Yankee Staff get out of its Sticky Situation, with the help of Michael Pineda

The bottom line is it wasn’t pine tar that made Pineda mostly unhittable for six-plus innings on Thursday night. After all, from spring training on, his slider has been his best pitch, with such tight spin that hitters fail to recognize it, so it’s not as if this was something new.

h/t +New York Daily News

MARK BONIFACIO/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Who knows what's on Michael Pineda's hand, but it probably isn't the reason he shut down Boston.

It’s the most accepted form of cheating, if you will, in baseball. And that’s if Michael Pineda actually was using pine tar to get a better grip on the baseball.

He said he wasn’t. He said it was just dirt on his hand that became the talk of Thursday night’s Yankees-Red Sox game.

It looked like something a little stickier, based on the images presented on TV and then the Internet. But in any case, David Ortiz claimed to know nothing about it after Pineda shut down the Red Sox for six-plus innings in a 4-1 victory.

And when he was told Pineda may have been using pine tar, Ortiz made it clear he didn’t care.

“Everybody uses pine tar,” he said. “It’s no big deal.”


That’s surely an overstatement. And it is against the rules, so let’s not pretend otherwise. Though it is not grounds for ejection, but a warning, according to the rule book.

And certainly you shouldn’t be dumb enough to actually put the pine tar on display on your pitching hand, if indeed that’s what Pineda did.

But in any case, Ortiz pretty much summed up the feeling among players and managers: that pitchers use it on cold nights to help get a better grip on the ball, but pine tar doesn’t significantly alter the pitches themselves.

It’s not considered to be in the same league as scuffing the ball with sandpaper or doctoring it with a slippery substance — both ways of making the ball sink or sail or move unnaturally.


If it was, the Red Sox would have brought it to the attention of the umpires. They didn’t, which is standard practice these days apparently because the use of pine tar is such an open secret.

The Red Sox, in particular, weren’t about to protest after Clay Buchholz, their starter on Thursday night, was accused last season of doctoring the ball with something more slippery than pine tar.

So the bottom line is it wasn’t pine tar that made Pineda mostly unhittable for six-plus innings on Thursday night. After all, from spring training on, his slider has been his best pitch, with such tight spin that hitters fail to recognize it, so it’s not as if this was something new.

And after all the sound and fury on Twitter, that’s really the beauty of this night for the Yankees.

ROBERT SABO/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Michael Pineda (l.) fist bumps Derek Jeter in the third inning.

More and more they can believe that, two years after shoulder surgery, Pineda looks very much like the guy they thought they were getting in that trade of Jesus Montero to the Mariners in January of 2012.

His fastball is touching 95 and even 96 on occasion now, which means his arm strength is practically what it was as a rookie with Mariners in 2011, when he topped out at 97 mph.

More significantly, he seems to have a feel for pitching that allows him to read swings and change speeds accordingly, keeping hitters off balance. On Thursday, for example, his changeup was nearly as effective as his slider.

All of this means the Yankees could well have the deepest starting rotation in baseball, depending on what CC Sabathia gives them at the front end.

It’s not considered to be in the same league as scuffing the ball with sandpaper or doctoring it with a slippery substance — both ways of making the ball sink or sail or move unnaturally.

The Yankees are still going to be careful with Pineda, however. The minute Joe Girardi saw signs of fatigue, in fact, when Pineda gave up a home run and single in the seventh, he took him out with the right hander’s pitch count at 94. On this night that was no easy decision either, considering that Girardi had something of a bullpen crisis on his hand.

Indeed, with David Robertson on the disabled list, and Shawn Kelley and Adam Warren unavailable because of their recent work load, Girardi was minus his top three bullpen options.

Yet he still decided it wasn’t worth the risk of pushing Pineda too far. And it worked out for him, as Cesar Cabral and David Phelps buzzsawed through the Sox lineup for the final nine outs, making it look easy.

Phelps got the final seven outs, and here is where the Yankees’ gamble of using converted starters in their pen this year seems to be paying off, having relievers who can go multiple innings.

Of course, there is a bigger gamble the Yankees are taking by going with so many untested arms in their pen. Indeed, it’s fair to ask why a team that spent nearly $500 million to ensure a return to the playoffs didn’t sign at least one proven reliever to help fill the void left by Mariano Rivera.

For now, however, Phelps and Warren are giving the pen the boost it needs, so we’ll see. The Robertson injury has raised the stakes on the Yankees’ gamble, but suddenly it’s starting to look as if the Yankees have more pitching than expected.

On this night, that meant Pineda got the help he needed to finish off a gem. From his relievers, not his pine tar.

LINK to +MLB Network highlights video and original reference

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/harper-pineda-helping-yankee-staff-sticky-situation-article-1.1753083#ixzz2yarSQCov