The good news is there were no pine-tar questions for Hiroki Kuroda Friday night, and on a chilly night in The Bronx, it appeared he had no problems gripping the baseball.
The bad news is he gave the Yankees absolutely no chance to win.
When CC Sabathia struggles out of the gate, panic grips a Yankees Nation that implores him, needs him desperately to be an ace rather than a joker. Or something close.
When Michael Pineda plants a gob of gooey pine tar on his neck and is suspended for 10 games, and when Ivan Nova is lost to Tommy John surgery, Yankees Nation gives thanks for Masahiro Tanaka.
And asks Hiroki Kuroda to help him.
When Kuroda gets knocked around the park from pillar to post and fails to make it out of the fifth inning of a 13-1 loss exacerbated by the gopherball Yankees debut of Bruce Billings, alarm bells ring, because the Bronx Is Burning always.
What the alarmists point to is the way Kuroda collapsed at the end of the 2013 season, and there are 3,000 innings worth of mileage on that 39-year-old arm.
It is not lost on Joe Girardi that Kuroda wilted with a 6.56 ERA and .916 OPS-against over the last seven starts of the 2013 season. It would be prudent to keep his pitch counts from exceeding 100. No worries about that Friday night.
(Doesn’t he know this is Derek Jeter’s Farewell Tour, for crying out loud?)
“He just didn’t seem to be real sharp tonight,” Girardi said. “He just wasn’t able to ever to find it tonight. … There are those nights for pitchers.”
Why was this one of those nights for Kuroda?
“Overall my command was bad, and all my pitches weren’t good,” Kuroda said through his interpreter. “The sinker wasn’t good as well as my slider, and I got behind in the count and got hit.”
Kuroda refused to use the April cold as an excuse.
“The biggest thing is to improve the quality of my breaking ball,” he said.
He broke the media up answering a question as to whether adjustments at age 39 might be more difficult.
“This is my first time experiencing 39 years old, so I don’t know … but I have to make that adjustment, yes,” he said.
There surely will be nights when the Yankees bomb their way out of trouble, especially if and when Mark Teixeira remembers how to be Mark Teixeira, but this was never going to be one against C.J. Wilson, who has become some sort of Yankees Killer.
Wilson had allowed two earned runs or less in six of his previous seven starts against the Yankees and had a 2.08 ERA against them over his previous five outings.
“He’s got pretty good stuff,” Girardi said, “and commands the baseball with a lot of movement.”
Wilson sailed through the first four innings, allowing only an infield single to Brett Gardner and a pair of walks. Already staked to a 5-0 lead, he threw a 3-2 fastball up and past a waving Alfonso Soriano in the fourth and made Brian McCann look silly flailing at a 2-2 curve all to end the inning.
It was 8-0 when Gardner singled up the middle leading off the fifth, but Wilson got Brian Roberts to ground into a 4-6-3 double play.
Wilson got Jacoby Ellsbury looking at a tantalizingly slow 2-2 curveball to open the sixth before Derek Jeter singled to right and Carlos Beltran lined a double to left and Soriano’s sacrifice fly ruined the shutout. Wilson was gone after 111 pitches and six innings. Of course, so were the Yankees.
Girardi needs Kuroda to be the steady rock again.
“Each guy has to hold his weight,” Girardi said. “That’s the important thing, and that’s how you win a lot of games.”
Kuroda didn’t hold his weight.
“I think he’ll figure it out, I do,” Girardi said.
Vidal Nuno gets the ball Saturday. And when the day starts, the Yankees won’t be the only 13-10 baseball team in town.