ANAHEIM, Calif. — The Angels have a new Alex Rodriguez strategy. It’s called the intentional walk. And it’s going to be something they figure to use more in this series.
This time, closer Brian Fuentes walked Rodriguez. It happened in the ninth inning yesterday at Angel Stadium, as Rodriguez represented the go-ahead run. Rodriguez had homered on an 0-2 fastball in the 11th inning of the Yankees thrilling 4-3, 13-inning victory Saturday night at Yankee Stadium.
This time, with the game tied 4-4, Angels manager Mike Scioscia didn’t allow Rodriguez, who homered earlier in the game, to beat him. The strategy paid off when Fuentes struck out Jerry Hairston Jr. to end the inning as the Angels went on to a 5-4 victory in 11 innings.
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“That’s something we wanted to do,” said Fuentes, “but we didn’t want to do it the other night because Alex was leading off the inning. You don’t want to put the winning run on first to start the inning.”
You may want to do that if the Yankees have light hitters behind A-Rod because of having to run for Hideki Matsui. Of the strategy, Scioscia said he could think of only one other hitter to get that kind of respect from him: Barry Bonds.
“That’s the only time I think I can remember doing anything like that or we can remember doing anything like that,” Scioscia said. “You know the ball was carrying pretty well. You know Alex can go down and backspin some pitches like nobody’s business, and we just wanted to take our chances. We figured Hairston was going to hit and go from there.”
Yankee manager Joe Girardi painted himself into a corner and Scioscia took advantage. As for possibly walking A-Rod to lead off an inning, Scioscia wouldn’t go there. It will be interesting when the situation arises again.
Rodriguez’s fourth-inning home run came when he led off.