And it's not as if the Yankees had to flash a lot of fancy leather in order to get those 39 outs, either. In the case of Mike Mussina Tuesday night, the only reasonably well-struck ball in those first six innings was a first-inning Mark Bellhorn liner to center. All the remaining aerial outs were routine. Most of his outs were pathetically easy. In addition to eight strikeouts -- five in a row and six of seven at one point -- there were two 3-1s and a foul-out to first. He entered the seventh inning with a perfect game, and that's exactly what your mind's eye told you it should have been. He was in complete command.
Jon Lieber was just as good during his first seven innings Wednesday. Orlando Cabrera had a fairly solid single to center leading off the third, but that was it. He only had three strikeouts, but he is not a strikeout pitcher. He's a hit-my-pitch-at-somebody pitcher, and he was at his best.
Pedro Martinez needed 113 pitches to get through his six innings. Lieber pitched into the eighth on just 82 pitches, which is very good. But there's a very big yeah-but at work here. Don't forget that 16 of those 82 pitches were consumed in that sixth-inning epic confrontation with Johnny Damon, who eventully lined out hard to center. "I'm just glad he hit it right at Bernie," sighed Lieber, who needed no other comparable good fortune during the course of his evening's work.
When nearly 20 percent of your evening's pitch count is gobbled up in one at-bat, that speaks to a spectacular efficiency in dealing with everyone else. Lieber was the anti-Pedro. The Red Sox were unable to make him work hard enough for his money.
Were this football, Terry Francona would have been scouring the tapes to see what minutiae he could uncover that might aid his frustrated batters. But that's not the way baseball works. "You can't do it that way in baseball," explains the skipper, "because it changes so radically from night to night, according to the pitcher. I agree that in this case Mussina and Lieber were similar the way they went after us."
