Bradenton, Fla., February 26, 2014 — The season of 2014 Yankee Spring games, at least the ones against major league opposition, got off to a good start on Wednesday with a game vs. the Pirates in Bradenton. That the team scored two runs in both the first and second innings signifies this, but it doesn’t really describe it. New leadoff man Jacoby Ellsbury reached base three straight times, and scored twice. And the offense at the catching position the Yanks are unveiling this year had a good debut, as lefty-hitting backstop Brian McCann hit the third pitch he saw for a sharp rbi single, tellingly a bit to the left of second base.

Ivan Nova had a decent first start, though a walk in each of the first two innings got him into trouble, and the Pirates scored two once Bruce Billings came on once Nova had passed 35 pitches. Young shortstop Yangervis Solarte, in for Eduardo Nunez (scratched due to flu symptoms), had a great game, with a single and two-run homer. And the nifty play he made on Neil Walker’s soft grounder up the middle kept the Pirates off the board in the first. He did make an error in the second, failing to pick up a grounder, but it’s doubtful he had a play, the reason he rushed it.

Still, the Yanks had the 4-2 lead through three, and Dellin Betances wasn’t just solid retiring six of seven in the fourth and fifth; he was sharp. He broke pitches in on hitters’ hands, dominated with a little heat, but he had a nice touch on some breaking stuff too. Almost rounding out the pitching line on the day, Preston Claiborne picked up where he left off last year, striking out two in a tough spot, and Cesar Cabral pitched around a single in the eighth.

Spring Training games may be easier on the players, on the manager, on the coaches, but they aren’t really on the diehard fan, the pinstripe-clad doofus who knows the games mean nothing, but who can’t seem to tone it down, and pushes for a win every single time. (Did I just call myself a doofus? OK. Guilty. Clearly, disappointment at 73 degrees beats out success at 27.) Not only should the game outcomes not matter; it’s logical to expect a bad result, that someone in the 20-25 players used is going to have a bad day.

Case in point, on February 26, 2011, the Yanks took a 4-3 lead vs. the Phillies to the seventh inning in Tampa until a two-run rally against young righthander Eric Wordekemper turned the tables in a 5-4 loss. Two years later, playing in Clearwater this time, the Phillies plated three seventh-inning runs off Zach Nuding to eke out a 4-3 victory.

And this day, Chase Whitley, a Yankee draftee since 2010 who relieved at the AAA level the last two years, relieved Betances and pitched the sixth, but failed to get an out in the seventh. The Yanks had just increased their lead to 5-2 on a Mason Williams rbi double, so the lead was still safe following a leadoff single. But Whitley hit Jeff Decker with a 55-footer on a 1-2 count, so backup catcher Tony Sanchez’s booming home run to center tied the game. Compounding his problems, Chase failed on a 1-2 count again, walking one-time Yank Chris Dickerson and setting up the losing run. The Pirates scored him, and won 6-5 going away.

In game notes, aside from ex-Yanks Dickerson, fellow former pinstripers Russell Martin and Jose Tabata had a walk between them, and did not figure in the scoring. Washington Heights star third baseman Pedro Alvarez got the crowd going with impressive big swings, but struck out his first two times. The Pirates played McCann pretty much straight away with runners on the corners in the first, but employed the only overshift of the day (on either side) the second time McCann batted. With Mark Teixeira not scheduled to play until the end of next week, the first-basemen-thin visitors used second baseman Corban Joseph at first, substituting him with Jose Gil, who is starting his 10th minor league season, in the fifth.

With the game played at 73 degrees under cloudy skies with a chance of showers, there was no rain until almost two hours after the game. The Yankees host the Pirates under similar conditions Thursday afternoon.

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!