CHICAGO — After facing batters Saturday, Michael Pineda is scheduled to pitch two innings in an extended spring training game Tuesday in Tampa. If that goes well, Pineda will throw in a second extended game so the environment can be controlled.
After that, the right-hander could be ready for a minor league rehab assignment.
“When he starts throwing three or four innings [in minor league rehab games] and bounces back, you know you are fairly close as long as there are no setbacks,” Joe Girardi said before the Yankees slugged the White Sox, 7-1 Sunday. “You would like to have him ready to go 85 pitches.”
Pineda is on the DL with a strained terres major muscle high in the back and in the area of the right shoulder that required surgery and forced him to miss the past two seasons.
He was 2-2 with a 1.83 ERA in four starts before being suspended for 10 games for applying pine tar to his body. While on the shelf, he suffered the injury in a simulated game.
Brian Roberts got drilled in the back of the right shoulder with a 95 mph fastball from Javy Guerra in the sixth inning and homered in the eighth.
Friday night he fouled a ball off the right knee and didn’t play Saturday.
“It wasn’t the best series I have ever had physically, but we came out with two wins and move on,” said Roberts, who said he will be ready to play Monday in St. Louis.
Carlos Beltran will take dry swings Monday to test the right elbow that houses a bone spur and is being treated with cortisone. If Beltran feels good, the next step is swinging at pitches. If Beltran feels pain, surgery that would possibly cost him eight-to-12 weeks of the regular season might be needed.
Shawn Kelley will test his balky lower back by playing catch Monday. Kelley suffered a setback last Monday when he woke up feeling discomfort after a throwing session.
Girardi wouldn’t guess when CC Sabathia might be ready to come off the DL.
“He is not doing a lot. He is rehabbing in the pool,” Girardi said of Sabathia, who is out with a degenerative condition in his right knee. “We are still a ways away.”
Francisco Cervelli might not have a job to come back to, but the reports Girardi gets on the catcher indicate he could be ready to come off the DL on June 12, the first day Cervelli can leave the 60-day DL.
“He is doing well, he ran the bases [Saturday]. I would think he would be ready by that time,” Girardi said.
When Cervelli went on the shelf with a Grade 2 right hamstring injury, the Yankees promoted John Ryan Murphy over Austin Romine, and the youngest catcher in the big leagues (23) has impressed. He is hitting .378 (14-for-37) in 18 games.
Cervelli is out of options and Murphy isn’t, so the Yankees could keep both by sending Murphy to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.