Less rest was no problem for CC Sabathia.
For the second time in the American League Championship Series, the Yankees pitcher dominated the Angels, this time with eight innings of five-hit, one-run ball as the Yankees beat the Angels 10-1 to move within a win of the World Series. And he did it on just three day's rest.
"To be able to shut this club down like he did, again, is no easy feat," said Yankees manager Joe Girardi. "... For him not to throw a ton of pitches in eight innings" -- 101, 69 for strikes -- "he gave us what we needed."
Sabathia made it look easy, and made it sound that way, too.
"I didn't feel any different at all," he said. "I felt really good. You know, this late in the season, you're feeling healthy ... it's pretty much all the same."
And, as Girardi noted, his economy of pitches was nothing new, either.
"One of the reasons he's been so able to amass so many innings is he doesn't throw a lot of pitches in seven or eight innings," said the manager. "He gives you that almost every time out."
In the regular season, Sabathia was 0-2 with a 6.08 ERA against the Angels, but that pitcher wasn't the same one the Angels are seeing now.
"He's obviously figured some things out in a big way," said manager Mike Scioscia. "That changeup he was throwing the last couple times we saw him wasn't nearly as consistent as it is now.
"I thought that was probably the biggest thing we had trouble adjusting to tonight. He threw it on off counts and had great command of it.
"Game 1 and this game, CC is the story."
No margin for error: The Angels are now a game away from elimination, but Scioscia downplayed their predicament.
"We got beat pretty badly tonight," he said. "It was one loss. That's it. You come out there and gain some momentum.
"I don't think we've had a lead early in the ballgame yet this series. If we can start to play that type of ball, this can change in a hurry.
"Our guys are confident. There is nobody in that clubhouse that is down. We know what's in front of us. We knew where we have to get to, and there's a terrific challenge for us. And our guys ... they're going to be ready to go mentally, for sure."
Hunter's appeal: Angel outfielder Torii Hunter figured in one of the many controversial (read: erroneous) umpiring decisions in Game 4, and perhaps helped convince Tim McClelland into his decision to call out Nick Swisher for leaving third base too soon on a sacrifice fly. Replays indicated he didn't, but Hunter was emphatically yelling to his teammates to appeal to third as soon as he caught the ball and threw it in.
"I kind of saw him move out of my peripheral vision," Hunter said. "That's a big word -- but out of my peripheral vision, I saw a move, and when I got the ball in my hand, he was gone. Something wasn't right, right there.
"I don't know, he might have been on time, but I saw something move and pointed right away."
Hunter than gave an exaggerated wink, and his listeners started laughing.
"No, I did, I saw it," he said. "You have to quote me on saying I saw it. ... You can't use the wink. I have something in my eye."
Then he laughed, too.

If you'd asked the Angels to draw up a blueprint for their ideal opener to their playoff series with Boston, it probably would have looked just about like this.
With a dominant performance by John Lackey, the crucial hit by Torii Hunter -- and no small reminder of the importance of Bobby Abreu -- the Angels poked a 5-0 hole in the Red Sox to take a series lead against Boston for the first time since 1986.
Of course, that didn't ultimately turn out too well, so the Angels were trying not to get too excited.
"It's nice, for sure," said Lackey, who won his first postseason game since Game 7 of the 2002 World Series. "But we're definitely not towards any goal, for sure. We're at one game, and we've got to get to three before anything really matters."
That said, there was plenty about Lackey's night -- 7 1/3 innings of shutout, four-hit ball, with four strikeouts and one walk -- to energize the Angels.
"I'm very excited about hit start today," said Hunter. "He went out there and set the tone early. Man, we were so pumped up from then on."
Lackey sensed it could be a good night early on.
"Even in the bullpen I knew my arm was feeling good. ... The extra rest that I had, and the kind of short start I ended the season with" -- he worked just two innings in his final regular-season start, a week earlier -- "really helped me out tonight. I really felt like my arm was pretty live ... I had a pretty good fastball."
Manager Mike Scioscia said, "John made pitches, and that's a long way to pitch against that lineup, to get us 22 outs like that. That's a tremendous effort."
It was, in fact, the longest outing for an Angels starter in any of their four division series meetings with Boston. The previous best was Lackey's seven-inning performance last year.
"Lot of life on his fastball," said Boston manager Terry Francona. "Looked like he was moving both ways. Threw enough breaking balls we had to respect that, and he was able to locate his fastball again with two different directions. He was good. He was real good."
Good as Lackey was, it might not have mattered if not for the three-run homer by Hunter in the fifth, which provided another first for the Angels -- their first lead of more than one run in 11 division-series games with Boston.
Erick Aybar had opened the fifth with a double, moving to third on a bunt by Chone Figgins as Scioscia played for the first run of the game.
"Early runs are going to be important in this series," he said. "They definitely have a bullpen that can shut a team down. I think where the game was, to get up 1-0 was going to be important at that point. So we wanted to try to get in a position to get on top there ... and the inning got bigger once Torii got up, so that was nice."
Before Hunter batted, though, Abreu worked a walk -- one of his four on the night to give the Angels two baserunners with one out.
"For our whole season," said Scioscia, "Bobby set a tone that I think has been more than ... his numbers show. He's brought some great numbers to us, the on-base percentage, hitting, runners in scoring position, the amount of runs he's scored, the amount he's driven in, the way he's run the bases. He's brought a lot. ...
