Baby Bombers
The Baby Bombers
The Inside Story of the Next Yankees Dynasty
Bryan Hoch
Foreword by Mark Teixeira
Copyright
Diversion Books
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008
New York, NY 10016
www.DiversionBooks.com
Copyright © 2018 by Bryan Hoch
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com
Front cover images: Top, Aaron Judge © Rob Cuni; Middle, Gary Sanchez © Rob Cuni; Bottom, Luis Severino © Arturo Pardavila III
First Diversion Books edition March 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63576-418-5
Table of Contents
Dedication
FOREWORD by Mark Teixeira
PROLOGUE. American League Division Series, Game 5
CHAPTER 1. Changing of the Guard
CHAPTER 2. The Knighted Successor
CHAPTER 3. Repairing the Pipeline
CHAPTER 4. Unleash the Kraken
CHAPTER 5. Bird is the Word
CHAPTER 6. Deadline Dealing
CHAPTER 7. Passing the Torch
CHAPTER 8. Spring Forward
CHAPTER 9. All Rise
CHAPTER 10. Miami Heat
CHAPTER 11. Aces High
CHAPTER 12. The Future is Now
CHAPTER 13. Playoff Push
CHAPTER 14. Lights, Camera, October
CHAPTER 15. Take It to the Limit
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Connect with Diversion Books
For Connie
As George McFly said, “You’re my density.”
And for Penny
May you always swing for the fences.
FOREWORD
If there is one thing I learned during my career in Major League Baseball, it’s that a championship roster requires a blend of experience and youth. The last Yankee dynasty ended with five World Series rings for the “Core Four.” I was lucky enough to join Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera, and Derek Jeter for their last title in 2009. In the years following that 2009 World Championship, our Yankee teams became more reliant than ever on veterans, and were short on the energy and talent that young players bring to the field. Yankee Universe was looking for the next Core Four to bring a winning dynasty back to the Bronx. Even better, if these young players were homegrown.
Enter the “Baby Bombers.”
I first met Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Greg Bird, and Aaron Judge years ago in early spring training when major and minor leaguers worked out together. I saw their individual talents right away, but more importantly, I could confidently say about any of them, “Hey, this guy gets it.” For those unfamiliar with the term, when a prospect not only has talent, but also the intangibles and work ethic to want to be a great major leaguer, he “gets it.” And I knew it wouldn’t be long before these kids who got it were called up to the parent club.
When I played with those guys during their big league stints in the 2015 and 2016 seasons, everybody in the clubhouse realized that what we were seeing then in small samples, we had the potential to see for a long time as their careers developed: Sanchez’s throwing arm and bat control, Severino’s electric stuff, Bird’s sweet swing, and Judge’s immense power.
All of these tools were on display in the 2017 season, a campaign that ended one win shy of a World Series berth. While watching the 2017 playoffs, what jumped out at me wasn’t that the Baby Bombers were making key plays every game, it was that these ballplayers who were so amazingly good, were going to get even better. Sanchez will improve behind the plate, Severino will perfect his changeup and add another devastating pitch to his arsenal, Bird will put up monster numbers when healthy for a full year, and Judge will continue to learn better plate discipline to complement his power.
When I think of the groundwork that has been laid with these Baby Bombers, I can’t help but get excited (almost giddy) to watch them grow up in pinstripes. I tell Yankee fans to get ready for another run of championships because this roster will be full of talented players for a very long time. Yankees general manager Brian Cashman has done an unbelievable job of stockpiling talent in the major and minor leagues, and he’ll have the payroll flexibility to add in free agency as well as minor league depth to make key deadline trades for years to come.
I am so happy that Bryan Hoch is telling the story of the Baby Bombers, a story that I was lucky enough to witness up close and personal for the first few chapters. Bryan is in the Yankee clubhouse every day and understands the highs and lows of a young baseball player becoming a star. Even better, he understands the science and art of scouting, development, and front-office strategy.
