Living on the Black by John Feinstein

Author:John Feinstein [FEINSTEIN, JOHN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPO003000
ISBN: 9780316032339
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2008-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

17

Drought

THE YANKEES MANAGED TO SALVAGE the last game of the Subway Series the next night, young Tyler Clippard (who, not surprisingly, had been nicknamed “The Yankee Clippard”) outpitching John Maine, who didn’t have a nickname but had pitched very well all year. The win allowed the Yankees to limp back to the Bronx with a 19–23 record, still ten and a half games behind the Red Sox, who came into town riding high at 30–13.

For once, the Yankees had their pitching set up exactly the way they wanted it: Chien-Ming Wang would pitch the first game, Mike Mussina the middle game, and Andy Pettitte the finale.

“If we can’t get something done with the three of us pitching, I don’t know when we will,” Mussina said.

Before Wang outpitched Tim Wakefield in the opener, there were still rumors swirling that Joe Torre and Brian Cashman were in trouble. That win seemed to quiet things down for the moment. Mussina was matched against Julian Tavarez the next night.

Unlike Glavine, Mussina has never been especially bothered by the first inning. Like Glavine — and most quality pitchers — he has absolutely no clue what’s going to happen once he reaches the mound, regardless of how he warms up. There is, however, one key difference in his warm-up. Glavine is going to throw fastballs and changeups 80 to 90 percent of the time, mixing in a cutter, a slider, and a curve, no matter how he feels in the bullpen. “If my change isn’t good, I just have to hope it will get better by the time the game starts,” Glavine said.

Mussina’s warm-up, in contrast, is more like an audition for his pitches. Because he throws so many different pitches — fastball, curve, slider, changeup, sinker, cutter — with almost equal effectiveness at different times, he uses his warm-up to decide which pitches he thinks will work best on a given night.

“He creates his game plan while he’s in the bullpen,” said Mike Borzello, who has warmed up Mussina before games for seven years now. “He doesn’t pitch off scouting reports very much. He’s aware of what hitters have done off him in the past; he knows who is a dead fastball hitter, who likes the ball down, things like that. But for the most part, he comes out of the bullpen thinking, ‘My slider’s good today; I’ll throw it more.’ Or if he doesn’t think his curve is sharp, he may only use it as a waste pitch [a pitch thrown way off the plate on a pitcher’s count like 0–2 or 1–2, just to show it to the batter] that night.”

Mussina is also more apt to worry about a shaky warm-up than Glavine, although he understands that the way you warm up frequently has nothing to do with the way you pitch.

“It’s not as if there’s anything you can do,” Mussina said. “And I’ve had games where I was awful in the bullpen and pitched well. I remember pitching a one-hitter in Texas once when I literally didn’t throw a single strike in the bullpen.

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