My dear friend Jim Storer called this afternoon wondering what was going on in the mind of Joe Torre. He had heard that Enrique Wilson would be starting against Pedro Martinez in tomorrow's ALCS game 3. This article seems to confirm that:

The Yankees plan on using Enrique Wilson in the starting lineup on Saturday. Oddly enough, Wilson has hit Martinez well, going 10-for-20 in his career against him.

"All I can explain is it's just a freak of nature," said Little. "The best thing we could come up with it's we're going to tell Jason Varitek tell Enrique 'one pitch is coming and it's coming right down the middle' and we'll hope he'll overswing and pop the ball up."

If you count the post-season, Wilson is actually 10 for 21 against Pedro in his career. Jim's question was should Torre start a bad hitter like Wilson against a great pitcher like Pedro based on such a small sample size?

My answer was, it depends. Basically I think it's luck. But if it could be shown that hitters like Wilson do something that is effective against Pedro, I'd say go ahead.

What could that be? The theory I proposed to Jim was that Wilson is a hacker who makes contact (a bad Randall Simon was the term I used). He doesn't walk, and he doesn't strike out. Pedro is always around the strike zone, so Wilson has something to hit. And Wilson doesn't try to pull everything, because he can't.

Is there any evidence to support this theory? If you look at the top five hitters in terms of batting averge, they are Marquis Grissom, Wilson, Greg Jefferies, Luis Gonzalez and Bip Roberts. What they all have in common is that they don't strike out much. Only Gonzalez really draws a lot of walks. They are basically hackers who make contact a lot. (And the other four are much better hitters than Wilson ever was.)

I remember Pedro in 1999 had a very good year against the Yankees. He made three starts (including one in the post-season in which he struck out 11 in 7 innings, 17 in 9 innings and 12 in 7 innings. I remember the Yankees as a team were taking these big swings at what he throwing, and he made them look ridiculous. I wondered why they didn't choke up and just try to meet the ball, put it in play, because they were getting nowhere fast trying to kill his pitches. Pedro was 3-0 against them that year.

So Wilson just might be the right hitter to face Pedro. I still think it's mostly luck, and if Pedro threw his pitches in the dirt, Enrique would swing and miss. But if they are near the strike zone, Wilson will make contact, and when you do that, anything can happen.

Update: This is another example that good pitching stops good hitting, but it doesn't stop bad hitting. :-)