The Phillies think the more they see of Mariano Rivera, the better they will hit him.
“We can hit Rivera,” Phillies manager Charlie Manuel promised not long after the Yankees laid a 3-1 bruise on his team to even this World Series at one game apiece Thursday night in Yankee Stadium. “We’ve proved that. He’s good. He’s one of the best closers in baseball, if not the best. He’s very good.
“But I’ve seen our team handle good pitching, and we’re definitely capable of scoring runs late in the game.”
…
“Getting to see him that much gives you the opportunity to form a game plan against him,” said Phillies slugger Ryan Howard, who fanned four times in Game 2, including taking a called third strike from Rivera to start the ninth. “Obviously, the more you see a guy, the more you get used to him.
“That’s a guy you don’t want to see a lot of. You want to keep him in the bullpen as much as possible.”
So does seeing Mariano often help hitters? Here’s a list of players who faced the closer at least 15 times, sorted by OBP. Notice there are a number of hitters who did very well against Mariano. Also notice, however, that
- This is a list of very good hitters.
- Most of them did their damage early in Rivera’s career.
So good hitters will get some hits against Rivera, and the Phillies have plenty of those. American League batters as a whole, however, have seen Rivera since 1995, and he’s posted ERAs under 2.00 in six of the last seven years. He’s not perfect; despite the hype you hear every time he comes into a game, Mariano will blow saves. So the heart of the Phillies lineup will get hits off him. The tough part will be stringing them together.
Posted by David Pinto at 8:17 am | Pitchers, World Series | Permalink | 5 Comments
Comments
Leave a Reply
October 30th, 2009 @ 12:04 pm
It appears that Mo has lost more velocity than I had thought earlier in the year. He seemed to be sitting more at 89-91 last night. I wonder when the diminished velocity will catch up with him.
October 30th, 2009 @ 12:25 pm
I added up all the listed players and got an total batting of .259 and a total OBA of .322.
October 30th, 2009 @ 5:57 pm
Yeah, have fun with that one Phillies. As you mentioned and as we saw in game 2 and against the Angels, they may get hits, but it’s pushing the runs across that’s the hard part. The dude has a 0.77 era in the post season. He’s pitched in more games and innings in the post season than any other closer ever and probably ever will. That means there’s a solid book on him in the post season, not to mention in the regular season. But no team can score one earned run on him in 9 innings. And he does it with one pitch.
And Dave, if they don’t hype Mo, what closer should they hype? There’s no one even close to what he’s consistently done. In an imperfect baseball world that is why they say he is “perfect”. Mo is one of a kind.
October 30th, 2009 @ 10:51 pm
Watching Rivera Thursday night, it struck me that he’s one of the reasons I like baseball so much. He’s been doing this for almost 15 years and while he does blow a save every now and again, for the most part he’s been consistently great.
Hitters have 14+ years of game film to study him and try to figure out how to hit him but so far, no hitter, let alone team has figured him out completely.
That wouldn’t happen in the NFL or NBA. Some brilliant coach would break him down from film and figure out a gameplan to counteract. But I do realize that footnall and basketball are more multi-player oriented than baseball.
My closing thought: Rivera coming in for a save in a post-season game is essentially a lock, but Michael Jordan was never a lock to take over the last 5 minutes of a playoff game (or even the last shot).
October 31st, 2009 @ 2:46 pm
What post-season lock?? Rivera personally lost the deciding game of 2001 WS. He got big time help in DP call in this WS Game 2.