I hope that you enjoy reading about the Baby Bombers as much as watching them. As you know, these guys never seem to disappoint!
Mark Teixeira
ESPN Baseball Analyst
New York Yankees 2009-2016
2009 World Series Champion
PROLOGUE.
American League Division Series, Game 5
October 11, 2017
The hardest thrower in the history of baseball placed his left foot along the rubber on the mound of Cleveland’s Progressive Field, oblivious to the roars being unleashed by a frenzied, towel-waving crowd of 37,802 attempting to will their hometown Indians into extending their season for a few more precious minutes. Aroldis Chapman trained his eyes upon catcher Gary Sanchez as he looked for a sign, his New York Yankees one strike away from completing a historic and unlikely comeback in the American League Division Series.
Fastball, Sanchez suggested. His fingers flashed the sequence quickly, so as to conceal them from Carlos Santana, the runner at second base. Cradling the baseball in his left hand, Chapman nodded, rotating his digits expertly around the seams and bringing his glove to a high set in front of his face. Chapman’s fluid motion brought his right knee into his chest, generating immense torque before the baseball was released from his hand, hissing toward home plate.
A radar gun clocked the ball’s velocity at 101 mph, remarkable for most pitchers but another day at the office for Chapman, as the hurler’s thirty-second offering of that sixty-one-degree, overcast evening buzzed up and in toward Austin Jackson. The outfielder flinched, jerking his body toward the third-base dugout as the ball smacked into Sanchez’s glove.
Jeff Nelson, the home plate umpire, raised his right hand and jabbed the air with his left, signaling a third strike. Chapman clenched his fists and screamed toward the sky, addressing no one and everyone all at once. Sanchez tucked the ball into the back right pocket of his uniform pants, trotted to the mound and was the first to embrace Chapman. The battery was quickly surrounded by their teammates, as they hugged and shook hands to celebrate their advance to the AL Championship Series.
As the Yankees charged off the diamond and through the dugout runway that led to the visiting clubhouse, they seemed to be drawn magnetically toward the dozens of champagne bottles that waited on ice in the center of their dressing area, and their hoots and hollers echoed in the concrete corridor. Plastic sheeting had been tacked over their belongings and the industrial-strength gray carpet, creating the appearance of a boozy backyard Slip ‘N Slide.
Goggles were strapped on and corks were popped as the team enjoyed their third—and ultimately, final—celebration of the year. They had also doused each other with bubbly after clinching a postseason berth with a September 23 victory over the Blue Jays in Toronto, and again after prevailing over the Twins in the American League Wild Card game on October 3 at Yankee Stad
ium. Considering the stakes, the stage, and the opponent, this Cleveland edition of the ongoing party seemed to signal that great things were in the very near future. Not bad for a young team that had been widely expected to endure a rebuilding season.
The 2017 Yankees exceeded expectations all season long, highlighted by their comeback to defeat the Indians in the ALDS. New York was the tenth team to recover from an 0-2 deficit in a best-of-five postseason series. (© David Richard-USA TODAY Sports)
“They just keep getting better and better, to be honest,” power-hitting phenom Aaron Judge said, squinting through the droplets while pitcher Luis Severino attacked him with an overflowing bottle of Napa Valley sparkling wine. “This was a pretty huge win against an incredible Indians team.”
The Yanks had come out swinging to win three straight games and upend Cleveland—a 102-win force during the regular season—in an epic ALDS. By doing so, the Yankees became the tenth team to recover from an 0–2 deficit in a best-of-five postseason series, and all of the “Baby Bombers” had been smack dab in the middle of the action.
First baseman Greg Bird connected for what may have been the team’s most important home run of the postseason in Game 3 of the ALDS, backing a dominant Masahiro Tanaka outing with a seventh-inning drive to right field off Andrew Miller––an intimidating left-hander who’d surrendered five homers to left-handed hitters since the beginning of the 2015 season. Bird’s deep drive represented the only run of that game.
