It’s Time to Forget Middle Men

The debate centered on whether Troy Percival should have been left standing in that decisive eighth inning Tuesday night, watching from the bullpen, just one more spectator in a Yankee Stadium crowd of 56,710.

Maybe, however, the real debate should have centered on whether Jarrod Washburn should have been left sitting, watching from the dugout as the New York Yankees overcame a 5-4 Angel lead with four runs in an 8-5 victory that is sure to test the heart and resiliency that Manager Mike Scioscia and his players like to brag about.

On a night when the Angels played aggressively, otherwise dismissing the Yankee Stadium mystique and the issue of their postseason inexperience, the Yankees won the opener of the best-of-five division series primarily because Percival wasn’t used and Washburn may not have been used enough.

In between the starter and closer, Ben Weber, Scott Schoeneweis and Brendan Donnelly, three of the unsung arms in a bullpen that evolved into the American League’s best on a statistical basis, learned the truth about October baseball, especially in a ballpark where Yogi Berra throws out the ceremonial first pitch and each of those 26 years when the Yankees won the World Series come blazing out of the matrix board in center field as the Angels are standing along the third base foul line during the pregame festivities, their view of the championship drumroll inescapable.

Amid the intimidating environment, his adrenalin pumping, his fastball rising and sinking, the left-handed Washburn delivered only 81 pitches in seven innings and wanted to go out for more.

“I lobbied for it, but they had their minds made up,” Washburn said at his locker later. “I mean, it wasn’t a situation where I got to do a lot of arguing. It wasn’t where they asked me, ‘How are you doing, how do you feel?’ It was more like a pat on the back, and ‘Nice job.’ ”

So, the 18-6 ace took a seat on the bench and watched Weber, Schoeneweis and Donnelly cough up the lead six outs from a victory that would have given the Yankees something to think about, and there was Washburn later playing the diplomat.

“Our bullpen has done a great job all year,” he said, “and we were all confident they would do it again. It’s the way Mike has gone about it all year, and I’m not going to stand here and say he made a mistake this time. I kept us in the game, and I’m proud of that, but I don’t think I had my best stuff. I didn’t have normal life on my fastball, although I did make a lot of good pitches when I had to.”

Yes, it was the way the Angels have gone about it in a season in which Washburn completed only one of 32 starts and pitched into the eighth inning only five times, but then isn’t this the start of a new season, as managers and players like to say, isn’t this when you stay with your best and go with your best?

The answer to that seems obvious, but the flip side is that the Angels may have to bring Washburn back on three days’ rest in Game 4 on Saturday, and that definitely entered into the thinking, pitching coach Bud Black said, adding, as Washburn had said, that the bullpen had done the job all year and that the Angels aren’t going to beat the Yankees by avoiding the bullpen.

“And frankly,” Black said, “Wash’s stuff wasn’t real crisp.

“It’s a rare game when he gives up three home runs, gets four double plays and throws only 80 pitches.”

Washburn described it in various terms. Among them:

“Crazy.”

“Uncharacteristic.”

Indeed.

Among major league pitchers this year he was the worst in ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio. In 206 innings, he had elicited only eight double plays. He got half that total in the seven innings against the Yankees, making the pitches, as he said, when needed.

Although all those fly balls--the ratio translated to 100 for every 60 ground outs--made it a year of living dangerously, he had given up only the equivalent of one home run every 10 2/3 innings for a total of 19 during the regular season. And until Tuesday night, when he gave up solo homers to Derek Jeter and Rondell White and a two-run shot to Jason Giambi, he hadn’t given up three in a game this year and had been tagged for that many only twice in his career.

Of the three, he said, the only pitch he’d take back was a hanging slider to Giambi.

“Jeter hit a fastball in and White a sinker away,” Washburn said.

“They were both good pitches, but I guess you would have to call them mistakes since they ended up in the seats, and you’re not going to beat the Yankees by hoping you can get away with mistakes.”

In April, when he was awarded the honor of pitching the season opener, Washburn hadn’t been able to control his adrenalin and was beat up early by the Cleveland Indians.

Jeter homered as the second batter he faced Tuesday night, but Washburn insisted he had got his emotions out of the way when he popped up leadoff man Alfonso Soriano.

How was it for him in the middle of the Bronx madhouse?

“I loved it,” Washburn said. “It was awesome. Yankee Stadium is the coolest place this time of the year. I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.”

Well, he loved it until he didn’t love it, until none of the Angels did, until they were all forced to replay a familiar theme.

As Washburn put it:

“No question, it was a tough loss, but this team has found a way to bounce back from tough losses all year. We won 99 games. We came back all season, and there’s no reason we can’t do it again.”

These are the playoff-tested Yankees, however, and the Angels will prevail only if they don’t leave their best starter and their dominant closer serving as mere spectators in crunch time.