Return Is Like a Dream for Weaver

VERO BEACH, Fla. —  Jeff Weaver is pumped, to use his word.

Pumped to have the opportunity to come home and pitch for his favorite team growing up in Simi Valley.

Pumped to be convinced that he has restored the mechanics and confidence damaged during his difficult and disappointing 1 1/2 seasons with the New York Yankees.

Pumped to be certain that he can retain the spot in the Dodger rotation that is currently his.

“I don’t see any reason I can’t be the No. 3 or 4 starter and go from there,” Weaver said.

The question, as Weaver starts today’s exhibition game against the Atlanta Braves and begins to defend his berth in a rotation that includes Hideo Nomo, Kazuhisa Ishii, Odalis Perez and Edwin Jackson, is this:

Can Manager Jim Tracy and pitching coach Jim Colborn keep the pump inflated in the wake of Weaver’s deflating experience in New York?

It is one of the most significant issues facing a team that again might need to burden its pitching given the lingering lineup deficiencies.

Said Tracy: “I’m not going to over-analyze his first two or three appearances this spring.”

Said Colborn: “He looks ready to compete. His mechanics have been solid and consistent.

“If there was a negative energy and momentum that snowballed in New York, he seems to be out from under it. The objective is to give him a chance to be the pitcher he can be.”

It is the first week of March. A year ago, Weaver had a sensational spring with the Yankees only to have it dissolve amid the Bronx summer, leaving him suspended between the rotation and bullpen.

He finished a season of 32 appearances and 24 starts with a 7-9 record and 5.99 earned-run average and had not pitched in 35 days when, with Yankee pitching options evaporating, he was called on to work the 11th inning in Game 4 of the World Series.

Amid the pressure of the 3-3 tie and the pleading of the Florida Marlin partisans in Pro Player Stadium, Weaver retired the side in order and walked off feeling on top of the world.

“I just knew we’d score and I’d get a ‘W’ in the World Series,” he said in reflection. “After all the previous problems, how great would that have been?”

Great, indeed, but it didn’t happen.

The Yankees didn’t score in the 12th, and Weaver yielded a full-count, game-winning homer to Alex Gonzalez leading off the Florida half.

It was nothing more than a 330-foot fly that hugged the left-field line, but it ignited the Marlins’ three-game, Series-clinching win streak and would translate to Weaver’s last competitive pitch for the Yankees, although he didn’t know it at the time.

In fact, the Yankees sent him to their Tampa training facility in November to work with pitching guru Billy Connors and told him he wouldn’t be traded.

“I was excited to go to Tampa and have the opportunity to try and figure out where I was from a mechanical and mental standpoint,” Weaver said. “I was told that I’d be back [with the Yankees] to try and dig myself out of the hole and I appreciated the support. Obviously, things changed, but I’m more than happy they did.”

New York traded Weaver, two minor leaguers and $3 million to the Dodgers for Kevin Brown in mid-December.

The Dodgers, privately wary of Weaver’s coming off his disappointing stint with the Yankees, tried to find alternatives but ultimately knew they had to get what they could. Brown wanted out, the Dodgers wanted the payroll savings and they couldn’t run the risk of retaining his unhappy presence in a clubhouse in which he wasn’t the most popular or effervescent figure to start with.

The Yankees, meantime, had lost starters Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and David Wells. They needed a proven veteran of Brown’s capability, and maybe the Gonzalez homer lingered in their mind, as they knew it would linger with fans already hostile to the young pitcher who had failed to sustain his promising emergence during his initial 3 1/2 seasons with the Detroit Tigers.

“Some of the things that happened to Jeff in New York were in his control and some weren’t,” Yankee General Manager Brian Cashman said. “It was kind of the Pigpen theory where there was always a dark cloud, as if nothing ever went right.

“I give Jeff credit for trying to fight through it, but New York can be an unforgiving town, and I’m not sure our fan base would have accepted bringing him back.

“I think Jeff can still be everything we thought he could be, and I believe he believes that, but it was in his best interest to try and climb out of his hole in another city.

“He’s always pitched well on the West Coast [3-1, 1.88 ERA in Anaheim], and I think he’ll benefit from going to the National League [with one less hitter to face] and working in a pitcher’s park like Dodger Stadium.”

Weaver’s acquisition by the Yankees in July 2002, part of a three-way trade with the Tigers and Oakland Athletics, was viewed as something of Steinbrennerian excess.

As the young ace of a deteriorating Detroit team, a first-round draft choice out of Fresno State in 1998 who would pitch only six minor league games before his big league arrival in 1999, Weaver won 33 games in his first three seasons, pitched 229 innings with 13 wins in 2001 and signed a four-year, $22.25-million contract in 2002 that obligates the Dodgers to $15.75 million over the next two years.

Weaver seemed secure, but a new administration headed by Dave Dombrowski recognized the need for a total makeover in Detroit. Weaver was a bargaining chip whose contract represented financial flexibility. There was also concern about his tendency to lose control on the mound and in the dugout over a bad play, of which there were many, or bad pitch.

“He isn’t the first young pitcher to have trouble handling adversity,” said Randy Smith, who was Dombrowski’s predecessor as general manager and is now with the San Diego Padres. “Jeff didn’t have a lot of minor league experience on which to lean. He was a work in progress.

“I know they were looking at an opportunity to improve the roster depth, but I was very surprised when they traded him. He’s one of the few guys in the prime of their careers to ever make a commitment to Detroit.”

Of what ensued in New York, Weaver sat at his spring locker and said he resented any perception that he simply collapsed amid the environment because it overlooks his positive periods there -- his role in helping the Yankees twice reach the postseason, his relief effectiveness late in 2002 (Manager Joe Torre was calling him “The Terminator”) and his early consistency as a starter last year when the rotation won its first 16 decisions, an unprecedented accomplishment.

“Look,” Weaver said, “I went from starting to the bullpen to starting to the bullpen. I was all over the map and I couldn’t get the routine down to mentally deal with it. It was tough. I had always been given the opportunity to go out there and work through my mistakes, but there’s no time for that in New York. I was in deep water when those opportunities weren’t there.”

Weaver admitted as well that he watched pitchers such as Clemens, Pettitte and Mike Mussina consistently ring up high strikeout totals and tried to be something he wasn’t by doing the same, “which just isn’t my style. I try to sink the ball, get through [a game] with the least amount of pitches possible, and I think I just tried to change my whole approach. When that happened, my mechanics and everything else fell apart and I just couldn’t get on my feet again.”

Weaver is confident now that he’s back standing.

“You take the good with the bad,” he said. “I think all the tough times I had there will help mold me into what I’ll be in the future.

“I feel I have everything back together and am throwing like I was last spring. I’m really excited with the way things are right now.”

Of course, there is still a month before the start of a season in which Weaver’s homecoming is only one of the reasons for a family celebration. His brother, Jered, a pitcher at Long Beach State, also is expected to be a first-round selection in the June draft, possibly the first player chosen.

Jered was widely pursued coming out of Simi Valley High, unlike his older brother, who had to walk on at Fresno State.

“I’ll always be grateful to Coach [Bob] Bennett for seeing something in the tryout and keeping me around,” Weaver said. “I hadn’t pitched a whole lot in high school and was physically immature when I went to Fresno. I had the chance there to grow into my body and learn how to pitch with it.”

Now a lean 6 feet 5 and 200 pounds, the blond Weaver at 27 is reminiscent in appearance and style, Torre was saying at the Yankee camp the other day, to Don Drysdale.

If Weaver puts the Big Apple behind him and starts to pitch like Big D, a lot of people will have reason to be pumped.