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Keidel: Beast Of Burnett

By Jason Keidel
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Oliver Perez does not pitch for the Yankees, even if it feels that way.

As the Yanks play the playoff shell game with their rotation, they are hiding a former ace in a hole. The club spent about $250 million on two pitchers before the 2009 season, yet only one has won the right to collect.

CC Sabathia, standing taller than his mountainous frame on the mound, his cap crooked as though he slept between innings, has become the lone horse when the Yanks thought they bought two. Sabathia doesn't want the ball in the big game. He needs it.

It is the defining difference between CC and A.J. Few hitters will say Sabathia has better stuff than Burnett. To the contrary, most say Burnett is the last pitcher they want to face when he's filthy (in the inverted baseball vernacular where bad is good), when his fastball shaves the black and his curve dips from belt to boot before the swing is complete.

Both have the tangibles, but CC has the intangibles. George Steinbrenner spent the 1980s learning that you can buy the skill but not the will. Burnett lacks the latter in glaring contrast to a guy (CC) the Yanks had to beg to live in the Bronx.

After pitching perhaps the worst regular season in the team's history (10-15, 5.26 ERA, 204 hits allowed while hitting 19 batters) Burnett has become a burden, the topic and target of rabid fans who see rabbit in his blood. For all the cream pies he has pounded into teammates after a big hit, Burnett has morphed into the saddest clown in town. Your ability to be funny is commensurate with your ability to be fabulous. There are no cute losers in New York.

The Yanks are resigned to finding cozy folds in the rotation to bury Burnett, at a time when every game is crucial. He is an $82 million rest stop between studs when he is paid to be one himself. While Javier Vazquez proved that he only plays well when there's nothing to play for, Burnett has gotten more chances to shine than he deserves. In the parlance of romance, Burnett is the gal you date only after the first five say no.

With his cool coif and cooler drawl, Burnett, 33, should be in his prime and primed to repeat as a world champion. Yet he talks, walks, and chucks like he's lost, the maddening paradox of gift and gaffe. After walking another hitter he should have fanned, he circles the mound, thumbing his necklace waiting for the moment rather than seizing it, as though indifference leads to dominance.

Publicly, Joe Girardi regards Burnett with typical baseball speak swathed in platitudes about location, mechanics, and mindset. Girardi tells us that Burnett works as hard as anyone on the squad.

What else would he say? Girardi has been wonderful – if not masterful – at handling pitchers the last two seasons. But his engineering degree from Northwestern did not equip him for the quips of the pitcher who has lost his mojo. It's an impossible task.

Since most Yankees are judged by deeds under brown leaves, Burnett can redeem himself with a solid performance in the ALCS, even if the team carried him the bulk of his 33 regular-season starts.

The 2009 World Series is a microcosm of Burnett's career. Is he the man with the golden arm of Game 2 who befuddled the Phillies for 7 innings? Or is he joker who got whiplash from watching all the line drives whiz over his head, yanked by the Yanks after just two innings in Game 5?

It seems he is both – a walking Rolaids moment on eternal loop.

Feel free to email me: Jakster1@mac.com

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