Yankees’ pitcher Jhony Brito bounces back in start vs. Angels

BRONX — Jhony Brito didn’t have a perfect outing for the Yankees in Wednesday night’s extra-innings win over the Los Angeles Angels, but it was a step in the right direction after a very rough one in his last appearance.

Brito pitched over 4.1 innings in the 3-2 victory, which saw him allow three hits and just one run in a game that the rookie pitcher needed to show he could be competitive in. The righty did walk a career-high three batters, but he did hold the Angels at bay for the most part until he exited the game in the fifth inning.

The only earned run he did allow occurred after he handed the ball over to reliever Michael King, who helped the Yankees out of Brito’s only significant jam of the after he allowed runners on second and third. Brito struck out three batters on Wednesday night.

“I thought he did a really good job of mixing, you know, using his sinker and his four-seam fastball,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said about Brito’s performance. “And using it to both sides of the plate. He just made a lot of mistakes with the sinker last outing, where he was up with it and it was running back to the heart of the plate a number of times. I thought today he was better, not only north and south, but up and down with the four-seam and the sinker. I thought he was on the sides of the plate with it.”

Boone said that the Angeles made him work for some of his outs, but that he didn’t break when they tried to break through offensively. It was a promising sign for the young pitcher who has been thrust into a starting role this season due to injuries to the Yankees’ starting rotation.

Brito was lit up in his last outing on April 13 against the Minnesota Twins where he gave up seven runs in two-thirds of an inning and was only able to get two outs before he was pulled. His ERA skyrocketed but dipped down to a 5.40 after his fourth major league start.

The Yankees pitcher said after his last start, he took it in stride and went right back to work.

“At this level of baseball, there’s a lot of learning,” Brito said. “So the following day you sat down with the pitching coach as we usually do to go over the start and we start preparing for the next one. Then we fine-tune tune, find key takes from outing, positives and things that we want to improve on and you keep up with your routine. Start preparing for the next one.”