\jeff{krimmel}

Another Devastating Blow

I was not able to watch too much of tonight’s World Series game. I watched the first three innings, then went to dinner with a bunch of friends, and made it back home in time to watch the bottom of the ninth inning. What did I see? Brad Lidge serving up another game winning home run, sending the Houston Astros to a 0-2 deficit against the Chicago White Sox.

Wow. I thought I had seen the last of this in the NCLS, when Brad Lidge served up a fat one to Albert Pujols, who then drove the pitch over the left field wall to give the St. Louis Cardinals the win. Surely Lidge was over this. He is dominant. He has two full seasons worth of proof.

Unfortunately, we may be watching Brad Lidge morph into Rick Ankiel, Chuck Knoblauch, or Steve Sax. Rick Ankiel was a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals who had electric stuff early in his career, but later developed a mental block that resulted in his consistent throwing of wild pitches. Both Knoblauch and Sax were second basemen who experienced similar blocks later in their careers that caused them to botch routine throws to first base.

Lidge’s case, if indeed it turns out to be a case at all, is different because it doesn’t involve making an error (in baseball vocabulary, at least). It seems like he’s starting to freeze at the end of the game, almost subconsciously expecting to give up the home run ball that ends the game. He really served up another fat pitch to Scott Podsednik that almost any Major League hitter would have crushed out of the ballpark.

I am not sure what I would do if I was Phil Garner, the Astros manager. I don’t think you can ask Lidge to close out another close game in this series. Maybe you can use him in middle relief, where giving up a run doesn’t immediately result in the end of the game. Regardless, Lidge continuing to serve up game winning homers will do nobody any good, and it will quickly become a situation where you damage players mentally to a point from which they cannot recover.

All of that being said, this series is not over. The Astros need to win four of the next five games, and they need to start Tuesday night in Houston. We need our pitching staff to figure this thing out. Wasting six runs from an offense that normally produces nowhere near that many will end this series very quickly.