Shortstop Eckstein comes up big, wins MVP
ST. LOUIS -- In 2000, Derek Jeter was the shortstop when the Yankees won their third consecutive World Series and fourth in five seasons. From 2001-05, there were five different World Series winners, and five different shortstops: Craig Counsell, Diamondbacks, 2001; David Eckstein, Angels, 2002; Alex Gonzalez, Marlins, 2003; Orlando Cabrera, Red Sox, 2004; and Juan Uribe, White Sox, 2005.
Last night, Eckstein not only became the first shortstop since Jeter to pick up a second ring, he also was named World Series MVP after his four-hit performance in Game 4, which included the winning double in the eighth inning, and another two-hit game in last night's Game 5, in which he drove in the Cardinals' first run with a broken-bat infield hit and singled and scored their last run on Scott Rolen's two-out base hit in the seventh.
Rolen hit a team-best .421 with a home run and two RBIs and finished what had started out as a contentious postseason with a 10-game hitting streak. But Eckstein, who batted .364 (8 for 22) with three doubles and four RBIs, came away with the Corvette for being MVP.
Eckstein became the fourth shortstop to be named MVP, joining Jeter (2000), Alan Trammell of the Tigers (1984), and Bucky Dent of the Yankees (1978).
"It's a great honor," Eckstein said, "but I feel like I was just trying to do what I usually do, you know."
Eckstein also singled out Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina, who hit .412 in the Series, including three singles and two runs last night, after batting just .216 in the regular season. "Yadi did such a great job behind the plate, controlling the pitchers," Eckstein said. "And then coming up so big with his bat. I feel like he could be sitting right here with me, with the rest of the guys."
Eckstein did not light up the stat sheet this season. Out of 21 big-league shortstops who had enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title, he was 11th in on-base percentage (.350), 18th in slugging percentage (.344), and 16th in OPS, on-base plus slugging (.694). He was last in RBIs with 23, 12 fewer than the next lowest, Jack Wilson of the Pirates. He was last in home runs with two; Bill Hall of the Brewers had 35.
And yet, here he is, Series MVP.
"I think that the No. 1 thing about Eckstein is that people don't really give him credit for the amount of talent he has," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. "This guy is a much more talented player than I think is the perception. I mean, this guy is very tough to strike out. He can pop a ball -- I'm not talking about home run power -- and he never misses a ground ball. They say he doesn't have a strong arm, but everybody is always out."
The five errors by Tigers pitchers in five Series games were one more than Gold Glove pitcher Greg Maddux made in 102 starts over the last three years. Leyland said after the game it was his fault, that his pitchers hadn't done fielding drills all season until they had a week off before the start of the Series. "I'm being facetious, obviously."
Preston Wilson of the Cardinals offered a more plausible explanation.
"It's one of those unusual things," Wilson said. "I think sometimes you start getting a little tentative, and the ball was a little slick because of the way the weather was the past few days, and then you start thinking about it a little bit more. It's an unusual thing, but you can see how it started snowballing."
Placido Polanco, who hit .521 in being named the MVP of the American League Championship Series, went 0 for 17 in the World Series. Leadoff man Curtis Granderson hit .095, cleanup hitter Magglio Ordonez batted .105, and playoff-tested Ivan Rodriguez batted just .158.
Even with Sean Casey collecting nine hits, tying a record for hits in a five-game World Series, the Tigers batted just .199, the lowest average for a team in a five-game Series since the Phillies hit .195 in 1983 against the Orioles.
"I think that you have to credit Dave Duncan and his pitching staff," Leyland said. "They probably did the best job of anybody all year pitching to us. And they really hadn't seen us that much."
Scott Rolen and Jim Edmonds were a combined 1 for 30 against the Red Sox in the 2004 World Series, with Rolen going 0 for 14. Though Edmonds went hitless in four at-bats last night, Rolen had an RBI single in four trips and the pair finished 12 for 36 (.333).
"To me, you've heard it a thousand times, everybody talks about being rushed in '04," Rolen said before the game. "And I think that's a mental state more than it is anything physically when you show up at the ballpark. I think we celebrated a Game 7, which felt like the World Series to us, to go to the World Series. And when we looked up, we were down, 2-0, and coming home and facing Pedro Martínez. So that was what was tough for us.
"I think this time, through some guys who had been on that team -- I personally felt like, hey, we have nothing to lose right now. Let's go out and play as hard as we can. Let's play baseball. Let's concentrate on baseball on the field and not worry about all the distractions and other things that are going on that kind of overwhelmed us last time."
It became moot, but Leyland before the game was adamant about sticking to his plan to have lefthander Kenny Rogers pitch Game 6 at home, even though he would have been on regular rest last night. All three of Rogers's starts in the postseason have come at
"The bottom line is we have to win three games," Leyland said. "So if somebody thinks, well, you have a better chance to extend [the Series] by pitching Kenny tonight, well that may or may not be. But my thought process is I'm not going to change anything.
"Plus Kenny, you know, he's had quite a bit of rest during this run, two extra days, and he's responded very well to it."
Long after the game, the stadium public address system played "The Gambler," by that other Kenny Rogers.
