NEW YORK -- Nearly two decades after suffering a similar injury to his throwing shoulder, Curt Schilling said he thinks Yankees starter Michael Pineda could return from surgery in less than a year -- and that Pineda might be even better.

"He can be back better than he has ever been in 10 months," said Schilling, now an ESPN baseball analyst. "Maybe less, because he is younger. It is going to be 100 percent on him."

The Yankees have diagnosed Pineda, 23, with an anterior labral tear. The team says it will take Pineda one year before he will be on a major league mound. Surgery is scheduled for Tuesday.

"I was really surprised to see the 12-month-out thing," said Schilling, who suffered a superior labral tear in 1995.

Schilling, who won 216 games during his major league career, had the surgery when he was 28 years old. Ten months later, after rigorously following the rehab program, Schilling returned in May 1996 and threw seven shutout innings. He went on to throw more than 2,400 additional major league innings and may end up in the Hall of Fame.

"I came back after my surgery, throwing four to six miles harder than I did before," he said. "That is where the magic is. It is all about rehab. Most doctors can make you 100 percent well physically. I would tell you that it is 25 percent about the surgery and 75 percent about the rehab."

Dr. Craig D. Morgan performed the surgery on Schilling. Morgan said that pitchers take four months before they can pick up a ball.

With the advances in the science, Morgan believes Pineda possibly could pitch again in six to eight months.

The ability to hasten the recovery likely will have to a lot to do with Pineda's work ethic.

"These people have to develop a meticulous work ethic on this," Morgan said. "It is their life. They have to do it. Some of them are lazy. Some of them aren't.

"They are functional and good by six to eight months, but they are at their best the next year after that. It is kind of a spectrum of a comeback. Schilling was better than he was before he got hurt. The reason for that was that he bought into the exercise program for his total body, which made him a better pitcher than he was before he got hurt."

Schilling said the fact that Pineda came in out of shape doesn't help, but it has "absolutely" nothing to do with the injury. Pineda arrived at camp 20 pounds overweight.

"You have a lot of people speculating about his weight gain and blah, blah, blah," Schilling said. "It is all about the strength in the shoulder. He clearly had a very weak shoulder. When you have a weak shoulder, your shoulder will start to droop and you will start to tax muscles and you get tears."