This was supposed to be the day Cliff Lee made his debut in Yankees pinstripes. Instead, he will be south on I-95 wearing a Phillies uniform, leaving the Yankees to turn to one Allan James Burnett, their 6-foot-4, 230-pound tattooed question mark, to face the Tigers.
Since Lee spurned the Yankees just before midnight on a Monday night last December and Andy Pettitte chose family over fastballs, the Yankees’ focus has been on Burnett.
Coming off one of the worst statistical seasons in Yankees history and with a $16.5 million paycheck coming his way, there is more pressure on Burnett than there is on anyone else in the Yankees clubhouse. But he says he doesn’t feel it.
“I put a lot of things behind me,” Burnett said this week. “I’m looking forward to a new start, and it begins [today]. Actually, it began in the spring. This is the next step. I’ve got a job to do. I’m looking forward to taking the mound.”
Burnett has been fighting a head cold this week, but he said Thursday he expects to be ready today. The challenge facing Burnett and the Yankees is the first sign of trouble is going to feel like a precursor of doom. Every hit, every walk, every sign of bad body language from Burnett will be magnified.
The question is: How will he handle it?
“It comes down to me,” Burnett said. “I’m just confident if I throw one to the backstop, who cares? Get back on the mound and try to throw a strike. I’m not going to be perfect. I think I tried to be perfect too many times.”
After a strong start in 2010, nearly everything about Burnett’s season looked awful. He finished the year with a 10-15 record, a 5.26 ERA, 16 wild pitches, 19 hit batsmen, one lost fight with a clubhouse door, one mysterious black eye and just one postseason start after manager Joe Girardi deemed him untrustworthy.
The Yankees have spent the winter trying to rebuild Burnett’s mechanics and confidence. General manager Brian Cashman and new pitching coach Larry Rothschild traveled to his home in Maryland. Rothschild changed Burnett’s delivery, and everyone raved about the positive results in spring training.
People around the Yankees keep saying they believe Burnett can turn it around, almost as if they say it enough times they will start to believe it. But it is a tough task.
Over the last 10 seasons, 38 pitchers who threw a minimum of 175 innings had a worse ERA than Burnett did last season. One of those — Kyle Davies — did it in 2010, so how he rebounded cannot be judged yet.
Realistically, it will take 25 starts, an ERA under 5.00 and at least 11 wins for this to be a successful rebound season for Burnett. Of the 37 pitchers, just eight were able to reach those benchmarks in the season the following year. Only two — Mike Hampton in 2003 and Lee in 2005 — showed significant improvement.
The 34-year-old Burnett always has struggled to control his emotions. Now, he must guard against trying to make up for 2010 in one start this afternoon, something Girardi admitted he is concerned about.
“A.J. has talked about [how] he does understand his responsibilities,” Girardi said. “I think A.J. went through the winter, started making changes, understood how important he is to this team. Yes, I do worry about that a little bit.”
For the past two years, Burnett had the locker next to the always-calm Pettitte, who in many ways was the anti-Burnett. On the day Pettitte announced his retirement, he was asked about Burnett and delivered some final advice.
“Mentally, he needs to put his blinders on and not worry about anything else,” Pettitte said. “God has given him an unbelievable arm and the ability to play this game, and sometimes I think you can make it a little too confusing and a little too complicated. . . . He wants to be great. Sometimes that works against you.”