The Yankees played an exhibition game in Tokyo on Sunday night, slept for a few hours and came back to the Tokyo Dome for another exhibition game game on Monday afternoon. It was the dreaded day-game-after-a-night-game routine, but this time the Yankees welcomed it. The schedule gave them more than 24 hours to relax for their faraway opening act.
The baseball season started for real yesterday -- at 5am in New York and 7pm in Tokyo -- with the first of two games against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. It was to be the first game for the Yankees' new star, Alex Rodriguez, and the start of what could be an historic season.
"I think everyone's a little curious to see how good we can be," Derek Jeter said. "But that takes a little time to find out."
The Yankees split their exhibition games against Japanese teams, beating the Yomiuri Giants and losing to the Hanshin Tigers. Jose Contreras dominated the Giants in the first game, and the Tigers rocked Donovan Osborne in the second. For all of the Yankees' offensive thunder, manager Joe Torre said, they were only as ready for the start of the season as their starting pitcher, Mike Mussina, who was to oppose the Devil Rays' Victor Zambrano.
"When you look at these two games we played, the success was spelled `pitching' and the defeat was spelled `pitching,'" Torre said.
Success, of course, will also be determined by Torre's hitters. One batter Torre has not been impressed with this spring is Kenny Lofton, the longtime leadoff man who was signed in the off-season to spark the lineup. Lofton was to bat ninth in the opener, with Jeter leading off, followed by Hideki Matsui and Rodriguez. With Bernie Williams recovering from an appendectomy in Tampa, Florida, Ruben Sierra was to start at designated hitter and bat seventh.
Williams is on the active roster and could be available when the Yankees play their US opener on April 6 in Tampa. The fifth starter Jon Lieber is out with a strained groin, and Torre decided to keep both of the candidates to replace him, Osborne and Jorge DePaula. The team will not need a fifth starter until April 10.
General manager Brian Cashman said the fifth starter is probably his biggest area of concern as the season begins. But Cashman has not been compelled to seek a trade because he expects Lieber back by May. The bigger question was Contreras, and he starred in spring training.
In five March starts, including the game against the Giants, Contreras went 3-0 with a 1.83 earned run average. He struck out 28 in 192/3 innings, throwing his fastball with more confidence and baffling hitters with his tumbling forkball.
"If you'd asked me a month ago about Jose Contreras, I would have said him," Cashman said, referring to his most pressing concerns as the exhibition schedule began. "But not the way he's pitched the last month. He's pitching more like a No.1. I think all of our starters, even Lieber when he's healthy and right, have the ability to pitch like a No.1 on any given day."
Kevin Brown, who starts Game 2 of the season on Wednesday against Tampa Bay's Jeremi Gonzalez, had a 1.86 ERA, in five starts in spring training. Javier Vazquez, who did not make the trip to Japan so he could continue working out in Tampa, allowed one earned run in 11 spring training innings. If the front of the rotation -- Mussina, Brown and Vazquez - holds up as the season progresses, Contreras could thrive in the back.
RSS