TAMPA – For someone who hadn’t thrown off a mound since Feb. 26, Randy Johnson looked remarkably sharp during his 12-minute bullpen yesterday morning.

Johnson, who has been sidelined with a left calf injury, tossed 56 pitches in the bullpen adjacent to the main diamond at Legends Field. He pronounced himself “fine” and ready for tomorrow’s start against Atlanta at the Disney complex.

“That’s what we’re shooting for – unless I get hit by a car or something,” he said.

Johnson was scratched from a bullpen session last Tuesday and held out of the exhibition opener Thursday. The Big Unit said he was “a little rusty, because I haven’t thrown on the mound since the last time I threw BP.”

It didn’t look it, though. He pumped fastballs, sliders and splitters as catcher John Flaherty squatted and Yankee fans watched overhead on a pedestrian bridge leading into the ballpark. The fastballs popped Flaherty’s mitt, while the sliders exhibited a nasty sweeping motion.

“I thought it was excellent,” Flaherty said. “The split-finger, that was the first time I had ever seen that.

“He had that moving real well. His location was good. The slider was tight. Maybe out of the stretch a little bit he was leaving a little early, but that’s not unusual for a guy who hasn’t been on the mound for a while. But I thought all in all, he had to be real happy about it.”

After 14 warmups, Johnson chucked 35 pitches from the windup, 20 from the stretch and one final fastball from the windup to end his session. He was firing pitches like bullets from a machine gun.

“You can tell when he does his work, he’s there to do his work,” Flaherty said. “There’s not a whole lot of thought process in between, and he pushes himself physically, I’m sure.

“You’ve got to be ready back there, because you know he’s coming at you.”

Johnson didn’t discuss his side session for longer than a minute, but he admitted his slider felt “great.” Flaherty predicted that Johnson could use his splitter this year as a tertiary weapon after his top two pitches.

“Even if it doesn’t break a whole lot, it gives him a second off-speed (pitch), something that is slower,” Flaherty said. “Because when his fastball is firm and his slider is hard, he can just drop that change/split in every once in a while and give a different look.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a bread-and-butter pitch for him, because he’s a power pitcher, but it’ll just give him another look for the hitter to think about.”