Long before A.J. Burnett was a key piece of the Yankees’ starting rotation, he was a Mets farmhand trying to figure out how to pitch.
Burnett spent the first three years of his professional career in the Mets’ minor-league system before the team dealt him in 1998 to the Marlins as part of the deal for Al Leiter.
“I didn’t like those three years,” Burnett said yesterday in the Yankees’ dugout before the Mets’ 2-1 victory last night at the Stadium. “It was a lot of hard work, and I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Burnett takes the mound for the Yankees tonight to face the organization that drafted him in the eighth round of the 1995 draft. Burnett, 34, spent some moments in center field before last night’s Subway Series opener chatting with Mets reliever Jason Isringhausen, one of the Mets prized pitching prospects when Burnett first arrived.
“He had an unbelievable arm,” Isringhausen said. “Nobody really got a glimpse of him until he got to Miami it seems like, and he was lighting up radar guns and throwing that knuckle curve. He turned into a pitcher rather than a thrower and in this game you have to.”
Burnett remembers watching Isringhausen and his fellow “Generation K” pitchers — Bill Pulsipher and Paul Wilson — during his first spring training and questioning if he would ever be able to pitch that well.
“I wasn’t really much of a pitcher,” Burnett said. “I pitched like four games in high school. I played third in high school. I threw hard. I would go five innings, walk eight, strike out eight pretty much every start. Everybody jumped up [in levels]. I took one step at a time.”
Over three seasons in the minors with the Mets, Burnett went 9-5 and struggled with his control. The Mets dealt him on Feb. 6, 1998. Burnett said the trade saved his career.
“I was going to give it up after 1997,” he said. “I wasn’t having a lot of fun. It was a struggle every outing. I didn’t pitch a lot growing up. I told my Dad, ‘I’m going to give it one more chance. I’m going to look at it as a fresh start.’ I think it was good for me. I got away from my crew that I always hung with and had good times with. It was pretty much the same people for three years playing together.”
As a Yankee, Burnett has put up good numbers against the Mets. He made two starts in 2009 against them, carrying a no-hitter into the sixth inning against them at Citi Field and throwing seven shutout innings against them at Yankee Stadium. He went 2-0 with a 0.00 ERA and struck out 18 combined in the two starts. He didn’t face the Mets during his brutal 2010 season.
This season, Burnett is going through another career rebirth, starting 4-3 with a 3.99 ERA.
“The biggest growth has been this offseason,” said Leiter, now a YES broadcaster. “Every pitcher has a spot where you say, ‘I’ve pretty much hit rock bottom, where not only statistically you hit rock bottom but you believe it.’ You say, ‘You know what? I was awful last year.’ He’s not just saying it. He believed it.”
Leiter said the biggest difference this year in Burnett is how he’s trusted his changeup.
“He made a concerted effort to use three pitches,” Leiter said. “I think the difference that you’ll see him is he’s eventually going to gain more confidence. In his three dominant games here the third pitch was the integral part of him having somewhere to go.”