Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

MLB

For better or worse, Yankees turn to Pineda

BALTIMORE — Sure, it makes perfect sense in this topsy-turvy Yankees season that, in the hopes of staying afloat, they’re relying so heavily on someone so unreliable.

“I’m very, very happy,” Michael Pineda said Monday before the Yankees opened a crucial series with the Orioles at Camden Yards. “I’m coming back to my team.”

The Yankees announced Monday what they informed Pineda of Sunday: The beleaguered right-hander will make his return to the starting rotation Wednesday, after requiring nearly four months to heal a muscle injury behind his right shoulder.

The 25-year-old displayed quality stuff and no pain in two minor-league rehabilitation starts, and while his pitch count won’t climb much higher than 85, this decision calls to mind what Yankees general manager Brian Cashman told The Post’s Joel Sherman back in March: “If he earns the right to make the team, he will make the team.”

In other words, there’s no point in having Pineda use his limited bullets on an unworthy target. His stuff is dynamic enough, as we saw in that four-start teaser in April, to take on the inherent risks.

The most significant risk, you could argue, might be emotional. The Yankees have to accept the reality Pineda, who missed his first two seasons as a Yankee due to a serious right shoulder injury, could go down at any moment, and for a while.

“He’ll pitch the next seven weeks, and then we’ll go from there,” Joe Girardi said Monday. “I feel good about him taking the mound. It’s not going to be in the back of my mind, worried about [his health]. I’m not going to think that way. But I will be cautious his first couple of starts about his pitch counts.”

Pineda tantalized his audience when he made the team out of spring training and put together three outstanding starts, striking out 15 and walking three in 18 innings while compiling a 1.00 ERA. Then came his April 23 start at Fenway Park, which will forever be remembered as the dumbest application of pine tar in baseball history. An embarrassed Pineda, with the sticky stuff shining on his neck, got tossed with two outs in the second inning. And we haven’t seen him since, as a 10-game suspension morphed into a debilitating injury.

He’s back, finally, expressing contrition for his transgression — “I made a mistake. I learned from this. Everything is in the past right now” — and anxious to aid a Yankees starting rotation that has largely kept its lineup in games despite getting decimated by injuries.

“I’ve been working hard,” Pineda said. “I want to be ready for this situation.”

“This is a guy who threw very well for us when he got here,” Girardi said. “We’re looking forward to getting him back.”

It speaks volumes about the industry-rattling January 2011 trade which sent Pineda and Jose Campos from the Mariners to The Bronx in return for Jesus Montero and Hector Noesi that the Yankees stand at the winners right now, based on Pineda’s three good starts. Montero has embarrassed himself by getting caught in the Biogenesis web and gaining a great deal of weight. Noesi pitched his way out of Seattle and has improved with the White Sox. Campos is rehabilitating from Tommy John surgery.

Pineda possesses an opportunity to lengthen that Yankees lead by helping the team in its time of need, and by taking his turn every fifth day. The Yankees have little reason beyond blind faith to think Pineda can in fact stick around for the duration.

At this juncture, however, there’s little harm in throwing Pineda out there and seeing what he can do.

When Pineda was asked whether he was nervous for his return, the right-hander replied: “No. Excited? Yeah. But not nervous.”

He might be the only person earning a Yankees paycheck who isn’t both excited and nervous about Wednesday.