the gamble.

what did eric wedge do on saturday night?

if you answered anything other than "he watched lsu play florida," you're dead wrong.

so if the indians win the world series, credit wedge for his management of the game last night.

this type of low probability gamble was not without precedent. consider, for example, les miles deciding that, what the hell, fourth and one when the team's down by three late in the fourth is worth it. we're trying to win the whole damn thing. so wedge took the same type of risk: what the hell, if we lose tonight, we're likely toast, but we're trying to win the whole damn thing.

knowing full well that if sabathia and carmona didn't get the opportunity to start four of the seven games in the red sox series, the indians were in real trouble (jake westbrook in game 2 = yuck) wedge took a gamble that paul byrd could win. the two gambles are eerily similar in their probability of success (eg, everyone in yankee stadium thought byrd would be shelled, just as everyone in tiger stadium knew it would be inches between destiny and being demoralized) and the guts it would have taken to do it.

of course, it was a huge risk. byrd doesn't have any stuff, and the yankees are the closest thing to murderer's row that we have in the game today. chide that last comment if you want, but a-rod has had a historically great season; jeter and posada have been fantastic, cano was good, abreu is borderline great (but only borderline) and johnny damon is an underrated star. so needless to say, throwing paul byrd out there could have (and probably should have) not worked.


but a funny thing happened along the way: the indians lit up chien-ming wang in the first. they lit him up so badly that the yankees had to put mussina in to stop the bleeding, and then the indians started to believe that it was possible. more runs were scored, and byrd held the dam for five innings. like a coach stealing minutes for a foul-ridden superstar, wedge used game four to steal innings for sabathia and carmona, knowing that if it worked, the indians could set their rotation for the red sox series in a way that would optimize their chances of winning.

and byrd held them off long enough to get to perez. part of the reason was two a-rod k's, to be sure, but jeter didn't help matters with the double plays. once perez came in, the yankees had concerns. once betancourt came in, it was certainly something close to lights out.

so, given a score of 6-3, wedge decided to really roll the dice. knowing that borowski would be essentially worthless if wedge decided to keep betancourt (the better pitcher) out there, wedge took betancourt out and put in borowskit. let me spell out the intuition: if we can build borowski's confidence now, where the payoff is high and the situation isn't so dire, maybe he can close in the world series or the LCS. and we will burn out perez and betancourt at a four-innings pace, so he has to pitch.

and so borowski was brought in, because sometimes you have to roll the dice. and he gave up the home run to abreu, but he somehow got three outs and now we're headed for one of the best LCS's in years.

if we're going to give managers hell for outrageous rationales (such as firing joe torre- how is it his fault that his starting pitching sucked??? i'll never know the answer to that one.) then we should at least give credit for the gambles that worked. and kudos to paul byrd and the tribe.

and, as i've learned the whole season, we must never give up the faith.