1 starter John Lackey is a native Texan who now resides in southern California. He did pitch in the North while in the low Minors. Lackey suggested Thursday that in an event of this magnitude, "the last thing on my mind will be the weather."
"I'm not going to be intimidated by anybody," he said. "That's why I'm throwing tomorrow.
He doesn't sound like a potential hypothermia victim.
Still, there is home-field advantage, and the Yankees have it. Having played well enough to get this edge, starting Friday night they need to play well enough to make it work.
(c) 2001-2009 MLB Advanced Media, L.P. All rights reserved.
Cards, Dodgers break left-on-base mark
LOS ANGELES -- It was duck season Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium. And the Dodgers and the Cardinals, bad shots through most of Game 1 of their NL Division Series, left a lot of ducks on the pond.
Thirty of them, to be exact, 30 men left on base in 8 1/2 innings to shatter the previous record by both teams in a postseason game.
And yet, for all the LOB-ing back and forth, St. Louis' Ryan Ludwick came within the width of a duck's webbed foot of clearing the bases in the fourth inning, his drive into the left-field corner coming that close to possibly reversing the outcome of the Cardinals' 5-3 loss.
"Yeah, that could've been a game-changing moment right there," agreed Skip Schumaker, the lead runner on third base in that situation.
The Dodgers had a 3-2 lead, but the Cardinals had just chased their starter, lefty Randy Wolf. Jeff Weaver came on with two outs and the bases loaded to face Ludwick, who had already singled for a first-inning run and walked in the third.
The lefty-hitting Ludwick swung late on a Weaver heater, but that simply resulted in an opposite-field liner that kissed off the low box-seat fence tantalizingly to the left of the foul line.
"Yeah, wish that ball had been an inch-and-a-half to the right," said Ludwick, who would also score the Cardinals' final run in the ninth after singling off Los Angeles closer Jonathan Broxton. "Guess that's why they say it's a game of inches."
Ludwick eventually pulled a little dribbler that a lunging Weaver snared in his glove's webbing and flipped to first to end the inning.
"We didn't catch a break there," Ludwick said. "It would've been nice, but it didn't happen. I did take a look [on video], and it looked really close. It hit right there by the line. But it's past us. We've got to look forward to being ready [Thursday]."
Ludwick, at least, seriously threatened to clean the bases. Batters for both teams posed no such threat most of the night.
The teams needed only the first six innings to break the record of 22 men left on base set in the inaugural Division Series, in 1995, turning the first two-thirds of Game 1 into an exhibition of missed opportunities.
Or, for the cup-is-half-full set, of clutch pitching.
"You have to give credit to the pitchers for getting out of jams when they had to," Schumaker said.
Showing the way there was Wolf, who started off in a bases-loaded, none-out fix in the first and limited the Cardinals to just one run, on Ludwick's flared single into short center.
"We had a chance to silence the crowd and steal some momentum, start off on the right foot," said St. Louis shortstop Brendan Ryan. "It just didn't work out. Given the opportunities we had, we would've liked to have had a few more runs."
So would have Chris Carpenter, whose own uncharacteristic struggles did not match up well with the halting offense.
"But I don't concern myself with what goes on with the other side," Carpenter said. "That's not my job. My job is to execute outs."
Carpenter executed 15 of those -- 11 of them with men on base, making his own contribution to the records.
Yes, plural -- the Dodgers wound up stranding 16 runners, breaking the single-team Division Series record of 14 set in 2006's Game 3 by the Padres -- against the Cardinals.
When pinch-hitter Jim Thome struck out in the sixth to leave the bases loaded with Dodgers, the teams' LOB tote board reached 23 -- breaking the record of 22 accomplished four previous times.
It is not easy to average nearly four men left on base for six innings, but these teams managed it by leaving the bases loaded three times, twice by the Dodgers, and misfiring on numerous other scoring chances.
The Red Sox and Indians stranded 22 runners on Oct. 6, 1995 -- a mark that was first matched the next day by the Yankees and the Mariners.
The Braves and Cardinals also combined for 22 men left on base on Oct. 3, 2000, as did the Dodgers and Mets on Oct. 7, 2006.
Through six innings in Wednesday night's game, pitchers for the two teams had faced a total of 66 batters -- and got to pitch out of a windup to 11 of them.
Getting hits with men in scoring position translates to MISP hitting.
Wednesday night, the Dodgers and Cardinals displayed MISS-hitting, combining to go 5-for-28 with men in scoring position. Rather, on this occasion, men in stranding position.
(c) 2001-2009 MLB Advanced Media, L.P. All rights reserved.
Rays set team record for home runs
ST. PETERSBURG -- The Rays went deep twice in the first inning of Monday night's game against the Orioles to establish a team single-season record for home runs.
