BALTIMORE — After Jordan Montgomery’s shortest outing of his brief major league career, CC Sabathia still came away impressed.
“He battled again without his best stuff,” Sabathia said after Montgomery and the Yankees lost, 3-2, to the Orioles at Camden Yards. “Most young pitchers in that spot against a team like that, it’s a blowout. But he’s always under control. Now, it’s just about getting experience.”
And Sabathia is doing what he can to speed up that process, taking the 24-year-old southpaw under his wing since the beginning of the regular season.
“We’re both lefty and throw a lot of the same pitches, so it’s been an easy relationship,” Sabathia said. “I first really started to pay attention to him this spring and thought I might be able to help.”
Montgomery’s lack of command — especially early — prevented him from going deep into Monday’s game. But given the fact that it took him 34 pitches and a visit from pitching coach Larry Rothschild to get through the first inning, his performance was at least somewhat respectable.
He surrendered one run in that lengthy opening frame and was hurt by a Starlin Castro fielding error in the third that led to a pair of unearned runs on a two-out double by Jonathan Schoop. But it was the long counts Montgomery found himself in that caused him to throw 100 pitches in just 4 ¹/₃ innings.
“He wasn’t dictating counts because he was behind,” Joe Girardi said. “[He’s] a young starter. He’s gonna have some growing pains.”
Following Rothschild’s first-inning trip to the mound, Montgomery struck out Trey Mancini to get out of the inning, but was consistently in trouble the rest of the way.
He pitched around a two-out double and walk in the second and gave up back-to-back, two-out singles in the fifth to end his day, but Jonathan Holder struck out the next two batters to get Montgomery off the hook.
“I want to be a guy who you can count on to eat innings,” Montgomery said. “I haven’t done a great job of that so far, but hopefully learning from CC will help. … He’s been doing this for 18 years and has won a lot of games, so if he sees a little bit of himself in me, I’m going to take advantage of that.”
The two will sit in the dugout, with Sabathia urging Montgomery to not let the game speed up too much, which is something that happened against Baltimore.
“I was a little rushed early and my pitches weren’t as sharp,” Montgomery said.
The lessons will continue Tuesday.
“I’m new at being the old guy,” Sabathia said. “It’s fun watching a young kid starting out and if I can pass along some knowledge, great.”