Anthony Reyes presumably throws a four-seam fastball up in the zone against a Detroit Tiger batsman on October 21, 2006 (via newyork.yankees.mlb.com ).

It was late October in the year 2006 and the "Tigers-in-Three" conventional wisdom had reached a fever pitch amongst the baseball commentariat that had already confidentally, knowingly picked the Padres in two and the Metropolitans in three in the weeks prior. Nonetheless, it was the 83-win Cardinals who emerged as champions of the National League, escapees of one of the most dramatic National League Championship Series of our lifetimes, which featured a Game 7 for the ages that still causes Carlos Beltran to wake up at night in a cold sweat, having dreamt of an Adam Wainwright curveball coming right at him, only to break seemingly against the laws of physics, over the plate, through the strikezone, for a called "Strike Three!" After that knock-down, drag-out heavyweight fight, the Cardinals trudged onward and northward to the city of Detroit.

A seven-game series inevitably throws a club's pitching rotation and staff into disarray, as the field manager is thrust into a win-at-all-costs mentality and consequently leaves no arrows in his pitching quiver for the World Series that is to follow. And so the Cardinals were left with an up-and-comer, or, down-and-outer--depending on where you, as a Cardinal fan, came down on the dramatically polarizing Anthony Reyes debate--for the pivotal (and what World Series game is not pivotal?) Game 1.

Tyler Kepner, of the New York Times (newspaper of the once-again free archives), offers a wonderful setting of the stage in his game story:

Anthony Reyes made his first start this season at a place called Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City, against a team called the RedHawks. He gave up nine hits and his team lost.

Reyes was not the preferred choice for the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 1 of the World Series on Saturday. He had not won in 47 days, and his five regular-season victories were the fewest for a Game 1 starter in 77 years.

But Reyes was rested, unlike the other Cardinals starters, so there he was on the mound at Comerica Park...

Loathe as I am to measure a pitcher's individual pitching performance with "Wins" and "Losses." There are other stats which demonstrate the improbability of Reyes being tapped by TLR and Dave Duncan to start the first game of the World Series. That year, Reyes started 17 games for St. Louis, throwing 85.1 big-league innings. He struck out 7.59 and walked 3.59 per 9 innings. Reyes also gave up many a homer, 1.79 per 9 innings, in fact. All of this amounted to a 5.49 FIP, or, a 5.06 ERA, if you are so inclined. Furthermore, his groundball percentage was a mere 34.5 percent.

His manager had turned to Reyes in Game 4 of the NLCS, with St. Louis leading the series two games to one, and Reyes had neither dominated nor flopped, lasting only 4 innings while surrendering only two runs despite issuing four walks and giving up two home runs. (He left the game to WonderBrad Thompson tied at two, and Thompson wasted little time allowing the Mets to take a 5-2 lead. Thompson was the losing pitcher in a 12-5 thumping that tied the series. This is part of the postseason experience Thompson possesses and that Straussie seemed to so covet in the days between season's end and playoffs' start.) The walks and homers surrendered to the Mets left no reason for the Cardinal faithful to anticipate anything but more of the same from Reyes: walks, strikeouts, and homers.

To make matters worse, the Wild Card Tigers had ripped through Billy Beane's Athletics, sweeping Oakland in the ALCS, which afforded Jim Leyland the luxury of having his pitching staff perfectly alligned for a three-game World Series sweep. For Game 1, that meant Rookie of the Year Justin Verlander, he of the high-90s (and sometimes 100) fastball which was complimented by a deceitful change-up. Verlander's 3.63 ERA somewhat masked a 4.35 FIP, but Verlander was democratically only striking out 6 batters per 9 innings while inducing grounders about 42 percent of the time (compared to the fascist K and GB rates of Reyes). Verlander was also walking 2.99 per nine innings. The peripheral stats made a David-vs-Goliath ERA mismatch something less biblical in nature, even if it was, perhaps even justifiably, Exhibt A in the case for the Tigers-in-Three. 

The temperature was a cool, but comfortable, 54 degrees in Detroit that evening, and Verlander cooled the Cardinal bats in the first, inducing two groundouts before striking out The Great Pujols, to end a 1-2-3 visitors' half of the first. Reyes then took the mound. After retiring Granderson on a grounder to Pujols, Reyes surrendered a double to Craig Monroe, induced a popout by former Cardinal Placido Polanco, walked Magglio Ordonez, and gave up an RBI single to Carlos Guillen, which gave Detroit a 1-0 lead, before Ivan Rodriguez fortuitously lined out to second base to bring the first inning to a close.

