SEATTLE — With four days off between starts, Ryan Feierabend has shown the Seattle Mariners over the past month that he’s a solid starting pitcher.
He’s not so bad with about two hours’ notice, either.
That’s all the time Feierabend had to prepare for the New York Yankees on Sunday, and it’s all he really needed.
With scheduled starter Carlos Silva scratched because of a back injury, Feierabend held the Yankees to five hits and two solo home runs in seven innings, leading the Mariners to a 5-2 victory over the Yankees at Safeco Field.
Feierabend said the short notice might have been the key.
“I’d never pitched against the Yankees before and against that caliber of team, you tend to sit on it and think about who’s in their lineup and what they’ve done in the past,” he said. “Today, all I had time to do was go over the gameplan and just pitch.”
Feierabend was dinged only by Derek Jeter’s home run in the first inning and Xavier Nady’s homer in the second.
“He’s got a lot of composure,” manager Jim Riggleman said, echoing what Feierabend’s coaches and managers in the minor leagues have said for years. “It seems like no matter what’s going on, he trusts his stuff. It’s his mental presence as much as anything. He has a mature feel about it. It’s like he’s a veteran out there.”
Feierabend, who turned 23 on Aug. 22, is part of the recent wave of young starting pitchers who have lifted the Mariners’ spirits for next year.
The victory was his first in the five starts since he joined the rotation last month, but he has pitched well in all but one of them.
And, it followed impressive outings this weekend by Brandon Morrow (one hit in 72/3 shutout innings Friday) and Ryan Rowland-Smith (seven hits and three runs in 61/3 innings Saturday) against the Yankees.
“After the solo shots to Jeter and Nady were done, I figured, ‘It can’t get any worse,’” Feierabend said. “I got outs.”
He bailed himself out of a second-and-third, one-out jam in the fourth, did the same with a nifty pickoff move in the fifth and retired 10 of the last 12 hitters he faced, including the final six.
The pickoff move ended a dicey situation with Jason Giambi batting in the fifth. Jeter stood on second and Alex Rodriguez on first after walks.
First baseman Bryan LaHair, playing behind the runner at first, noticed that Rodriguez was walking a little too casually off first base. He gave Feierabend a signal and broke toward the bag.
Feierabend’s throw trapped Rodriguez off first base while Jeter broke for third. LaHair then threw to third baseman Adrian Beltre, who tagged out Jeter for the third out.
“The backdoor pick is a play LaHair and I have done the last four or five years that we’ve been together (in the minor leagues),” Feierabend said. “It’s gotten to the point where we know each other so well that we know when to look for it and put it on.”
Added LaHair: “We probably did that 30 times in Tacoma and it probably worked 26 of those times.”
Bolstered by Jose Lopez’s two solo home runs, Adrian Beltre’s two-run homer, Raul Ibanez’s single for his 102nd RBI this season and J.J. Putz’s 98th career save, the Mariners beat the Yankees for the second time in three games.
Not only that, the Mariners have won three of their past four series. Of the seven victories in those series, the young starters on the staff have five of them — Rowland-Smith two and Feierabend, Morrow and Felix Hernandez one each.
“We’re getting a little respect around the league and if you can go out there and compete against the Yankees, that’s saying something,” Riggleman said.
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com
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