By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2016/10/07/the-running-of-the-indians-bulls/Attention, Buck Showalter. Pull up a chair, Mike Matheny. Join up, any other manager who thinks there’s no such thing
as using your best relief pitchers in any situation other than closing it out when you take a lead to the ninth.
Class was in session in Cleveland’s Progressive Field Thursday night. Schoolmaster, Indians manager Terry Francona.
Lecturers, Andrew Miller and Cody Allen. Special guest victims, the Red Sox.
Showalter’s Orioles spent the early hours of their early off-season still in search of Zach Britton. On Thursday night,
opening an American League division series, Francona knew exactly where to find Miller and Allen. That was the
difference in a 5-4 Indians win that ended with Allen striking out the side around a two-out single from Red Sox
rookie Andrew Benintendi, ending a game could have gone the other way at any moment.
“Against that lineup,” Allen said by his locker after the game, “you just never know. They’re just so relentless through
nine innings. They really don’t give you a break.”
It was Miller’s assignment, though, that drew the most attention. Francona had warned before the game that he
was going to have every chip short of the stadium custodial staff ready to roll to win Game One. Especially if starter
Trevor Bauer—who can be tight and effective or loose and vulnerable, sometimes in the same outing—played with
a little too much fire at any point no matter when.
Never mind if Red Sox starter Rick Porcello looked like he was playing with a bigger book of matches through the first
four innings. A game that opened with a 1-0 Red Sox lead that the Indians tied almost an instant later, before the Red
Sox snatched the lead back when Benintendi opened the third with a solo bomb, turned into Porcello suffering third-
degree burns in the bottom of the third:
* Indians catcher Roberto Perez, who’d hit all of three homers for the Tribe on the regular season, hit a full-count
offering over the right field fence to lead off.
* One out later, second baseman Jason Kipnis hit a letter-high fastball not far from where Perez’s blast landed.
* Shortstop Francisco Lindor followed Kipnis and hit a 1-0 service into the same vicinity.
Red Sox catcher Sandy Leon closed the deficit to 4-3 by opening the top of the fifth with a fight back to a full count
from 0-2 before hitting sixth pitch of the sequence over the center field fence. And Francona took no chances when
he read his man as spent.
He reached for the lefthanded Miller. The lefthanded Holt greeted him with a double banging off the base of the center
field fence, and Mookie Betts wrung him for a followup walk. Miller admitted after the game he was wired up just
enough to overthrow to both men before settling down.
And settle down he did. Acquired from the Yankees at midseason, when the Yankees went into sell mode for once in
their lives, Miller struck out lefthanded David Ortiz dramatically enough to drive Progressive Field insane. As if they
had to be driven there for a long distance.
But what was Miller doing in the game that soon, fools? you could hear the conventional wisenheimers crowing.
They wondered the same thing near the end of the 1949 season, when Casey Stengel (first-year Yankee manager)—
needing to win the final two to nail a pennant, and with the Red Sox up 2-0 on a suddenly-ineffective Allie Reynolds—
brought in his preferred closer (“fireman,” in those days) Joe Page . . . in the third inning. Page shook off a pair of
bases-loaded walks and pitched one-hit ball the rest of the game. The Yankees overcame to win 5-4, then won the
following day to bag the pennant.
They wondered likewise in Game One of the 1966 World Series. The Orioles snatched an early 3-0 lead but starter
Dave McNally was in danger of surrendering it when he couldn’t stay comfortable on Dodger Stadium’s then mountain-
high mound. Manager Hank Bauer reached for his effective middleman Moe Drabowsky. Drabowsky walked a run
home between a pair of outs but was unhittable—eleven strikeouts in six and two thirds—the rest of the way. It
launched the Orioles’ unlikely Series sweep.
Miller didn’t have to work quite that long Thursday night, but he joined Page and Drabowsky in upholding the law
that says if you need a stopper early, especially with a road to the championship on the line, you bring him in the
moment you need him. Has Buck Showalter found Zach Britton yet?
Francona stayed with Miller as he threw about two or three more pitches in his two innings’ work than he’d thrown in
any regular-season assignment. Maybe the only reason Miller came out after two swift outs was because Francona
liked the matchup of Bryan Shaw pitching to Pedroia, who hit one up the first base line that Mike Napoli—a Red Sox
World Series factor in 2013—played off his chest for the out.
The Indians tacked up a fifth run in their half of the fifth with Perez’s leadoff single and a fly out deep enough, or at
least fooling Benintendi enough as he caught it and took extra moments to throw in, to let Perez get daring enough
to take second on the tag-up. Red Sox manager John Farrell lifted Porcello for Drew Pomeranz. Kipnis promptly
swatted a base hit up the pipe, the throw home too late to bag the hustling Perez.
The Red Sox closed the deficit to 5-4 when Holt led off the eighth with a jolt over the right field fence. Shaw got the
first out promptly, catching Betts’s towering popup on the third base side of the mound himself, but Francona took
no chances. Any more than he took chances winning a pair of Series managing the Red Sox earlier in the century.
He asked his closer Cody Allen for a five-out save.
And he got it—despite Ortiz greeting him with a rip off the right center field wall on which Big Papi beat the throw
to second with some big hustle for a 40-year-old retiree-in-waiting; despite Benintendi whacking a two-out single
in the ninth, which rudely interrupted Allen’s striking out the side to nail it.
“We wanted to win the game tonight,” Francona said after the game, explaining just why he wasn’t going to wait to
go to Miller, arguably his best relief pitcher after his acquisition. “Tomorrow might have a different design.”
Maybe he won’t be able to use Miller after a forty-pitch Game One assignment, but he has other bulls to run. And
he’s not afraid to run them early and often if need be. Just don’t ask Miller. “I’m not gonna miss any of these games,”
he said after Game One was in the bank.
Class dismissed. For now.
