ST Game Thread: Pineda’s First Impression

For the first three months of the offseason, we wondered how and when the Yankees were going to upgrade their rotation. In one fell swoop on Friday the 13th, they added a hard-throwing youngster and a wily ol’ veteran to shore things up. Michael Pineda is that hard-throwing youngster, and all eyes will be on him today as he makes his Spring Training debut for the Yankees. Considering that Jesus Montero went the other way in the trade, the attention and scrutiny will only be greater. Here’s the starting nine…

LF Brett Gardner
CF Curtis Granderson
RF Nick Swisher
DH Raul Ibanez
1B Eric Chavez
C Russell Martin
SS Eduardo Nunez
3B Bill Hall
2B Jayson Nix

RHP Michael Pineda

Available Pitchers: RHP David Robertson is scheduled to follow Pineda. RHP Dan Burawa, LHP Cesar Cabral, LHP Juan Cedeno, RHP Brett Marshall, RHP Adam Miller, LHP Michael O’Connor, RHP Ryan Pope, RHP Graham Stoneburner also made the trip, but it’s unclear who will actually pitch and who just tagged along for the ride.

Available Position Players: C Gus Molina, 1B Jorge Vazquez, 2B Corban Joseph, SS Ramiro Pena, 3B Brandon Laird, LF Zoilo Almonte, CF Melky Mesa, RF Colin Curtis, and DH Justin Maxwell will replace the starters. C/1B Jose Gil, C J.R. Murphy, C Gary Sanchez, IF David Adams, and IF Doug Bernier also made the trip.

The game will start at 1:05pm ET and can be seen on both MLB Network and MLB.tv. The blackout has been lifted in the Tri-State Area. In honor of Pineda’s first start, we’ve got a special game chat today. I can’t promise I’ll stick around for all nine innings, but I will give live pitch-by-pitch for at least Pineda. Fun starts after the jump…