Ted Lilly insisted that the pitch he threw at Scott Spiezio's head last Sunday was not meant to hit the Angels' batter. Major League Baseball saw the incident a little differently, handing the young left-hander a six-game suspension Thursday. An appeal was filed by the MLB Players' Association, delaying the start of the suspension. Lilly, who is scheduled to start for New York in Oakland on Friday, will make the start pending the appeal. "I was shocked (by the suspension). There were no fights. There were warnings. And that was it," said Lilly via a Yankees spokesman. "It was not my intention to hit Spiezio and an appeal has been filed by the Players Association. I'm just going to pitch Friday and wait and see what happens with the appeal."

Lilly was not with the team in Tampa on Thursday, as he flew to Oakland a day early in preparation for his start on Friday. Yankees Manager Joe Torre was not pleased with the decision to suspend Lilly, citing a conversation he had with MLB Vice President of On-Field Operations Frank Robinson, who handed down the suspension. "I can't understand it," Torre said before Thursday's game. "Frank Robinson called me up the other day and asked my opinion. I was as candid as I could be with him not knowing, and I still can't tell you at this minute, if Lilly was trying to send a message or not. I know for one thing he doesn't want to hit him in the head, he has no track record of that." After Angels pitcher Ramon Ortiz hit Derek Jeter in the hand with a pitch in the bottom of the fifth on Sunday, Lilly came out for the sixth inning and hit Spiezio in the helmet with his first pitch. Torre removed Lilly from the game after both benches were warned, but no one was ejected from the game for the incident. "The umpire didn't think it was worth throwing him out of the game for, so if he doesn't throw him out of the game, how the hell can you suspend him for six games?" Torre said. "We're going to give (Lilly) every bit of support we can give him. He's just trying to win a ballgame. That's first and foremost with us even with the veterans, let alone the the kids." Torre said that while he was disappointed with the decision, he was equally as upset with the way Robinson dealt with him. "I spent 5-10 minutes on the phone with Frank the other day. All of a sudden, I found out he's suspended for six days," Torre said. "I just called him today and told him 'Don't do me any favors, don't ask my opinion anymore.' He wasn't very pleased and I don't give a darn. I gave him fair warning. I told him 'I want you to hear it from me before you read it in the papers. I'm just not pleased at all. I can't understand it. ... That's an insult to me that you want my opinion yet ignore the whole thing." "It didn't last long," Torre said of his call with Robinson. "He hung up on me. I wasn't very nice though. I may have hung up on me too, I don't know."