Bengie Molina Gets What He Wants

The Texas Rangers have put the vise grips on the ALCS, going up 3-1 in the series by beating the New York Yankees 10-3 in Game 4 on Tuesday night. The turning point came on Bengie Molina’s three-run home run in the sixth inning, turning a one-run deficit into a two-run lead.

In the year of the pitcher — and the playoffs of the pitcher — the A.J. Burnett–Tommy Hunter matchup looked seriously out of place. It lived up to that billing, with Hunter getting through just 3.1 innings, and Burnett struggling through six innings. Burnett was in and out of trouble, with the same problems that have plagued him all year: three walks (one intentional) and a hit batter, a wild pitch and a stolen base allowed.

Still, it looked like Burnett might give the Yankees six innings of two-run ball. With Nelson Cruz on first base and one out in the sixth inning, Ian Kinsler flied out to center field. Cruz, with the base-running aggressiveness Texas has shown throughout the playoffs, tagged up and went to second base.

With two outs and first base open, Yankees manager Joe Girardi elected to intentionally walk the lefty David Murphy with Molina on deck. Putting an extra man on with the lead in the sixth is an unorthodox move, and it didn’t work. Molina hit the first pitch, an up-and-in fastball, down the left-field line for a three-run homer. Before that, the Rangers had a 33.7 percent chance of winning. After the Molina homer, it went up to 73.3 percent. The swing of almost 40 percent was easily the biggest in the game.

This graphic shows the locations of the pitches that Bengie Molina has hit for home runs over the past two seasons. The one in bold is the pitch from A.J. Burnett on Tuesday night.

Up-and-in pitches can sometimes handcuff a batter, but over the past two years Molina has had no problems with them. Many of his home runs have come on pitches in this location. In the graph to the right, you can see the locations of the pitches he has hit for a HR, with the one against Burnett marked. The graph is from the catcher’s perspective.

The second-largest win percentage shift happened in the top of the fifth when the Rangers’ Mitch Moreland hit into a double play. Molina had just hit a single, so Texas had one on with no outs while down by just one run. The Molina hit translated into a 42 percent win percentage for Texas, but when Moreland hit into the double play, that fell to just 31.3 percent.

The third-largest win percentage came in the bottom of the second inning on Robinson Cano’s controversial home run. That play took the Yankees’ win percentage from 52.9 percent to 63.1 percent. At the time, Burnett was cruising; he had struck out three of the first six batters with no signs of the command issues he would show later in the night. It was the first time the Yankees had struck first in the series, and with what looked like a solid Burnett on the mound versus a shaky Hunter — two batters later Lance Berkman almost hit another solo HR — the Yankees must have felt like they had a better than 63 percent shot at the game.

But that is not how it played out. Now the Yankees will need three straight wins against the Rangers. It’s not where they wanted to be, but the Yankees are set up with their best three starters all on normal rest.