Posted: Sunday, 20 April 2008 10:43PM
Sweeny Says: Professor Pettitte
Sweeny Murti
yankees@wfan.com
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Baltimore, MD (WFAN) -- This could be worse.
Last year after 20 games: 8-12. This year after 20 games: 10-10. And by this time last year the Yankees had already used these starting pitchers: Carl Pavano, Kei Igawa, Chase Wright, Jeff Karstens, and Darrell Rasner.
In the 20th game last year, Phil Hughes made his major league debut…still 2 months shy of his 21st birthday. Maybe I don’t need to keep reminding you how young Hughes (21) and Ian Kennedy (23) are. Maybe you don’t care because you figure if they’re pitching for the Yankees age is no excuse. You’re right to a certain extent, but their age and inexperience combine to form a reality that you can’t erase no matter how much you want to.
Andy Pettitte showed again on Sunday how to pitch for the Yankees, what it’s like to step up when your team needs you. Pettitte has age (35) and experience on his side and it seems like he’s just been making it look this easy forever. But as I wrote last week, if these guys are paying attention they will learn a lot from Pettitte. They won’t turn into him overnight, but they will begin this long, bumpy journey by starting down the right path. They’ve both been given excellent physical and mental gifts just to get this far. And now they need something more. They are a combined 0-5 with a 9.20 ERA. They aren’t this bad. And neither are the Yankees.
Take a look at what Pettitte had to say about his young students after those seven shutout innings on Sunday picked up the Yanks after Hughes and Kennedy lost to the Orioles the previous two nights. It was like listening to Professor Pettitte lecture in a graduate level class on pitching:
“Sometimes what’s inside of you…you can’t put in other people. These guys have a great idea how to pitch and they’re figuring out that this is a very difficult league to pitch in. And they’re going to have to continue to go out there and figure out how to do it.
We can talk to them and tell them how to do it, but you gotta go out there and you gotta be mentally tough enough to get through certain situations.
It’s a long season, and it’s a battle, man, and you can’t get down. We’re gonna just grind our way through it. I hope they didn’t expect this to be easy. I hope they didn’t expect to come in here and just dominate this league. We gotta get better as a staff and hopefully we’ll start doing it this time around.”
Pettitte then tried to impress upon us how important it was to keep their spirits up during rough stretches like this:
“I talk to those guys, y’all know how close I am to them. You try to keep them positive. You don’t want them to lose it mentally, that’s the big thing, and just trust their stuff. They’ve got great stuff, they both know how to pitch extremely well and they’re gonna be alright. Sometimes mentally you can get down a little bit here, so that’s the most important thing for those guys.”
It’s easy to forget now that we know what the finished product looks like, but take a look back at Pettitte’s rookie year of 1995. He got his first start on May 27th and he lost 6 of his first 9, getting run out in the 3rd inning against Texas on July 7th (a 10-0 loss). But Pettitte got better.
The Yankees went unbeaten in his next 5 starts with Pettitte pitching to a 2.02 ERA. He struggled some more after that. In back to back starts in late August, Pettitte lasted a total of 3.1 innings and gave up a total of 13 hits and 12 runs. Pettitte was 6-8 and the Yankees were 4 ½ games out of the Wild Card spot.
Then Pettitte won 6 of his last 7 starts, finished 12-9 and helped pitch the Yankees into the playoffs, his final victory coming on a Friday night in Toronto on the final weekend of the regular season.
That was the first run of pressure pitching Yankee fans had witnessed by Pettitte, the kind we’ve all seen much more often since then and almost take for granted. Thirteen years later we seem to have blocked out the ups and downs that came before.
Benjamin Franklin said, “He that can have patience can have what he will.” I’m not sure if Ben ever worked for the Steinbrenners or paid 100 shillings a pop for season tickets, but it’s a good thought to keep in mind. Even he would know that young pitchers struggle, and when they break through to the other side of the learning curve you’ll forget all about the past. We did with Andy Pettitte.
Looking for some insight on what might be wrong with Hughes and Kennedy right now, other than the youth factor? I spoke to a scout who saw both of them pitch recently. He said Hughes has lost some velocity and command, perhaps because of inconsistency in his delivery. Kennedy, he said, is just too tentative and afraid of contact, pitching like a kid who thinks he’s still in college facing hitters with aluminum bats.
Don’t think the Yankees are going to dump these guys like you dump pitchers off your fantasy teams. The fantasy here is that there are better pitchers to take their places (Kei Igawa?). The reality is they didn’t stick to their guns on not trading these guys in order to shuffle them out of the rotation three weeks into the season.
Thanks for reading. Send comments and questions to yankees@wfan.com.
Sweeny |
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