In the top of the second, Scott Rolen tied the game with a home run off of Verlander and Reyes made quick work of the bottom third of the Tiger order, 1-2-3. In the third, the Cardinal bats opened up the game. Yadier Molina led things off with a single and advanced to second base by starting left fielder, So Taguchi. After David Eckstein struck out looking, Chris Duncan doubled home Molina, for a 2-1 Cardinal lead. Then, The Great Pujols launched a ball deep into the Motor City night, expanding the Cardinal lead to three runs, 4-1. That would be all Reyes would need.

Beginning in the second, Reyes retired 17 consecutive Tigers, a streak that was broken by a seventh inning Carlos Guillen single. By that time, however, an error-filled sixth had doubled the St. Louis lead to 7-1. Reyes retired four consecutive Tigers after the Guillen single and entered the bottom of the ninth still ahead 7-1, having not allowed a Tiger past first base since the first inning. Naturally, Reyes regressed to his mean and gave up a solo home run to Craig Monroe, making the score 7-2, and was pulled by Tony La Russa for Braden Looper, who finished out the Cardinal victory. Reyes threw 91 pitches that evening, 67 for strikes. He collected only 5 democratic outs via groundball and 19 by the flyball. He struck out only four Detroit batsmen, but walked merely one. The Tigers mustered only four hits on the rookie, in an offensive effort that was diagnosed as rust-induced, due to the long layoff between ALCS Game 4 and World Series Game1.

Timesman Kepner writes:

[T]he Tigers could not explain how Reyes, without an overpowering fastball, handled them so easily. Reyes threw almost all fastballs after the first inning, taking a suggestion from the pitching coach Dave Duncan, and he rarely missed a spot.

He was a marvel of efficiency, throwing only 90 pitches and allowing four hits and a walk with four strikeouts. From the last out of the first inning to the first out of the seventh, he retired 17 Tigers in a row. It was the longest such streak in the World Series since Cincinnati's José Rijo set down 20 Oakland hitters in 1990.

Tom Goldman, of NPR, colorfully describes how Reyes tamed the Tigers:

Here's a World Series math puzzler. When is five greater than 40,000? Answer: when Anthony Reyes is pitching. Before last night's game, five was the number most associated with the Cardinals' rookie right-hander. It was the woeful amount of wins he had during the regular season, the fewest of any Game 1 starting pitcher in World Series history.

But by the end of the game, the roughly 40,000 Detroit fans at Comerica Park were left shell-shocked by what Reyes did to their Tigers. He defanged them, de-clawed them, turning them into pussycats who only got four hits and two runs. With his Cardinal-red socks pulled up high the old fashioned way, and wearing his cap with the most unfashionable flat brim, Reyes at one point retired seventeen straight Detroit batters.

And so the Tigers-in-Three movement was stopped dead in its tracks with an unlikely gem by a former top prospect.  As Thomas Harding wrote for stlcardinals.com, "Thanks to outstanding pitching by Cardinals righty Anthony Reyes, the coronation of the Tigers is not such a foregone conclusion now, is it?" Sportswriters, fans, and players alike were astounded to learn that the Tigers now had to win four games out of a maximum of six remaining games to clinch the title.

Reyes' was a classic performance, but, sadly, not one that was a harbinger of future success for the young four-seamer in the birds-on-the bat. He would appear in 22 games for the Cardinals during the 2007 season and perform poorly, with a FIP of 5.25 and an ERA over six. In 2008, he was traded to the Indians for Luis Perdomo, a young fireballer out of the bullpen who the organization would not even protect from the Rule V Draft. Reyes pitched well for Cleveland in '08, but was lit up in 2009 and now faces a murky future.

The fate of Anthony Reyes was unsurprising. His most important game, even if it was not his best performance, collected a game score of 69, consisted of one less 4 strikeouts and 3 groundouts to go with nearly 20 15 flyball outs.* Anthony Reyes on the LaDunc St. Louis Cardinals was a mixing of oil and water, a flyball/strikeout pitcher known for firing his four-seamer high in the zone for swings-and-misses installed into a system founded on the philosophy of pitching to contact, throwing sinking two-seamers down in the zone. Despite a relationship that was, in retrospect, doomed from its inception, Reyes turned in a pivotal performance on the sport's greatest stage, helping the National League's greatest franchise capture the tenth World Series championship in its long and storied history. Every October, I think of that unlikely band of Cardinals, and give them the appreciation I feel they deserve for that magical run. The day of October 21st goes to Anthony Reyes.

*Hat tip to Solanus for correcting the out breakdown via Retrosheet.