Girardi will bring Yankees starters along slowly

TAMPA, Fla. - Early in the offseason, Joe Girardi thought about a potential issue and called Yankees pitching coach Dave Eiland to talk about it.

The concern, the manager said Thursday, was the heavy workload required of CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Andy Pettitte last season, particularly in the postseason, and how to handle them in spring training.

One solution to lessen their load was to not have the trio, as well as Javier Vazquez, throw their customary bullpen sessions on Day 1 of spring training. They won't throw one today, either.

"We want to ease all these guys into it to make sure they're absolutely physically prepared to go out and have that same kind of workload," Girardi said.

Sabathia, who will start the spring training opener March 3 against Pittsburgh and the season opener in Boston April 4, won't throw his first bullpen until Saturday. "CC's going to start the first game in spring training, so why are the other guys throwing extra bullpens, in a sense, because they're not going to start the first game?" Girardi said. "We thought we could cut it back a little bit."

Including the postseason, Sabathia pitched 2661/3 innings, Burnett 2341/3 innings and Pettitte 2251/3 innings in 2009. Pettitte is 37, Burnett 33 and Sabathia 29.

"I talked to Dave about it and that's why we're trying to take some measures to make sure they're where we want them to be physically all year long," Girardi said. "So that is something of a concern or we probably wouldn't have changed it."