Stottlemyre’s deception helps Brown shut down A’s
NEW YORK – Everyone had been down this road so many times – the manager, the pitching coach, the fielders, the fans and especially Kevin Brown, the man in the middle.
Brown got through the first inning Sunday, but the Oakland Athletics had the bases loaded with no outs in the second and another disaster was in the offing, the restlessness spreading across Yankee Stadium again.
When New York Yankees pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre saw Brown’s first-pitch fastball to Keith Ginter sail high, he walked to the mound to give communication another chance.
“I told him his best chance to limit the damage was to keep the ball down,” Stottlemyre said. “And he said, ‘I just threw a ball down, and the guy got a base hit.’ I had to think of something, so I told him, ‘(Erubiel) Durazo is a low-ball hitter, this guy’s a high-ball hitter.’ … I was lying. You just want to change a guy’s thinking.”
In tough situations, Brown, 40, has been trying to throw the ball by hitters, to pull out his six-guns and shoot his way out of trouble the way he did in his younger days, and opponents exploited him for big innings, four runs or more, in three of his first four starts. Sunday, he pitched to spots and got some breaks. Ginter, jammed with a fastball, hit a liner to third baseman Alex Rodriguez, then Eric Byrnes struck out swinging and Marco Scutaro took a called third strike.
The critical outs behind him, Brown went on to pitch seven scoreless innings as the Yankees won 6-0 before 47,575.
Characteristically, the tightly wound Brown said he didn’t remember what Stottlemyre said.
“You’d have to ask him,” Brown said.
The Yankees (13-19) have two victories in a row, both shutouts, and hand the ball to Randy Johnson against the Seattle Mariners on Monday night. For a day, at least, the crisis atmosphere abated, and Brown was a fan and teammate favorite.
“He’s very hard on himself,” Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter said. “He has a lot of pride, and he doesn’t enjoy it when he doesn’t pitch the way he wants to. This was as fine a game as I’ve seen him pitch.”
Brown (1-4), who got out of a bases-loaded, two-out jam in the fourth, allowed five hits, walked one and struck out four, throwing 69 of 106 pitches for strikes and lowering his ERA from 8.25 to 6.39. It helped that the A’s, with their paltry .236 team average, were the opponents. But the Yankees got only two runs off hard-throwing Rich Harden (2-2), so Brown had to be good.
“You talk about results,” Brown said. “It’s unfortunate, but the thing you want most from this game is the thing you have the least control over. If I knew I could throw the ball right over the middle of the plate and have them hit the ball right at someone, I’d win 27 straight games. This game doesn’t work that way. Focusing on results … results will drive you out of this game.”
In his previous start, Brown allowed six runs in the first inning at Tampa Bay.