Swisher gets the call against Pedro
NEW YORK - When Pedro Martinez started Game 2 of the World Series for the Phillies, Nick Swisher watched from the New York Yankees bench while Jerry Hairston manned his spot in right field.
In Game 6, Yankees manager Joe Girardi had Swisher in the lineup against Martinez at Yankee Stadium.
Hairston went 1-for-3 against Martinez last Thursday and is batting .367 (11-for-30) against the veteran righthander for his career. But Swisher, who homered and doubled in Game 3, got the nod from Girardi last night.
"We thought it was important for Swish just to sit down for a day," the manager said before the game. "His at-bats have been very good since we sat him down. We don't always look at how many hits you get. We look at the at-bats, does he hit the ball hard, does he square the ball up and is he seeing pitches?"
Swisher, a switch-hitter who was a collective 0-for-5 with three walks Sunday and Monday, was batting .136 in the postseason entering Game 6 but only .043 (1-for-23) against right-handers. Martinez is a right-hander.
Burnett in the bullpen
After a 53-pitch outing that ended in the third inning Monday night, Yankees starter A.J. Burnett was available to pitch in relief, Girardi said.
"I don't know how much we would use him," the manager said, "but he is available to us."
Burnett allowed six earned runs in two-plus innings in Game 5, which the Phillies went on to win 8-6. It marked the shortest non-injury stint by a Yankee starter in a World Series since Andy Pettitte in Game 6 of the 2001 series against Arizona.
More three-day talk
Girardi said he decided on going with a three-man rotation in the postseason on a round-by-round basis, and decided to do so in the World Series because Chad Gaudin had pitched just one inning in the postseason.
Girardi confirmed that Gaudin, acquired on Aug. 6 from San Diego, would have been the fourth starter but he decided to go with three starters, each on three days rest.
"Chad hasn't thrown in a game in a long time," he said. "We tried to do simulated games to keep him sharp. I think it was 27 or 28 days at this point. We thought this [three starters] gave us our best chance to win."
Gaudin last started a game on Sept. 28. Since then, he has been on the mound for one inning - in the ninth of Game 4 of the American League Championship Series on Oct. 20.
Thick and thicker skin
Asked about criticism toward him being rougher now that he's in the World Series, Girardi said it happened a lot during the regular season "so you get kind of used to it."
"The interesting thing about what people were calling second-guessing that I've always thought is curious is they don't know if their idea would have worked," he said. "Everyone makes the assumption that it would have worked.
"We base our decisions on a lot of preparation, a lot of discussion. We don't do anything where we just pull something off the wall with the intent of it working.
"The one thing about baseball and in life, every decision is not going to go according to plan, and you have to deal with it and you have to answer for it, and you understand that here."
Etcetera . . .
After starting the World Series 2-for-12, leftfielder Johnny Damon has had back-to-back three-hit games to raise his average in the series to .381. entering Game 6. . . . The Yankees are trying to do what their 1923 counterparts did - win the World Series in their first season in their new Yankee Stadium. The other two teams to win the Fall Classic in their first years at new venues are the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals and the 1912 Boston Red Sox. ... When the Yankees lost Game 5 on Monday night, it marked only the third time they had dropped a fifth game after taking a 3-1 lead. In their eight previous series up 3-1, they won six of them in five games and two in six.
Contact staff writer Joe Juliano at 215-854-4494 or jjuliano@phillynews.com.
