NEW YORK -- Drew Pomeranz is heading into his start at Yankee Stadium Tuesday night with a fair amount of optimism.
The Red Sox pitcher is coming off his best outing of the season, one that saw his velocity finally creep up to 92 mph while finishing a six-inning outing against the Royals having allowed three runs. It was a significant step in the right direction for Pomeranz, whose spring training had been derailed due to injury.
"I don’t feel 100 percent where I want to be but I feel some of the things we worked on this week, I finally got them down toward the end of the game and settled in," he said. "It may be early-season stuff, trying to find my timing. It’s really hard to replicate the regular season."
As for how he got back on the right track, Pomeranz pointed to a variety of factors. But the idea that fixing a pitch-tipping problem was at the top of the list wasn't part of the equation, according to the pitcher.
"There is some potential for that, but at the same time I don’t really know because it’s not like the ball was jumping out of my hand and I was like, ‘Man, how are they hitting these pitches?’ I was throwing some pretty [expletive] pitches. I looked at a few things," Pomeranz said. "[Red Sox manager Alex Cora] told me what he was thinking. I played around with grabbing certain pitches on the mound. You want to look the same on every pitch."
The idea that there was even a semblance of telegraphing what pitch was coming doesn't faze Pomeranz. Why? As it turns out, he's been on that roller coaster before.
"In college one year I was tipping really bad and I got crushed until somebody told me four weeks later," said the lefty of his time with the University of Mississippi.
As it turned out, a player Pomeranz knew from the University of Arkansas was the one who let his friend know that word had gotten out around the Southeastern Conference. From that point on, the pitcher started his path back toward dominance, knowingly tantalizing opponents with the perceived tip only to go in a pitch direction they weren't expecting.
"I fixed it and the next start it was totally fine," Pomeranz said. "I went from dominating, to not dominating at all, to dominating just by changing things up. It’s part of the game. It’s not a bad thing. It’s my own fault if I’m doing something that noticeable. Sometimes you’re thinking about your mechanics and you’re not thinking about those other things."