MLB

Must win? It ain’t so

What does it take for net work baseball experts — experienced experts, no less — to sensibly speak baseball?

In the bottom of the first of last night’s Game 2 Fox telecast, “The Home Depot Tools To Victory” graphic appeared. It included, “NYY: Must Win? You Better Believe It.”

Tim McCarver and Joe Buck then endorsed it. “A must-win situation for the Yankees?” said McCarver. “I think so.”

“I agree,” said Buck.

And so Fox’s experts, first inning, stamped the game “a must-win” for the Yankees. They couldn’t head to Philly down two; if they lost they were done. And they repeated that in the seventh.

Buck and McCarver therefore were asking us to totally dismiss what they, far more than most, have learned from their many years covering baseball. Instead, they asked us to believe in something that now rarely occurs in postseason baseball: form.

In 1996, Buck and McCarver, paired for the first time on a World Series, watched the Yankees lose the first two games — home games, too — to the Braves 12-1, then 4-0. With the Braves starting John Smoltz, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, there was far more reason to believe that Game 2 in that Series was a must-win than Game 2 in this one, no?

The Yanks then won the next three in Atlanta, then returned here to win the Series, 4 games to 2.

How many such non-form fitting October happenstances had Buck and McCarver covered — the Yanks blew a 3-games-to-0 lead to the Red Sox in the 2004 ALCS — to even suggest to a national audience that any Game 2 of an MLB best-of-seven is a “must win”?

Last night, both on the pregame show and early in the game, Fox’s experts hammered home the theme that A.J. Burnett is not effective unless he gets ahead in the count. “He can’t fall behind,” said McCarver, “because that’s when he has to come in with the fastball.”

Really? Gee, that’s such an oddity it places Burnett in the vast majority of pitchers.

Turned out the first two Phils to get hits against Burnett did so when behind in the count, on a 2-2 pitch and then a 1-1 pitch, but who’s counting?

In the pregame show’s “Keys To The Game,” Mark Grace told us that the Yankees’ bats have “to show up; this is the World Series.” Well, alrighty then!

Good grief, Great Pumpkin, it’s the World Series.

*

If, in the bottom of the seventh, first baseman Ryan Howard thought (or knew) he caught Johnny Damon ‘s liner before it hit the ground, why didn’t Howard just next step on first to complete the double play? Instead, he threw to second to try to get Jorge Posada, who was running from first. If McCarver or Buck realized that, neither said a word about it. No problem with Buck during Game 1 noting all the off days the Yanks and Phils have had during the postseason. Good note. But then he should have added that such largely was due to MLB’s sale of postseason scheduling authority to TV, especially to Fox.

After Mike Francesa, before Game 1, winked that he has inside info that Chase Utley is hiding a serious injury that has diminished his power, we were surprised that Utley hit only two home runs, and not five . . . OK, OK, man of the people Rudy Giuliani has front row seats; we get it.

Those commercials seen on Fox during the Series, those starring TV clown Chris Berman raving about Applebee’s fried wings and “three-cheese pasta,” appear when Berman is also starring in ads for NutriSystem’s weight-loss plan. There’s precedent: Dan Dierdorf, as ABC’s MNF analyst, simultaneously endorsed a weight loss drink and Lay’s potato chips.

phil.mushnick@nypost.com