Pettitte Looks to Guide Youngsters

From Sweeny Murti:

Take a look at what Pettitte had to say about his young students after those seven shutout innings on Sunday picked up the Yanks after Hughes and Kennedy lost to the Orioles the previous two nights. It was like listening to Professor Pettitte lecture in a graduate level class on pitching:

“Sometimes what’s inside of you…you can’t put in other people. These guys have a great idea how to pitch and they’re figuring out that this is a very difficult league to pitch in. And they’re going to have to continue to go out there and figure out how to do it.

We can talk to them and tell them how to do it, but you gotta go out there and you gotta be mentally tough enough to get through certain situations.

It’s a long season, and it’s a battle, man, and you can’t get down. We’re gonna just grind our way through it. I hope they didn’t expect this to be easy. I hope they didn’t expect to come in here and just dominate this league. We gotta get better as a staff and hopefully we’ll start doing it this time around.”

Pettitte then tried to impress upon us how important it was to keep their spirits up during rough stretches like this:

“I talk to those guys, y’all know how close I am to them. You try to keep them positive. You don’t want them to lose it mentally, that’s the big thing, and just trust their stuff. They’ve got great stuff, they both know how to pitch extremely well and they’re gonna be alright. Sometimes mentally you can get down a little bit here, so that’s the most important thing for those guys.”

If there's one pitcher on the Yankees staff that Hughes and Kennedy should try to emulate it's Andy Pettitte (besides that whole HGH thing of course). Pettitte has an 89-91 MPH fastball and still has no trouble attacking the zone and getting people out. I'm starting to wonder if maybe Hughes and Kennedy should have had their lockers next to Pettitte's in spring training instead of Mussina's.