Acts of genius on the ball field don’t come around every day. When they occur, it’s a good idea to pay attention and appreciate the way you would a painting or a beautiful piece of music. In baseball, where there are so many games between the beginning of spring training to the last game of the World Series, brilliance can sometimes get lost in the shuffle. It’s those subtle things like Chase Utley going from first to third or Jimmy Rollins making a strong throw from the hole to beat the runner by a step.
It’s what keeps us coming back every day.
That’s the nuance and the minutia that the devout understand. The genius, on the other hand, supercedes all. It stands out and hovers over the season in a way that a highlight film cannot capture.
Pedro Martinez’s outing on Sunday night was an example of pure, baseball genius.
The line spoke volumes: 8 IP, 6 H, 2 BB, 7 K – 130 pitches and zero runs. It’s the 130 pitches that opened the most eyes, but that’s just half of it. It was the way he showed off those 130 pitches against his old team. For instance, David Wright saw nothing but fastballs in his first three at-bats without so much as a sniff at an off-speed pitch. But in his fourth at-bat Pedro struck out Wright after starting him off with a pair of change ups before turning back to the heat.
After strike three, Wright walked away from the plate like he didn’t know if he was coming or going.
Wright wasn’t alone. After throwing nine total changeups to every hitter the first time through the Mets’ lineup – except for Wright, of course – no hitter saw anything more off-speed than a handful of curves the second time around. That changeup, Pedro’s best pitch, wasn’t thrown at all.
So by the third and fourth time through the Mets could only guess. By that point Pedro was simply trying not to outsmart himself or his catcher Carlos Ruiz, who probably was just along for the ride. In fact, Pedro said that the he purposely bounced a pitch in the dirt (a changeup) that teased Daniel Murphy into making a foolhardy dash for third base that led to the final out of the eighth inning.
Yes, he intentionally threw one in the dirt on a 0-1 offering. Whether or not he did it thinking Murphy might make a break for third is a different issue, but not one to put past Pedro’s thinking.
Like pitching coach Rich Dubee said about the star pitcher – you never know what he’s going to do.
Frankly, there should not be any debate whether or not Pedro takes a spot in the starting rotation for the playoffs. At this point the better question is if he gets Game 1, 2 or 3?
That’s especially the case when he can throw 130 pitches in a mid-September game in just his seventh start. You know, after the manager went out to the mound, and he looked him dead in the eyes and said:
“I got this.”
Cold-blooded, as Pedro likes to say.
“I feel like 1998, 1999, 2000, because I'm bouncing back pretty good,” Pedro said. “The other day when I threw 119 pitches, I felt so good I was a little surprised, to be honest. I wasn't sore. Nothing to complain about. Whatever amount of pitches I threw, I feel fine.”
Better yet, the professed post-start salsa and meringue dancer says he’s really starting to have fun pitching now.
“I'm enjoying every single pitch I get in baseball from now on,” he said. “If it’s 130, 150, 200. If I only throw 72, 89, then that's all I got. I'm going to honor the game the way it should be. I'm going to go away doing as much as I can, and enjoying the time.”
If only he could hit, too. Then he’d really be a genius.