Bernie’s bad timing

On the season, Bernie Williams hasn’t been awful with runners in scoring position. According to the day-by-day database, before today, Bernie had 77 at-bats with RISP, and in those at-bats, he was hitting .273/.326/.351. While a .677 OPS from Bernie makes me pine for the days of the late 1990s, he has managed 31 RBIs in those 77 appearances.

So when Bernie came up with the potential go-ahead (and the Yanks’ third) run of the game at third base with one out today, I assumed he would succeed. So much for that.

Bernie feebly struck out on three pitches. An inning later, Kelly Stinnett made a mockery of his postion and cost the Yankees the game and Randy Johnson’s strongest outing of the season.

For Bernie, however, lack of success with a runner on third and less than two outs is somewhat surprising. Heading into today’s game, Bernie had 13 at bats in that situation and has 14 RBIs to show for it. While he had just 3 hits in those situations, he has a lot of what I call the Bernie Speciality: a bouncing ball to second base. That strike out, a costly one, was just Bernie’s second of the season in that situation.

It couldn’t have come at a worse time.