Anatomy of a Miraculous Comeback Win

It’s late.  Real late.

The kids have to be awake at 7:30 am.  You have to be at work by nine.  And you don’t know it yet, but you’ve totally spaced on getting to the vet’s office when it opens to pick up your hamster’s prescription stool softener.  You’re getting even less sleep than you think you are.

So what are you doing here, lying on the couch with the TV turned down to a casual hum?  This game’s over.  A nine run deficit late in the game is staring your weak-ass offense in the face.  It is absolutely purposeless for you to stay here, assuming this will somehow become a ball game, unless you’re just trying to avoid your wife’s night terrors again.  Coward.

No?  Still sitting here?  Good.  Because you, like many others, are perfectly aware that the miraculous comeback win is not a likely scenario.  However, when put in a position to see one unfold, you cannot turn off that voice whispering, “But what if…”  You don’t want to be one of those gutless invertebrate who claim to have seen the epic 10-run rally in the bottom of the ninth, but were actually upstairs, shouting passages from “Living with Night Terrors: A Guide” as their wives hurled a lamp at them.  You want to be one those gut-filled vertebrates explaining the victory to your co-workers while still hungover from you celebratory post-game champagne-chug in the kitchen with the lights off.

Which brings us to the current season.  There is a way to do the comeback right, and there’s a way to do it… without doing it.  And recently we’ve had two perfect examples.

Everyone remembers the Yankees’ 15 unanswered runs in Boston last week that helped them get passed a nine-run Red Sox blockade.  I’m sure we were all rooting for the Yanks in that one.  They’re so likeable.  America’s team!

And, on the less successful front, we have the Phillies, faced with an inevitable 9-0 loss in the top of the ninth in Arizona, only to start scoring runs with no outs.  Their story does end as happily.

Both teams were staring down a nine-run deficit after watching their starter get chased out early.

“Kyle Kendrick… allowed 11 hits and seven runs in three-plus innings, making him just the fourth Phillies starter since 1918 to allow 11 or more hits and seven or more earned runs in three or fewer innings.”–Todd Zolecki“[Freddy] Garcia wasn’t fooling anyone in the Red Sox lineup during his time on the mound in the Yankees’ stunning 15-9 victory. He recorded just five outs and served up five runs on seven hits, knocked out after just 48 pitches.”–Bryan Hoch

Both teams were power players in their division; shifting, pitiless monoliths who are unable to find sympathy outside of their own fanbases.  A victory would be scorned by the masses.  A loss, celebrated with glee.  When the time came, both teams had a reaction.

But one team did it right, while the other did it so, so wrong.

Yankees

Now, I can’t in good conscience sit here and type out any flattering words about any of the Yankees.  So if throughout all of these descriptions, just assume any actions are being performed by someone with a dumb face, a hideous outlook on life, and probably a closet full of dark, sinister secrets, because as someone on the internet, I can make assumptions about the Yankees all I want with zero accountability.

The key to the comeback win is “that vibe.”  There’s a difference between the guy that scores the first run of a rally and a guy that just knocked in a meaningless run with a groundball out and comes trotting back to the dugout with the same eerily mundane look on his face as when he swung at a 3-1 pitch out of the zone or did his taxes earlier.

The Yankees had “that vibe” when Mark Teixeira put a baseball over The Green Monster for their first run of the afternoon.  If you want to talk about looks on people’s faces, Teixiera eyeing up that meatball will go down as one of the OMFG-iest facial expressions in the history of people having faces.

It’s like he could see, with sudden, pristine clarity, exactly what the Yankees were about to do, and that he was the beginning of it.

FOX reluctantly cut away from this game to show Phil Humber tie up the loose ends of a perfect game, and when they came back, Joe Buck was shouting “I-told-you-so’s” into the microphone, while Tim McCarver laughed and laughed.  By this point, it was 9-5.  Still not quite at that threshold of hopelessness for the Red Sox, but teetering on the verge of it, as Nick Swisher grand slammed Vicente Padilla.  Which is honestly what they deserve for making everybody look at Vicente Padilla for part of an inning.

Now, a grand slam changes things.  9-5 is not terrifying anybody just yet, but the fact that Swisher was able to do the thing that everybody was thinking with the bases loaded, kind of left an imprint on the afternoon.  There isn’t a much stronger momentum shifter during a rally.  It’s up there with throwing a guy out at the plate to end an inning or strangling the opposing mascot to death in front of a completely silent stadium during the 7th inning stretch.

