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"FacebookPinterest\n\nGirardi could have started journeyman Chad Gaudin last night instead of A.J. Burnett, but the Yankee manager must have thought doing so would effectively concede the game to Philadelphia (lefties, of which the Phillies regularly bat at least five, had a .408 on-base percentage against Gaudin this year). Maybe so. But spotting Philadelphia that single game would have slotted the three other Yankee starters back into their normal rotation schedule, a vital consideration at the end of the year. For instance, Burnett is 3-0 with a 1.64 ERA on short rest during his career, stellar numbers, but when asked about this before the game, he took pains to point out that he pitched the games in question in the middle, not at the end, of the season.\n\nHere&amp;#39;s how the Phillies built their six-run lead, then held off the Yankees in the ninth to force Game 6:\n\nBottom of the third inning, A.J. Burnett pitches to... Dana DeMuth\n\n The difference between World Series Game 2 A.J. Burnett, who gave up one run in seven innings while striking out nine, and World Series Game 5 A.J Burnett, who gave up six runs and managed to get a total of six outs before being yanked in the midst of a messy third inning, actually isn&amp;#39;t a discussion topic for the next meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Nor is it entirely a matter of Burnett&amp;#39;s starting Game 2 on short rest. No, the difference between the two A.J.s is Jeff Nelson and Dana DeMuth. Both Nelson and DeMuth are Major League Umpires. The former called balls and strikes in Game 2, and the latter in Game 5. Nelson sees one of the most generous strike zones in pro baseball, and DeMuth one of the most parsimonious. Jonathan Hale at The Hardball Times did a great thumbnail study in 2007 that vividly illustrates how the two men work: Nelson calls nearly five more strikes per game than a league-average umpire and DeMuth calls four fewer, which means that a pitcher\u2014let&amp;#39;s call him A.J. Burnett\u2014who threw his last game in front of Nelson will get roughly nine fewer strike calls from DeMuth. Absent DeMuth&amp;#39;s Post-It-sized strike zone, Burnett would still have given up a three-run homer to Utley in the first inning, but he might not have collapsed in the third. Though he would still have begun the inning by walking Utley on five pitches, perhaps he wouldn&amp;#39;t also have walked Howard, to whom ball two, a 95 mph fastball up and in, was clearly a strike\u2014DeMuth&amp;#39;s stingiest call of the night. In fact, Burnett would have had a damn good chance of striking out Howard, who last night tied the all-time record for Ks in a World Series. And he would have struck out Jayson Werth (to whom his first pitch was a strike not a ball) rather than allowing an RBI single to him. With, let&amp;#39;s say, two outs and Utley on first, Burnett would have pitched to Ibanez, whose single to right would have moved Utley to third. Burnett would then have faced Pedro Feliz, who&amp;#39;s 2 for 15 lifetime against him, with a chance to get out of the inning without allowing a run.\n\nBottom of the 7th inning, Phil Coke gives up home runs to Chase Utley and Raul Ibanez\n\n In this excellent at-bat, Utley, leading off the inning, worked the count full and induced Coke into making a mistake\u2014which was to throw a thigh-high 94-mph four-seamer on the outer half of the plate. Utley parabola-ed the pitch into the right-field stands, his second home run of the game. The score was now Phillies 7, Yankees 2, but this run would prove to be the game-winner. Later in the inning, with two outs, Raul Ibanez would also homer against Phil Coke, colossally, to right. It&amp;#39;s worth noting that in Game 4, Coke was warming up to pitch the bottom of the ninth inning until Johnny Damon began the Yankees&amp;#39; two-out, ninth-inning, game-winning rally.\n\nTop of the 9th inning, Ryan Madson gets Derek Jeter to hit into a double play\n\n The score was 8-6, but Charlie Manuel opted not to use Brad Lidge to save this game. Maybe he was conserving Lidge for a putative Game 6, or maybe he&amp;#39;d finally lost faith in his problematic closer after Lidge&amp;#39;s meltdown in Game 4. Regardless, last night he chose to use Ryan Madson, who&amp;#39;s essentially been Lidge&amp;#39;s understudy this year, and Madson produced an inning right out of the Lidge handbook. Throwing almost nothing but fastballs to a fastball-loving team, he immediately gave up a double to Posada and a single to the pinch-hitter Matsui. He then faced Derek Jeter, and on the third pitch of the at-bat, Madson threw a 94-mph four-seam fastball that couldn&amp;#39;t have been closer to the heart of the plate if Le Corbusier himself had drawn it there. Derek Jeter then did two startlingly un-Derek Jeteresque things: firstly, he let the pitch go for a called strike. Secondly, when the next pitch arrived in a location that was only slightly less ridiculously mashable than that of the previous one, Jeter swung at it\u2014and grounded into a double play. Madson finally began mixing up his pitches in Johnny Damon&amp;#39;s at-bat\u2014five four-seamers, a slider and a changeup\u2014but the ice-veined Damon singled, bringing Mark Teiira to the plate as the tying run. Teiira, who is now 2 for 19 in the World Series, struck out swinging on four pitches, three changeups and a called-strike fastball. As the game ended, Alex Rodriguez was on deck."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/the-baseball-nerd-aj-burnett-vs-the-tiniest-strike-zone-in-the-bigs>