He’s a Pitcher of Perfection for the 5-4 Pilots : Baseball: When junior left-hander Carlos Garibay is on the mound, Banning becomes a different team.

There are worse problems for a baseball coach to have, but Banning High’s Syl Saavedra is puzzled by this one: What can you do about a pitcher who may simply be too talented for the team’s overall good?

On the one hand, there is probably not a coach in the South Bay who wouldn’t want Carlos Garibay, Banning’s junior left-hander who has all five of the Pilots’ victories this season.

On the other hand, Saavedra can’t find a way to motivate his squad in those games that Garibay doesn’t pitch.

Garibay is 5-0 this season; the Pilots are 0-4 when he doesn’t pitch. But it’s not simply a matter of Garibay having the ability to win games that the Pilots’ other pitchers can’t; it’s the way the Pilots play behind them that has Saavedra concerned.

The statistics are almost unbelievable: In the five games that Garibay has pitched, the Pilots have not committed an error. But in the four losses in which Garibay hasn’t pitched, they have committed 24, an average of six a game.

Certainly, Garibay has been overpowering this year--a 1.03 earned-run average with four complete games and three shutouts. But why the disparity in the Pilots’ defense on days when Garibay pitches versus days when he doesn’t?

Saavedra shook his head and laughed. “I can’t figure it out for the life of me,” he said.

Several minutes of baseball-talk later, several possible theories emerge:

* Whenever Garibay pitches, there is the possibility of a shutout, a no-hitter or even a perfect game. Banning’s players don’t want to be the goat responsible for ruining one of those possibilities with an error, and, thus, they conspire to play perfect defense behind him.

Banning’s other pitchers don’t have that potential, and the Pilots are more lax behind them.

“For some reason, it’s hard for me to motivate them when Carlos isn’t pitching,” Saavedra said. “They don’t have the same zeal to play behind anyone but Carlos.”

* Garibay possesses impeccable accuracy--he has given up only four walks (against 34 strikeouts) in 34 innings this year. Since he is always “around the plate,” Banning’s defense is prepared for the ball to be hit on the very first pitch.

With a less accurate pitcher, the defense tends to play back on its heels because it generally takes more pitches for a ball to be hit.

* Since Garibay gives up few hits and even fewer walks, it is less likely for there to be a man on base, which lessens the possibility of a baserunner-related error, such as a bad pickoff throw or a bad throw by the catcher trying to throw out a base-stealer. Thus, the Pilots are able to concentrate on the lone opponent, the one at the plate.

For his part, Garibay had no explanation either. While he acknowledged that the Pilots’ defense “has helped me out a lot of times,” he stopped short of taking credit for it.

“I know these other (pitchers) can do it,” Garibay said.

At 5-foot-10 and 165 pounds, Garibay hardly looks like an overpowering pitcher. But tell that to the Dorsey batters who couldn’t get their bats around on his fastballs Monday afternoon in Banning’s 13-5 victory.

Although Saavedra yanked him in the sixth inning, one short of securing his fifth consecutive complete game, Garibay earned his fifth win in five starts.

If it seems Garibay has burst onto the South Bay’s baseball scene overnight, that’s only because Banning was loaded with pitching talent last year, so much so that Garibay was stuck in right field and pitched only five innings.

Mike Busby, now in the St. Louis Cardinals’ organization, was The Times’ South Bay Player of the Year after compiling an 11-1 record with two no-hitters and a 0.66 ERA for Banning. In addition, Mark Chavez was 7-3 for the Pilots, who lost in the L.A. City 4-A Division title game to San Fernando last season.

With two standout pitchers and only two or three games a week, there was no room for a sophomore to crack the rotation, no matter how eager or persistent he may be (and Garibay was both, according to Saavedra).

“He really wanted to pitch, but I already had two good pitchers,” Saavedra said. “So we talked about it, and Carlos gave up. He said, ‘OK,’ and that was it. He accepted his mission.”

Maybe Garibay had a premonition of the success he would have this year and decided to be patient. Whatever his thinking was, it paid off. After spending last season learning from Busby, with whom he developed a close friendship, Garibay came into his own in Banning’s American Legion summer season.

“In the summer league, he became our No. 1 pitcher,” Saavedra said. “And he was proud of that. When you give someone that title, they try to uphold it. He really impressed me. He worked hard this summer defending that title, and when this (spring) season started, he was in great shape. He has an incredible work ethic.”

If indeed Garibay could sense something big was about to happen his junior year, it took him one start--against Hawthorne in the opener--to find out he was right.

In beating Hawthorne for the first of three consecutive shutouts, Garibay said he “had everything together. I knew it then. I started to gain confidence with every pitch.”

He has been so successful this year, in fact, that when he finally gave up a run on March 30 to Crenshaw, it was “kind of disappointing.” But after surviving the initial shock of being scored upon, Garibay saw the good side of it.

“If I start thinking I’m invincible, I’ll get drilled,” he said.

If Garibay ever felt he was invincible, that bubble was burst Monday when Dorsey scored four runs off him in six innings, ending his streak of complete games at four and raising his ERA above 1.00 for the first time this season.

“I can’t let myself get big-headed,” Garibay said.

By all indications Garibay appears to have a promising future. Saavedra said Garibay is ahead of where Busby was as a junior. That’s saying something considering that Busby was 9-4 with a 1.45 ERA and led the South Bay with 127 strikeouts as an 11th-grader.

Garibay, who wants to go to college instead of jumping straight to the pros when his high school career is over, doesn’t agree with Saavedra’s assessment. He hopes for nothing better in his prep career than to be as good as Busby.

“Maybe by next year,” he said.

As for the rest of the team, Saavedra can only hope he finds a way to motivate them when Garibay isn’t pitching. For the Pilots--who returned only two starters from last year’s Pacific League championship team--to contend with San Pedro for the title this year, they’ll have to solve this mystery.