8 years ago today….

Petagine in a Bottle

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69 pitches in 6 innings! Fatigued pitcher and a wiped out pen, you’d think the Yankees would have worked the count a bit. Of course, they should have tried bunting off Schilling too.
 

Sandy Leon Trotsky

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69 pitches in 6 innings! Fatigued pitcher and a wiped out pen, you’d think the Yankees would have worked the count a bit. Of course, they should have tried bunting off Schilling too.
I recall thinking that the Yankees just looked so defeated right at the start….their only energy that game WAS Pedro. Seemed like they knew they lost. The Pedro inning barely made me nervous- almost felt like Tito was toying with the crowd at that point.
 

lexrageorge

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69 pitches in 6 innings! Fatigued pitcher and a wiped out pen, you’d think the Yankees would have worked the count a bit. Of course, they should have tried bunting off Schilling too.
The bolded has been discussed here as well. Bunting was not as obvious of a decision as it's sometimes made out to be. The Yankees lineup was not built for bunting; Jeter and Cairo were the only ones any good at it. And the game situations made bunting less attractive of an option as well.
 

DennyDoyle'sBoil

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I love that Pedro pitched in game 7. I wouldn't change a thing about it.

When Pedro first came in the game, it did not seem like an obvious mistake. I was actually happy about it. I remember starting to think in the fifth and sixth inning that maybe we were pressing our luck with Lowe and that when he turned into a pumpkin the wheels were going to fall off fast. I was really on the fence between wanting to ride the hot hand with a spent bullpen and worrying about taking him out too late. There is simply nobody I trusted more than Pedro.

Of course, once the Yankees started hitting I was terrified. I was thinking what every Sox fan was thinking probably at exactly the same time. This is going to be the worst nut punch ever. And the ball that Loften hit up the middle seemed like middle middle salad that could have gone 450 feet.

But then with the crowd going bananas something clicked for Pedro. You could see it happen. Even McCarver could see it happen. He made Olerud look foolish on strike three. And two of his pitches to Cairo were nasty. The ball he hit was a can of corn and it wasn't really difficult play for Nixon.

I'll never forget what came next. It took all of four minutes for Belhorn to change momentum entirely. That awesome clang.
 

Sandwich Pick

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I just pulled up my copy of Francona: The Red Sox Years and, hilariously, it opened to that exaxtpassage in that game immediately (in fairness, it’s right before the picture inserts). Here’s what it says:



I love Tito unconditionally but a lot of that kind of sounds like bullshit.
I remember Bill Simmons writing in his book: "Looks like Francona just inadvertently plugged Yankee Stadium back into its socket." when he put Pedro in the game.
 

Earthbound64

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Another question is after the first 4 batters, how much more would it have required to have Tito to have to go lift Pedro? That would have been the ultimate embarrass for Pedro, to not get out of one inning.
No, I'd say the ultimate embarrassment would have been to give up the lead* – and I trust that Francona would have pulled him before that happened (wasn't that basically one of the interview questions when replacing Little? "Would you have pulled Pedro in that situation?")

*And then for his pants to fall down
 
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Leskanic's Thread

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I love that the 2013 memory thread became the 2004 memory thread, when there's already a 2004 memory thread up on the board.

2004 was a big deal!
 

StuckOnYouk

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I remember Bill Simmons writing in his book: "Looks like Francona just inadvertently plugged Yankee Stadium back into its socket." when he put Pedro in the game.
I loved Simmons comment in the 30 for 30 that bringing in Pedro and juicing up the Yankee Stadium crowd was like waiving a baby in front of a pit bull.
 

PedroKsBambino

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The bolded has been discussed here as well. Bunting was not as obvious of a decision as it's sometimes made out to be. The Yankees lineup was not built for bunting; Jeter and Cairo were the only ones any good at it. And the game situations made bunting less attractive of an option as well.
Also, as someone lucky enough to be at the game, the Red Sox were positioned to dissuade the bunt. Mueller was way in for many of the batters; not sure how much they did or didn't show that on TV but sitting there live it was pretty clear the Sox were anticipating the bunt, which made it tougher for Yankees to execute. I also agree the yankees were not built to do that a lot anyway.