Consensus lacking on issue of rest

Girardi taking risk, but has support for pitching decisions

Jenifer Langosch / MLB.com

NEW YORK -- It's become the debate of this World Series, with Yankees manager Joe Girardi and Phillies manager Charlie Manuel adopting opposite opinions on the subject. And one of the two is bound to be second-guessed for months -- maybe years -- when all is said and done.

Short rest: When is it the way to go? And when does risk outweigh reward?

Either Girardi will push his starters too hard in this series, to the point that they will be just the seventh team to lose a best-of-seven World Series after racing out to a 3-1 series lead. Or Manuel won't have taken a worthwhile gamble on the game's biggest stage.

It's not as if Girardi and Manuel are making decisions that haven't been made before. It's just that the dichotomy of their positions makes for such an interesting array of banter and opinions, so much so that it has become time for those who best understand the consequences to chime in.

Take Josh Beckett, for example, who came back on three days' rest for the Marlins in the 2003 World Series and responded with the best game of his career -- a five-hit shutout against the Yankees to clinch Florida's second World Series championship in eight years.

"Some days I feel better on that day than I do on my pitch day," Beckett said on Tuesday when asked about that game. "I remember we altered a few things in between starts. Obviously we knew that we were going to do that before anyone else did. We did a few things, but I felt great that night. It was cold weather, it was perfect."

He was a success story.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Red Sox pitcher Jim Lonborg, who was called on by manager Dick Williams to pitch Game 7 of the 1967 World Series on two days' rest, which was one day fewer than was normal during that time. After notching complete-game victories in Games 2 and 5, Lonborg faltered in that seventh game, allowing six runs in six innings.