HOME OPENER NEAR-PERFECT
YANKS’ PINEDA HURLS GEM
Afterward you could feel how much the Yankees wanted to believe that Michael Pineda’s gem in Monday’s home opener could be a turning point in his career, perhaps even allow him to make good on CC Sabathia’s stated belief that he has the stuff to win a Cy Young Award.
“You hope he learns a ton from today,’’ was the way Joe Girardi put it.
The manager talked about how Pineda made adjustments after getting knocked around by these same Rays five days earlier — how he used all of his pitches, including an effective change-up, and pitched to both sides of the plate.
“If you do that (regularly),’’ Girardi said, “you’ve got a chance to be successful.”
Right. If Pineda did that he’d be Justin Verlander. Or Bob Gibson.
But he’s not. And at age 28, with 102 starts in the big leagues behind him, he’s not going to suddenly discover the consistency that has eluded him for years.
The point isn’t to diminish Pineda’s brilliance on Monday, when he turned the Stadium atmosphere electric with frenzied anticipation by taking a perfect game into the seventh inning, mowing down the first 20 Rays’ hitters on a gorgeous April afternoon in the Bronx.
No, the point is that this was a day to be savored, as fans roared with every two-strike count, and exploded when Pineda would rack up another of his 11 strikeouts with one of those wipeout sliders.
Simply put, you go to the ballpark hoping for days like this, when suddenly history is on the table.
In the end, Pineda fell short in what turned out to be an 8-1 Yankees’ victory, but for a long time on Monday, it felt like it was going to happen — like he was going to add his name to the list of Don Larsen, David Wells, and David Cone, the three pitchers who have thrown perfect games at the Stadium.
After all, Joe Torre, perhaps the only person other than the late Bob Sheppard who witnessed all three of those previous perfectos in person, just happened to be in the house on Monday, having thrown out a ceremonial first pitch in celebration of Team USA’s win in the World Baseball Classic. Karma, anyone? More significantly, Pineda was locked in. Catcher Austin Romine said he’d never seen the big righthander as composed as he was on Monday, but most importantly, it was one of those days when he had his best slider, the one that falls off the table late, and he wasn’t making mistakes with it.
Pineda was so good that by the seventh inning, with a reasonable pitch count, Girardi was playing out scenarios in his head.
“I thought he had a shot,’’ the manager said. “His stuff was really good. His pitch count was down. I started thinking in my head, if he gets through the eighth, he’ll be around 100 pitches — how far do I let him go? “I would have sent him back out there.” It never got to that point because Pineda’s slider, which Romine labeled as “devastating’’ on this day, finally betrayed him, as he hung one, belt-high in the middle of the plate that Evan Longoria roped into the left-field corner for a double.
Pineda would give up a home run in the eighth to Logan Morrison as well, before Girardi pulled him and the fans showed their appreciation with a standing ovation. It was a nice moment for a pitcher who has been a source of frustration to those same fans, and the Yankees as well.
Indeed, it was a performance that surely left everyone in the Stadium thinking: why can’t Pineda dominate more often?
There is no mystery to why he gets hit hard in many a start: he just makes too many mistake-pitches with his fastball and slider. Why his command comes and goes is the issue, and maybe some of it is that he doesn’t always have the composure Romine saw from behind the plate on this day.
Or maybe it’s a simple as a pitcher who is 6-foot-7 and not particularly athletic trying to repeat his delivery. Girardi, who has admitted in the past to being baffled by Pineda’s inconsistency, indicated that he has come to believe that’s the most logical answer.
“It really comes down to location,’’ Girardi said. “When his location is on, he’s very tough to hit.”
“Is that mental concentration?’’ the manager was asked.
“I think we can make too much of it,’’ he said. “Is it mental? Is it physical? To me it’s mechanical. It’s everything being on time and the bigger you are, the harder that is. So it’s harder to be consistent when you’re that big.”
That being said, Girardi and others in the Yankee organization continue to hope that days like this will help all of the moving parts fall into place.
At this point, however, with Pineda only months away from free agency, they almost certainly wouldn’t bet on it.