TAMPA — This was a conversation a few days ago with a veteran scout:
Scout: Joel, can I ask a question?
Joel: Sure.
Scout: Does Andy Pettitte still play with the Yankees?
Joel (laughing): I guess so. I get to the stadium early every day and Andy is always out running the perimeter of the field. I don’t know about his arm, but if a marathon breaks out, he is nails.
Scout: It is just I haven’t seen him at all this spring. He is a phantom.
Joel: OK, you had me at hello. I will look into it.
So I did, and this is what I can report: Andy Pettitte is alive, well and ready to emerge from seclusion this afternoon to start against the Tigers. With Opening Day one week away, Pettitte’s official spring line consists of four innings and 55 pitches, all against Philadelphia on March 17. He’s 37, so you could wonder if the Yanks are protecting him or maybe even hiding his fade.
However, all parties insist the limitation is about Mother Nature, not Father Time. He was, for example, halfway to Viera to face the Nationals on March 12 before being notified of a rainout. Pettitte returned to Tampa to throw a 50-pitch bullpen in the batting cages. Rainouts also created a shortage of innings for the fifth-starter candidates. So wanting to emphasize the candidates’ innings in actual exhibition games, the Yanks shuffled Pettitte to an intra-squad game on March 22.
Thus, at this moment, Pettitte’s “game-day” activities have been a pitching smorgasbord: one simulated game, one extended bullpen, one actual exhibition game and one intra-squad game. He reports not having his full endurance/arm strength yet, but that is why he is so excited that the plan is for 100 pitches today. He then has one more scheduled spring start before facing the Red Sox on April 7 in Fenway, the third game of the regular season and the first of Pettitte’s 16th season.
“I would be worried if I didn’t have that spring game against Philly, but I felt great in that game and all my pitches were working,” Pettitte said.
Pettitte began this spring as the oldest pitcher in the majors with a sure rotation spot. Now it looks as if Philadelphia’s Jamie Moyer, 47, will beat out Kyle Kendrick, Boston’s Tim Wakefield, 42, will step in for the DL-bound Daisuke Matsuzaka, and Houston’s Brian Moehler, 38, could still eclipse Felipe Paulino. Unlike these other older gents, though, Pettitte is not back-end filler.
He is expected to again be a rotation mainstay, which makes him symbolic of how the Yanks’ season hinges so much on vital graybeards remaining healthy and productive. The Yanks have the majors’ oldest starting shortstop (Derek Jeter, 35) and catcher (Jorge Posada, 38), the AL’s oldest closer (Mariano Rivera, 40), and the AL’s second-oldest starting third baseman (Alex Rodriguez, 34). They also are the only AL team that will have three rotation members 33 or older (Pettitte, A.J. Burnett and Javier Vazquez).
Pettitte says the acquisition of Vazquez will make it easier to tell Joe Girardi he needs extra rest or to be skipped due to injury/fatigue, which he also was comfortable doing last year with CC Sabathia and Burnett on board. He said he could not do that late in the 2008 season when his shoulder was aching because the rotation was devastated and the Yanks were clinging to tiny playoff hopes. That pain made him wonder if his career were ending.
So he was elated to have a relatively pain-free 2009, having enough in the tank for five postseason starts in which he went 4-0 and won the clincher in all three rounds. Again, Pettitte might not be the ace, but he is no hanger-on. He is important to the 2010 Yankees.
The Yanks must hope his fight against age again is won by a tenacious work ethic, which includes those long early morning runs, combined with his genetic advantages — think the kind of broad back and shoulders you would want off a pitching assembly line.
Because with all the attention on the most overt rotation issue of spring, the battle for the No. 5 starter, the Yanks are relying more on their oldest rotation figure, Pettitte, than their youngest, 23-year-old Phil Hughes.
joel.sherman@nypost.com