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Palladino: Pineda, Sabathia Need To Keep Climbing For Yanks To Succeed

By Ernie Palladino
» More Ernie Palladino Columns

Baseball is all about getting over humps -- some personal, some team-oriented.

Winners get to the bottom of the hill and climb, gradually and sometimes slowly. It's only the lucky few who get helicoptered to the top and stay there all season.

CC Sabathia and Michael Pineda are climbing that hump quite adequately at this juncture. While Pineda has turned himself into a legitimate ace after a 2014 season first interrupted by a 10-game suspension for using pine tar like Old Spice and then shut down because of injury, Sabathia has just now begun his ascent after knee issues sent his season up in smoke eight starts in.

Whether the Yanks can maintain their AL East lead will be due in large part to whether the two pitchers can continue climbing along with the rest of the staff.

While there has been no doubt that the Delin Betances-Andrew Miller punch at the back of the bullpen has produced nothing short of knockout work, it is important that the two starting veterans at least get their team into the late stages. With Masahiro Tanaka slowly making his way back to an uncertain future, the Yanks may well have to rely on Pineda and Sabathia to stabilize the rotation for the majority of the season.

All of this brings us to their last two starts. Pineda had a virtuoso performance Sunday worthy of an ace, and Sabathia had his most effective outing Monday. It saved his season. For now, anyway.

That's some nice climbing.

Pineda's 16-strikeout domination of the Orioles underscored everything he has done this year. At 5-0 with a 2.72 ERA, Pineda has already turned Tanaka's ace role on its head. He has been fully rehabilitated. The fastball soars into the high 90s, and a newfound changeup keeps batters baffled. Most impressive is his season's strikeout-to-walk ratio.

54-to-3!

That is not a typo. He's around the plate, and apparently unhittable.

That suspension? It seems like 100 years ago. That came in a time when he believed he couldn't get by without a little extra help.

No need for Stickum now. He's just playing good, old-fashioned hardball.

Joe Girardi has been trying to convince everybody that Sabathia has been doing the same thing this year. But it wasn't until he notched his first win Monday that the words held any real meaning.

Not that it was a thing of Sabathia beauty. He did give up four runs in seven innings, and the Yanks did lose five balls over the Tropicana Field fence for him in a comfortable 11-5 win. But he only gave up one run before the three-run seventh, when the Yanks had the game well in hand.

That's the kind of Sabathia the Yanks need. Not the one with the 5.96 ERA over his first four starts. Not the one where his team went 1-5 in his first six starts.

The idea, now, is for Sabathia to keep climbing and show that Monday's season-high nine strikeouts weren't just an every-now-and-then flash. The ERA must continue to descend from its current, still-lofty 5.20. Assuming he gets sufficient support from the offense, Sabathia must look ever more like his old self, the workhorse that pitches into the seventh inning and beyond, as he did April 20 in an eight-inning, 2-1 loss in Detroit.

The wait for Tanaka is slowly coming to an end. He threw a bullpen session Tuesday and has thrown off flat ground.

The nominal ace is still a ways away from jumping back into the rotation from his forearm strain and wrist tendinitis, and when he does, he'll have his own hill to climb.

It could be a rocky one. The partially torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right arm may never allow him to get over his personal hump. The elbow will remain a ticking time bomb until it is finally addressed with Tommy John surgery, and no one knows when that will become a necessity.

Pineda and Sabathia have to keep on climbing so the Yanks can keep on climbing.

So far, so good. But they should know one thing. The trail won't flatten out any time soon. It only becomes steeper.

But that's the thing about humps. A lot of good stuff usually awaits on the other side.

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