"The four walks not only would have led to the pitch count where Jon Lester had to work hard to get to that part of the game" -- Lester threw 100 pitches in six innings -- "but also (set) the table."
Said Francona, "Bobby's at-bat was huge. We were actually playing back (to) sacrifice a run, try and stay out of a big inning. Bobby won't give in."
Which allowed Hunter to feast on a Lester fastball, depositing it over the fence in left-center.
"He's one of the toughest lefties in the game," said Hunter. "He had a lot going. The guy was throwing 96, 95-mile-an-hour fastball, a cutter on your back leg as a righthander. He was pretty tough, man.
"I guess I was lucky or blessed that he threw a fastball down the middle, and I was able to capitalize on that mistake."
Hunter had walked in his previous at-bat, fouling off three pitches in working his way back from an 0-2 count, which Francona felt set the stage for what happened in the fifth.
"Hunter's at-bat before that was so good that it makes him more dangerous," said the Boston manager. "And he gets a fastball. (It) wanders back and over the plate and catches enough of a middle, and he crushes it."
That made it 3-0, and the way Lackey was dealing, that was enough. The Angels added two more runs in the seventh, and when Lackey turned the game over to Darren Oliver in the eighth, the Angels and their fans had a sense that this night was not going to be like most of the Boston games that had preceded it. The ovation for Lackey was long, loud and well deserved. The pitcher noticed.
"Our fans, they sometimes get dogged on for not being loud enough," said Lackey. "But they brought it tonight, and that ovation I got coming off the mound meant a lot to me. We definitely appreciated them tonight."
Angel fans would not hesitate to tell you the feeling was mutual.

Torii doin' work.
A few more games like this, and Spike Lee may be rolling out a Torii Hunter documentary.
In the meantime, with the first three-homer game of his 11-year career, the Angels outfielder has a brief notion what it's like to be that Bryant fellow profiled by Lee.
"Today, I felt like Kobe," said Hunter after the Angels' 9-1 hammering of San Diego on Saturday. "When Kobe's in the zone, he's hitting everything, and now I know how it feels. This is my first time. It felt pretty good."
Looked pretty good, too. In four at-bats, Hunter -- now at .321 with 49 RBIs -- laced a line-drive out to right, and hit his 14th, 15th and 16th homers of the season in the third, fifth and seventh innings. He missed a chance to go for a fourth homer when he was left in the on-deck circle as Bobby Abreu made the final out of the eighth.
"He said, 'I was trying to work him (Padres reliever Greg Burke), but it was just a bad day all around,' " Hunter said, recalling his subsequent conversation with Abreu, who also committed the ninth-inning error that cost Joe Saunders his chance for a complete game.
"He was trying his best to get on, but it just didn't work out for me. ...
"I was cheering for him. I was like, 'C'mon baby, get a hit. Stay in there. Foul him off.' I was screaming at him. He was looking at me: 'I'm trying, you know.' ... He's at the plate, cracking me up."
This may have been his biggest day with the bat, but ebullient Hunter has been huge for the Angels all season, as manager Mike Scioscia noted.
"I don't think you can pinpoint one guy and say he's carrying you," said Scioscia, "but what Torii's done so far this season has been remarkable.
"If we didn't have Torii producing like he has been, and all the other things were happening, where Vlad (Guerrero) has been struggling and some other guys have been a little bit soft, we would really be scrambling to get to the level we need to play.
"He's doing everything, from defense to running the bases, to what he's doing in the batter's box, to what he's doing in the clubhouse. I think it's an understatement to say he's an important part to this club. This guy's special, and believe me, we're glad to have him."
Hunter is certainly flirting with a career year -- a career .272 hitter, his best offensive numbers have been a .289 batting average (2002), 31 homers (2006) and 107 RBIs (2007) -- but the world doesn't seem to have noticed outside of the immediate Los Angeles of Anaheim area. Hunter is fifth in the balloting behind Jason Bay, Josh Hamilton, Ichiro Suzuki and Carl Crawford, although only Ichiro (.356) has a better average -- Crawford is also at .321 -- and Hunter has more homers than any of them. (The glaring error in the balloting is Hamilton, who has been injured and is batting just .240 with six homers.)
Not that Hunter is going to worry about it. Not surprisingly, since this truly seems to be an athlete who gets most of the things about his job, he has the whole all-star picture in perspective.
"You know, if it's for the fans, and if happens that I'm one of the guys voted in to play, that's fine," he said. "Other than that, I'm honored if I get there. If not, I go home and play with the kids for three days, let my body heal and see my son play some baseball.
"Either way's not so bad, is it?"
Well, no. And while Hunter clearly was enjoying every bit of the three-homer game, he also knew better than to let it skew his perspective on what he can do, and what he does best.
"Robbing a home run still feels better," he said. "If I could rob three home runs in a game, I would throw a party. All the media, all the fans, everybody is invited. And they get in, free admission."
(Feel free to print that out and save it for future reference, just in case.)
Hunter very nearly got a taste of his own home-run medicine, as the second homer was just barely out of reach for leaping San Diego outfielder Tony Gwinn Jr.
"When he went up," Hunter said, "I thought he caught it, and I put my head down. Then they said home run, so I acted like I knew I hit it afterward. ... When I touched home plate and came into the dugout, I told somebody, 'Only me can rob me.' "
Nobody robbed Hunter of anything Saturday. Home runs, spotlight, enjoyment of the moment, he had all of it.
"I loved this day," he said. "It was a lot of fun."