No less important had been the contributions from the talented young duo of Judge and Gary Sanchez. They had been key cogs in the offense all season long, combining to belt 85 homers, but it was the young stars’ defense that earned plaudits that night. Sanchez made several blocks on Tanaka’s hellacious splitter that saved runs, including a fourth-inning sequence that froze Jason Kipnis at third base after a one-out triple. The welts that Sanchez absorbed allowed Tanaka to keep his pitches diving out of the strike zone, and the Indians’ lineup flailed helplessly.
Bird’s homer came one inning after Judge’s six-foot-seven, 282-pound frame crashed into the ten-foot wall in right field, his leaping grab bringing back what could have been a two-run homer off the bat of shortstop Francisco Lindor. Chants of “M-V-P!” echoed throughout the crowd, as they had all season for the rookie standout, and they spilled into the continuation of action as the Bronx faithful applauded their new favorite.
“That’s what it’s all about,” Judge said. “That’s what this team loves. Our backs are up against the wall, and then we come out swinging. That’s what we do.”
Pitching in front of a raucous crowd at Yankee Stadium, Severino rewarded the team’s confidence in Game 4 of the ALDS, bouncing back from an awful outing in the Wild Card game to pick up the win with a nine-strikeout performance. Showing off a thick gold chain that jangled out of his uniform shirt, Severino’s right hand unleashed fastballs that buzzed between 97 and 100 mph all evening. No Tribe hitter was rushing to the bat rack in order to face him.
His bat silenced to that point by Cleveland’s pitching staff, Judge broke through with his first hit of the ALDS, raking a two-run double that capped a five-run second inning and sent right-hander Trevor Bauer to an early exit. Sanchez completed the scoring in the sixth with his second homer of the postseason, an opposite-field bash that put the game out of reach.
In the series opener, the Indians had blanked New York before dealing them a gut-punch for the ages in Game 2, when manager Joe Girardi failed to challenge a hit-by-pitch on Lonnie Chisenhall. That set up Lindor’s sixth-inning grand slam off Chad Green, bringing the Indians back to life in a game that the Yanks believed had been put away.
“It was tough, but I feel like the guys were in good spirits, as good as we could be,” Bird said. “We knew we still had work to do and we weren’t out of it yet.”
So, they were here again in Cleveland, the home of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a river that once caught fire, and where a ten-story banner of NBA superstar LeBron James is proudly displayed in the shadows of their baseball stadium. At age twenty-seven, shortstop Didi Gregorius was a few years too old for the Bomber to be considered a “Baby,” but he had represented a key figure in the team’s roster turnaround. Now, he was about to take a boisterous Game 5 crowd out of the game, mashing a first-inning homer that stunned ace Corey Kluber.
When Gregorius doubled his fun by crushing a hanging curveball out of the yard two innings later, Kluber was on his way to the showers and the Yankees were rolling. As David Robertson completed 2⅔ scoreless innings and Gardner worked an epic twelve-pitch at-bat that produced a hit and two more runs, the “Big Buck Hunter Pro” cabinet arcade machine that had been shared by members of every American League club was being wheeled out of the visiting clubhouse, with workers behind the scenes preparing for the bubbly precipitation that seemed certain to come.
No one hit baseballs harder in 2017 than Aaron Judge, who was unanimously selected as the American League’s Rookie of the Year. He led the AL in runs scored (128), home runs (52), and walks (127). (© David Richard-USA TODAY Sports)
On the stadium’s suite level, Hal Steinbrenner sported a blue blazer across his shoulders and a satisfied grin on his face while he playfully jockeyed for position in a crowded elevator with his sister, Jennifer. The youngest son of George and Joan Steinbrenner, the forty-seven-year-old was handsome with a thick head of perfectly coiffed brown hair, and he preferred to steer the Yankees in a much different fashion than his bombastic father had.
