SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.  A month after winning his American League Cy Young award in 2002, Barry Zito relaxed on a couch in his parents’ home in California and discussed what the hardware meant.  Despite an 11-13 record and a 4.53 E.R.A. last season, his first with the Giants, Barry Zito is considered the staffs ace.  Keep up with the latest preseason news on The Timess baseball blog.  “The Cy Young’s not going to get me any more wins, it’s just going to get people to talk like I should get more wins,” he said, adding, “When you really start to dominate is when you get humbled by the game and basically get your butt handed to you.”  Zito was more right then than his pitching has been since. After his 23-5 season in 2002, Zito has been good but not great; and the gargantuan seven-year, $126 million contract he signed before last season advertises more what he isn’t than what he is. He pitched well in an exhibition game Friday for the San Francisco Giants, but Zito’s ghastly spring training has left Giants fans thinking that although one Barry (Bonds) is gone, their other Barry is missing.  “Whatever people think they’re going to think  I still have to go forward with what I’m doing,” said Zito, a left-hander who will turn 30 in May. “Obviously I care about the fans and what the fans think and those things, but I can’t take that out to the mound with me.”  Zito entered Friday’s start with one of the most shocking pitching lines of the spring: a 14.92 earned run average, 21 hits, 10 walks and not one strikeout in 12 2/3 innings, covering 67 batters. Some of that derived from his tinkering with his windup; it began to click Friday with excellent results. He finally struck out a batter  actually four  and crisply held an imposing White Sox lineup to two hits in five and two-thirds shutout innings, deflating his E.R.A. to 10.31.  Zito’s unsteadiness follows his difficult season with the Giants, when he had a horrible first half and finished 11-13 with a 4.53 E.R.A. Those who believed his contract  the largest ever for a pitcher at the time  purchased results were left aghast. Zito’s fastball had decreased several miles an hour to a more hittable 84, and he fell behind in too many counts for his excellent curveball to be effective.  Zito now acknowledges that he let the pressure of the contract get to him, and he is determined to return to the more imposing pitcher he is known to be. Then again, that reputation was largely built from 2000 to 2002 as he emerged as one of the best lefties in the sport. In the five seasons since, with no notable physical problems, he is 66-59 with a 3.98 E.R.A., which is far more Javier Vázquez than Johan Santana.  Giants Manager Bruce Bochy said that recent history had not prompted him to recalibrate his expectations of Zito. He remains the Giants’ opening day starter, their ace, and the veteran to whom the team’s promising young starters (particularly Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum) look up.  “When he hits the mound, we expect to win, and we expect Barry to give us a chance to win,” Bochy said. “That’s not ever going to change for us. That’s not a thought for me right now, to consider a point where we need to change anything.”  With Bonds’s exit leaving a punchless lineup, the Giants’ starting pitching is their primary way to compete in the difficult National League West. As Giants outfielder Dave Roberts said, “We’ve got pitchers who are great complements, but it all starts with Barry.”  Scouts who have watched Zito since 2000 said that hitters had learned to lay off his looping curveball on the first pitch. The statistics bear that out. According to Inside Edge, Zito began with 57 percent fastballs and 27 percent curveballs in his Cy Young season, and those numbers have steadily diverged to last year’s split of 68-15. His fastball also doesn’t challenge hitters early; he throws it for strikes a relatively low 54 percent of the time, often leaving him 1-0.  “Obviously, I let the team down a lot of times, and I wanted to pitch better for the guys, for management and those things,” Zito said of his 2007 season. “But it’s just the learning curve that I had to go through.”  Despite a strong finish last season, Zito decided to alter his windup this spring, keeping his hands chest-high as he kicks his right leg, rather than raising his hands over and behind his head. The reduced movement was supposed to make his release point more consistent, and improve accuracy and even velocity.  He got hammered. Zito maintained that spring training was the time to experiment and adjust, but his results were so awful that he and Bochy decided that it was time to return to competitive mode for his final two exhibition starts. Zito kept the new delivery on Friday, but he focused more on results. His success was reminiscent of his heyday with the Oakland A’s.  The Giants only hope that pitcher takes the mound in the regular season.  “It’s always good to have something to base confidence off of,” Zito said afterward, “instead of trying to just have it.”
With a new windup, Giants pitcher Barry Zito, the 2002 American League Cy Young winner, is trying to live up to expectations.