Baseball : Martin Up to His Old Tricks With Yankee Pitchers

If there is always a chance that Billy Martin will self-destruct, isn’t there also a chance that he will first destroy his pitching staff?

Recall the ashes of his Oakland years when Martin, devoid of a bullpen and pushing his philosophy that tomorrow may never come, turned Rick Langford, Steve McCatty, Matt Keough and Mike Norris into nonstop pitching machines.

It wasn’t long, of course, before the parts disintegrated. A shoulder here. An elbow there.

Now Martin has turned the New York Yankees’ pitching staff into his personal laboratory. The mix he has been brewing seems on the verge of combustion.

Said Dave Righetti: “Starters are relieving and relievers are starting. Everybody has to be ready at any time.”

Added Rick Rhoden: “I’m sure Billy has reasons for what he does, but I don’t want to say anymore. Nothing good would come of it. You can take that for what it’s worth.”

The Yankees on Friday began a 13-game stretch against the Cleveland Indians and Detroit Tigers, their closest pursuers in the American League East.

In the previous eight games, Martin used seven starting pitchers. Richard Dotson started with seven days’ rest. Tommy John started with one day’s rest.

Injuries to Rhoden, John Candelaria and Al Leiter have complicated Martin’s task, but John, 45 and a veteran of 25 professional seasons, said he has never seen a staff handled similarly.

“It’s uncharted water,” he said.

In a seven-day span through Wednesday, John made four appearances, two in relief.

Said Martin: “He wants to pitch. He throws every day. It’s good for him.”

John disagreed, suggesting that even a sinkerball pitcher can reach a point of being too tired.

“It’s tough enough to pitch in the big leagues when you’re ready,” he said. “It’s that much tougher when you have no bullets in your gun. I still have to throw it 60 feet--not on a bounce and not too high.”

A 6-3 loss to the Boston Red Sox Wednesday was characteristic of Martin’s strange maneuvering.

Leiter gave up 5 hits and 5 runs in 2 innings as the starter. He threw 54 pitches, all called by Martin. Forty-nine were fastballs. The appreciative Red Sox soon realized that was all they’d be seeing and pinned Leiter to the Fenway Park wall.

“I thought I had a pretty good curve,” Leiter said of the pitch he threw only in warmups.

Martin then called on Tim Stoddard, who had not pitched in 26 days because of injuries, and allowed him to go 5 innings in 95-degree heat. Stoddard had not pitched that many innings in 84 appearances dating to May 8, 1987.

Then, with his team trailing by three runs, Martin asked John to get the final out of the eighth inning, his fourth appearance in less than a week.

Unusual? Hardly.

Candelaria, who began the season with a history of elbow problems, was allowed to pitch four complete games in the first five weeks and subsequently left the rotation for a while when the elbow problem came back.

Dotson, the most consistent Yankee starter and a pitcher who overcame a career-threatening shoulder injury with the Chicago White Sox, was used twice in relief before saying he would not do it again.

Righetti, the relief ace, made three of his last four appearances through Thursday in games the Yankees were losing. He is reportedly nursing a sore elbow. Shouldn’t he be saved for his primary role, preserving victories?

“Things are puzzling enough,” Righetti said. “I’m not going to add to it.”

The St. Louis Cardinals left New York Wednesday, having been swept in 3 games by the Mets and having lost 9 of 12 to the National League’s Eastern Division leaders this year. That means they face the dark prospect of trying to catch the Mets without playing them again until the final two weeks of the season, when they will play 6 times in the final 10 days.

“I don’t know if there’ll be a race by then,” St. Louis Manager Whitey Herzog said. “I don’t mean just for us, I mean for everybody.”

Herzog has done another remarkable job of keeping the Cardinals alive amid their annual array of injuries. Consider that his rotation of John Tudor, Danny Cox, Greg Mathews and Joe Magrane has totalled just seven wins, with each of the four having been on the disabled list. In fact, Cox and Mathews are still on it.

Is the Detroit Tigers’ Jeff Robinson making a bigger name for himself than the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Jeff Robinson?

Both are doing quite nicely.

The Pirates’ Robinson, formerly of Cal State Fullerton and the San Francisco Giants, led National League relief pitchers in innings pitched through Friday and had 7 saves and a 3-2 record.

The Tigers’ Robinson, formerly of Azusa Pacific, has developed into the ace of his staff. He has reeled off 7 straight victories for an 8-2 record that has compensated for Jack Morris’ sudden struggle.

Morris, who has not had a losing season since he went 3-5 as a rookie in 1978, is 6-8 with a 4.74 earned-run average and has won 2 in a row only once. He believes that hitters have become wise to his forkball and are laying off the low, outside breaking pitch that they previously chased.

“I’ve thrown more pitches than anyone in baseball the last 10 years and now everyone is laying off that forkball,” Morris said. “They’re spitting at it.”

Morris said he has nothing to be ashamed off, which doesn’t mean he is writing off the season or his career.

“It’s still early,” he said. “I have time. That’s the hope you hold on to, anyway.”

By installing Kirt Manwaring as their regular catcher and optioning Bob Melvin to the minors, the Giants have turned veteran Bob Brenly, batting .169 through Friday, into a bullpen receiver and candidate to be traded.

“If they can trade Hack (Jeffrey Leonard), they can trade anybody,” Brenly said. “I don’t mind being a bullpen catcher if we can get to the World Series, but I don’t want to do it for a .500 team.”

The Kansas City Royals, 13 games out on June 1, surged to within 4 1/2 games of the Oakland Athletics in the American League West by sweeping a pair of three-game series from the Athletics in which they held the A’s to 10 runs and a .214 batting average.

In their last 14 games before a weekend series with the Angels, Kansas City pitchers recorded 5 complete games, 5 shutouts and a 1.37 earned-run average.

Said Manager Tony LaRussa of his Athletics: “At one point people were saying this was the greatest club since the ’27 Yankees. Now what do they think? We’ve obviously got some warts. That’s what’s beautiful about the major league season.”

Suddenly displaying some of those warts are Carney Lansford, who was 6 for 40 and 1 for 20 going into a weekend series with the Texas Rangers, and Mark McGwire, who had a .186 average, 2 homers and 7 runs batted in over his last 27 games.

The disappointing Red Sox are reportedly pursuing the acquisition of Baltimore Orioles’ shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. and Toronto Blue Jays’ right fielder Jesse Barfield. Barfield hit only 3 home runs in his last 69 games through Thursday and is on the trading block.

For Barfield, the Red Sox are said to have offered pitcher Jeff Sellers and outfielder Brady Anderson.

For Ripken, they have offered shortstop Jody Reed, catcher John Marzano, pitchers Sellers and Rob Woodward and a choice of either Anderson or Todd Benzinger.

The Orioles are believed to want center fielder Ellis Burks over either Anderson or Benzinger and are said to be furious at the Red Sox for going public with the negotiations.