SEATTLE – The next best thing to keeping Ichiro off the bases is stranding him there. And that’s what the Yankees were able to do in Game 2 of the ALCS last night.
The Japanese sensation went 1-for-3 with a walk, but managed to get on base three times. He didn’t score at all, though, and the Yanks were able to preserve a 3-2 win.
In perhaps the critical strategic move of the series, Yankee manager Joe Torre elected to intentionally walk Ichiro with a man on second and two outs in the seventh, even though he was the potential go-ahead run.
Mark McLemore hit a harmless grounder to first, and the Yankees escaped.
“There’s not many rookies you’re going to walk, but he’s a special player,” Torre said. “I turned to Mel [Stottlemyre, the pitching coach] and said, ‘What about walking him?’
“No disrespect to McLemore, he just puts the ball in play too much and gets too many hits to do that. It’s the right thing if you get the next guy out, and the wrong thing if you don’t.”
Seattle manager Lou Piniella wasn’t surprised.
“[He’s] hit over .400 with men in scoring position,” Piniella said. “I think that [Torre] made the right choice. Sometimes you’ve got to take chances, and he’s been in these types of situations before and he’s been victorious, so how can you question anything he does.”
Ichiro led off the game with a single under Derek Jeter’s glove at short and moved up on Bret Boone’s single. But he was stranded when Edgar Martinez grounded into an inning-ending double play.
In the third, he led off with a deep fly ball to center that Bernie Williams dropped. Williams took his eye off the ball as it hit his glove, and Ichiro ended up on second. He moved to third on Boone’s flyout but was again left on base.
The Mariner right fielder lined out to left on the first pitch he saw from Mike Mussina in the fifth, when he again led off the inning.
Ichiro, who hit .286 against the Yanks in the regular season, was stuck in the on-deck circle in the ninth when Mariano Rivera blew David Bell away on strikes to preserve the victory.