After taking over as the team’s managing general partner and day-to-day control person in 2008, Steinbrenner had been among the most vocal proponents in directing the organization toward a future that could be both exciting and cost-effective. As Steinbrenner made his way toward the celebration on the stadium’s basement level, he was aware of the outside perception that this Yankees team had overachieved. It was a sentiment that he had vehemently disagreed with.
“That clubhouse is one of the best we’ve ever had,” Steinbrenner said. “You saw it during the season, even in the times that they weren’t playing well. Every time I would go down to the clubhouse during a homestand, it just seemed like it was always the same. You wouldn’t be able to tell if they won twenty in a row or lost twenty in a row. They’re always loose, they’re always confident, they’ve always got each other’s back. And I don’t think [their success] is a surprise to them at all.”
As they bounced and splashed joyously in that room, Judge called the experience “a dream come true,” but he wasn’t shocked that the Yankees had been able to overcome Cleveland. It was a story that Judge had seen and participated in many times before. Those off-Broadway performances in places like Charleston, Tampa, Trenton, and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre had prepared Judge and his teammates for moments like this.
“There’s a lot of fight. We fight and we fight and we fight,” Judge said. “It’s incredible to watch. A lot of these guys I’ve gone through the minor leagues with. To see them develop and turn into what they have now, it’s amazing.”
As the revelry tapered off, a charter plane sat at one of the gates of Hopkins International Airport, waiting to ferry the Yankees to their next destination: a showdown with the Astros to decide which team would have the honor of representing the American League in the World Series. For everyone who had set foot in that room on that gleeful night in Cleveland, there was an overwhelming sense that the Baby Bombers’ journey had only begun.
CHAPTER 1.
Changing of the Guard
Two years, seven months, and nineteen days had passed since Derek Jeter’s final Yankee Stadium at-bat, and as the longtime captain tugged on a three-piece royal blue suit and walked the hallways of his baseball alma mater, retirement seemed even more enjoyable than he had anticipated. No longer was he forced to check into a Rust Belt hotel at 4:00 a.m. or to keep an eye on the weather forecast, unless it was to check on a tee time. Your calendar opens to a great number of possibilities when you no longer have to try to
win the World Series each and every year.
Jeter scaled the steps leading to the first-base dugout and found himself surrounded by players nearly half his age, milling about in a set of pink pinstriped uniforms that the team had been issued in observance of Mother’s Day. Offering a friendly grin, Jeter watched as his outstretched right hand was swallowed into the meaty palm of twenty-five-year-old right fielder Aaron Judge, who held a good four-inch, eighty-seven-pound advantage over Jeter’s final listed playing measurements.
Now forty-three, Jeter said he had not watched much baseball immediately following his retirement, eager to create some distance from the sport that had dictated his every action from February to October (and occasionally November) for more than two decades. Of late, he had found himself flipping on the TV in his Tampa, Florida, home more often, checking in on the only organization he had ever played for. As a child, Jeter’s favorite Yankee had been Dave Winfield, a towering right fielder with power. Now, all these years later, Jeter was becoming an Aaron Judge fan.
“He’s had a tremendous start to his career, but more importantly, he handles himself well,” Jeter had said two days earlier in Rockefeller Center’s Studio 6-B, where he taped an interview segment with Jimmy Fallon for The Tonight Show. “He’s a good person, he works hard, he has the right demeanor and attitude, and hopefully he has a long career.”
Judge said he was humbled by the comment, calling it “incredible.” Their careers had hardly intersected to that point; Jeter had been on the disabled list for most of the 2013 season, including the day that Judge signed his first professional contract and was rewarded with an invitation to the Oakland Coliseum, where he whacked batting practice homers with the big league team. Judge was across the street in minor league camp while Jeter went through the paces of his final spring training in 2014, but the parallels between the stars seemed to be evident on this May afternoon in 2017.