Sports

YANKS NEED JAKE TO BE REAL THING

THIS was early in spring training, but not so early that the signs of danger had not yet arisen. Darryl Strawberry had already been banished from working out with the Yankees. But it was still early enough that the pace was slow and the grandest dreams could be evoked.

Tucked down the right-field line, where the five warm-up mounds at Legends Field are located, David Cone stuck around after his 10-minute session to watch one of those guys wearing an offensive lineman’s number. It is the kind of scene unique to the nascent days of spring training, so quiet and unhurried that Cone could ask a reporter for silence so “you can hear the [hiss off a] slider.”

“He’s my sleeper,” Cone said, pointing his glove toward the guy who had thrown the slider, Jake Westbrook, before an exhibition game had even been played.

It is not spring training any more. And the danger signs are everywhere for the Yankees. Age in the rotation. Ineffectiveness in the offense. Throwing problems for the second baseman. And an owner ready to become a two-ton gorilla on this team.

It is not early any more, with the All-Star break less than a month away. Westbrook is now wearing 57 rather than 78, a sign the pace and the importance have changed, signs that the Yankees now need him to be a keeper, not a sleeper.

“It’s not like we are working him in middle relief,” Cone said yesterday, about three hours before Westbrook was going to make his major-league debut. “This is throwing someone right into the fire.”

And, boy, could the Yankees get burned. They were turning to a 22-year-old with 12 career Triple-A starts to quell the team with the majors’ best record, the White Sox. But Westbrook’s importance transcended his welcome to The Show. Suddenly, the Yankees are a team that needs new life, whether it is Westbrook to bring it personally or by being such a good prospect that he can help front a package for Juan Gonzalez or Sammy Sosa or an experienced starter.

“He’s our best pitching prospect right now and that is a very valuable asset in baseball,” Cone said.

Joe Torre said, “I’d like to see someone step up so that if someone malfunctions later in the year, we can call upon [Westbrook] or he could be part of the rotation next year or whatever.”

The unspoken “whatever” is a trade. And if the Yankees decide Westbrook is expendable, a lot more can be received for the right-hander if he shows well in what is expected to be at least two starts filling in for the disabled Roger Clemens. If he does not do well, Westbrook’s value plummets to the Yanks and any interested team.

“It is important to have prospects at the ready and not three or four years away,” Torre said. “And Jake is that guy, right now.”

Torre has helped break in some of the Yankees’ most important current players such as Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Orlando Hernandez, Ramiro Mendoza and Jorge Posada. In many ways, though, Westbrook enters in a more desperate spot for the Yankees than those others did. Suddenly, the Yankees do not look like a team on the climb or holding steady atop the sport. Rather, at best, these Yanks seem to be holding off substantial decline.

The only way to stall or reverse it will be to bring in new blood, from the system or through trades or both. Westbrook was being watched by a slew of scouts yesterday, including Ken Kravec from Sosa’s Cubs. George Steinbrenner is due here today and is expected to go to Boston with the team. If the losing continues in Boston, Steinbrenner could demand Sosa, Gonzalez or who knows what else? Is Ken Phelps still available?

“He is a chip that can help us and one that has been attractive to others,” GM Brian Cashman said of Westbrook.

The Yanks obtained Westbrook from Montreal as part of the Hideki Irabu trade. They had him ranked as the second-best pitching prospect in the Expo organization behind Tony Armas Jr., who was originally part of the Yankee system. Before Torre arrived in spring, the organization’s pitching aficionado, Billy Connors, gave him a “head’s up that [Westbrook] is special.” It was not long afterward that others began to have similar feelings.

Cone was talking about Westbrook almost from the outset of camp. Standing outside the fenced-in mounds at Legends Field that pristine spring day, Cone pointed out Westbrook’s solid 6-foot-3 frame, his compact motion, the heavy sink on his fastball and his intelligence in asking good pitching-related questions. The mechanics, Cone said, showed excellent coaching along the way.

“He looks as good as a prospect could at first blush,” Cone said that day in spring. “But you just don’t know until you get into a game.”

Game time was yesterday. Spring training felt far away. Who ever thought then that the Yankees would need a 22-year-old novice to help invigorate their season?