"It's pretty cool," said Ben Zobrist, who hit the record-breaker in the Rays' 7-6 win. "We had a real fast assent to the 100 mark, around the All-Star break. But breaking the club record is pretty cool. I didn't know we had that much power on the team."
Gabe Kapler got things started when he hit a 1-0 pitch from Baltimore starter Mark Hendrickson into the left-field stands for his eighth home run of the season and the team's 190th.
Kapler's home run tied the team record, which was set in 2006, but the Rays weren't finished.
One out after Kapler's blast, Zobrist rerouted a 1-0 Hendrickson fastball into the right-field stands for his 25th homer of the season and the team's record-setting 191st.
Evan Longoria added to the record season with a solo blast off Hendrickson in the fourth for his 32nd home run of the season and the team's 192nd before Willy Aybar's pinch-hit three-run homer in the seventh extended the record.
Ty Wigginton's 24 home runs led the '06 Rays, a team that had 10 players with 10 or more dingers. Carl Crawford finished second on the team with 18 long balls.
(c) 2001-2009 MLB Advanced Media, L.P. All rights reserved.
Arroyo leads Reds to sweep of Bucs
PITTSBURGH -- If only the Reds could have gone on a run like this earlier, when they were fading after the All-Star break.
A 4-1 win over the Pirates on Thursday gave the Reds a three-game series sweep and a 21-10 record in their 31 games since Aug. 23. They entered the day tied with the Yankees for the second-best record in the Majors, behind only the Red Sox, during that period.
"Some of it has to do with the better pitching," Reds manager Dusty Baker said. "Some of it has to do with the catching and game-calling being real good. Some of it has to do with defense. Some of it has to do with timely hitting. Some of it has to do with new personnel. Some of it has to do with having a more stable lineup."
There are also the factors of Scott Rolen and Drew Stubbs. Rolen returned from the DL on Aug. 23. Stubbs, who was given the day off on Thursday, was called up from Triple-A Louisville on Aug. 19. Since his arrival, Stubbs leads the club in home runs, total bases, steals and runs scored.
Some of it also has to do with fortunate scheduling. Eight of the wins have come against a Pirates team that is 3-23 over its past 26 games.
No matter who the opponents are, it's still been a solid month of baseball for the Reds. Baker's goal is to be better than the 74-88 record his team posted in 2008. Cincinnati is 72-81 with nine games left to play.
"Usually [with] a team that is struggling -- down the stretch, their spirit gets broken," Baker said. "It's the one thing we've been conscious of -- not having the team's spirit get broken. Once your spirit is broken, you're almost done."
After getting his 14th win to move one away from tying a career high, Reds starting pitcher Bronson Arroyo warned about being too impressed with the recent success.
"Honestly, I take it with a grain of salt," Arroyo said. "Last year we did the same thing. When the pressure is on, the games mean something, you see if a team is going to get it done. Adding Scott Rolen has made a world of difference.
"I'm definitely optimistic about next year, but I'm not taking the second half of this season and thinking we're going to just run away with the division next year. We'll have to play good ball. We're going to need every piece of this puzzle to come back next year and be healthy."
It's been a stellar streak of outings for Arroyo (14-13), who produced his 12th straight quality start by pitching seven innings and allowing one earned run and five hits with one walk and four strikeouts.
Pittsburgh scored on Arroyo in the seventh, when Lastings Milledge led off with a home run to left field. Nick Masset pitched a perfect eighth inning before Francisco Cordero earned his 39th save, despite a two-hit, one-walk ninth inning.
"Another outstanding start," Baker said. "It worked out perfectly, because he was out of gas after the seventh. Masset and Cordero hadn't gone in four days after working five days in a row."
Arroyo got all of the runs he needed in the top of the third, and he was the one who helped set up the rally.
"Don't forget to write that we scored four runs after Arroyo beat out that double-play ball," Rolen said. "All he did was run. Four runs, Reds win."
Consider it done. With one out and a runner on first against Charlie Morton (4-9), Arroyo dropped a bunt to the left of the mound that went for a fielder's-choice play to second base. He beat the throw to first base and kept the inning alive.
After a Willy Taveras broken-bat single put runners on first and second base, Sutton pulled an RBI double to the left-field corner that scored Arroyo. Joey Votto followed with his sixth double of the series, a two-run drive through the gap in right-center field. Brandon Phillips drove in Votto with an RBI single to left field that gave him a career-high 95 RBIs.
"In hindsight, it was definitely a big play," said Arroyo, who has a 2.15 ERA over his past 15 starts. "I haven't had a lead like that in a while. It was nice to get four runs, especially in a 12:35 p.m. game. It's almost impossible for me to feel good out there at that time of day. I was hoping to catch a groove. Getting that lead allowed me to pitch away and soft, and conserve some energy. I really didn't have a whole lot out there today."
(c) 2001-2009 MLB Advanced Media, L.P. All rights reserved.
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