Of course, when you concentrate all of “that vibe” into two bodies, you’re going to get some ridiculous performances.  Which there were, with Teixeira, again, and Swisher, again, putting the final touches on this bloody coup.  Swisher’s RBI double gave the Yankees the lead and Teixeira’s fifth and sixth RBI of the day gave them… I don’t know, but whatever it was, it didn’t satiate them, because they kept tacking on runs after that.

Phillies

But were the Yankees the only team that week with the power and emotional strength to overcome a nine run deficit?

Yes they were.

The Phillies had asked Kyle Kendrick to spot start for an injured Cliff Lee that day.  Kendrick is considered the “lil brother” of the Phillies clubhouse–the target of hazing well after his rookie season, and a far more average arm than the Phillies’ stacked arsenal of pitching.  The fans know this too.  And while some holier-than-thous will point at graphs and charts and say that Kendrick has performed well in every role he’s been asked to take on, others look at him as the “lil brother” who will never prove himself and prefer to sit back and laugh at him.  I’m not saying stats are worthless, it’s just that emotions require far less research.

But perhaps today would be the day that Kyle Kendrick taught his teammates and the fans that he was not the adolescent work-in-progress that he’s been for many years now.

So, here’s Kyle in the second inning.  As you can see he’s given up four runs already.  He’s about to give up two more to a Cody Ransom double.  So obviously, like many evenings prior, tonight was not Kyle’s night.  Better luck next time, KK.

With the Phillies offense employing bold strategies like refusing to work the count, or not knowing what the count is, finding out, and refusing to work it, it’s no surprise they wound up losing 9-0 in the top of the ninth.  The Diamondbacks sent young Joe Paterson out there to finish them off, which was key, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Laynce Nix doubled in Placido Polanco, Shane Victorino hit a three run home run, and Carlos Ruiz followed him with a solo shot.  Suddenly, it was 9-5 with nobody out.  This resounding salvo was followed quickly by a double play and a ground out and the Phillies ended their night by refusing to get out of their own way.

Now, where was “that vibe” you ask?  It’s a bit harder to find here.  The initial run of the attempted rally, unlike Teixeira’s blast, involved so little fanfare, it was tough to realize it had even happened.  Maybe it was because there weren’t as many Phillies fans at a Dbacks game as there would be Yankees fans at a Red Sox game (scoring runs amidst mostly silence isn’t exactly adrenalin pumping).  Maybe because the Phillies knew that it had taken them eight innings to get a single notch on the board against a struggling team.  Maybe because nine runs is a lot to score in one inning.  Maybe because anyone familiar with the 2012 Phillies offense knew it was enough of a god damn miracle for them to get a single run across at all.

Yes, unlike the Yankees, the Phils had one inning to do their rallying.  Which would have made it all the more miraculous, but again, 17 games into the season, it’s becoming clear this team won’t win a whole lot depending on “miracles.”

And lastly, the difference also became that following Ruiz’s home run, Joe Paterson was removed from the game.  Once the final three outs were recorded over the next three batters, it became clear that perhaps this had been less of a magical Phillies rally and more of a magical Joe Paterson sucking.

In conclusion

So, why were the Yankees able to mount a miraculous comeback win, while the Phillies faltered?  What’s that?  “Because the Yankees are a better team than the Phillies?”

Well, yes.  But we’ve already come over 1,000 words together, so let’s give this all a point.

The Yankees had more time, starting their rally in the sixth.  They had a lineup with multiple power sources.  They spread their rally over more than a single pitcher, and they had screaming fans present to appear in the background of their victory shots.

The Phillies had one inning, took advantage of one pitcher, and a couple of their baserunners were due to errors.

True fans will always maintain that hope.  But objective baseballers, just hoping to see something ridiculous, may be aided in not wasting their time when faced with these factors.  It all comes back to “that vibe.”  Are you thinking “Meh,” when the losing team scores a run, or are you thinking “Oh god no…”  The Red Sox seem to be entering a new era of “Oh god no…” while the Dbacks’ “Meh” as Polanco scored the Phillies’ first run was so echoing they didn’t even bother to try and throw him out (“Him” being a fragile 36-year-old infielder with little speed).

There is no clock in baseball.  But there is in real life.  It’s late, man.  Go to bed.