Baby Bombers Page 11
“This organization has never been [like] this,” Beltran said. “But it’s the new baseball, man. It’s the new generation. Organizations no longer are making dumb decisions.”
The only member of the Yankees’ starting rotation at that time who had been developed through the team’s farm system, Nova said that he was running on a treadmill at 3:55 p.m. that afternoon at Yankee Stadium when he looked at the clock, thinking to himself, “OK, I’m not going to get traded. I’m going to stay here.” A minute or two later, the sweat session was interrupted by bullpen catcher Roman Rodriguez, who relayed the news that Nova been dealt to Pittsburgh in exchange for outfielder Tito Polo and left-handed pitcher Stephen Tarpley.
The moves were met with sour reactions in the clubhouse; third baseman Chase Headley had observed after the Miller trade that “we’re probably not as good a team as we were ten days ago, seven days ago.” No matter. Cashman had a bigger picture in mind. In exchange for four veterans, the Yankees had acquired ten prospects, three of them highly rated. Frazier and Torres merited the largest headlines, but Tate had also received a $4.2 million signing bonus when the Rangers made him the top pitcher selected in the 2015 draft.
“I was like, ‘It’s time,’” Cashman said. “We need to do certain things that we’ve never really done. I’m glad ownership signed off on it, and I think that the future is brighter because of it.”
As they had done by adding Adam Warren in the Cubs trade, the Yankees attempted to cushion the blow to their big-league squad, adding right-hander Tyler Clippard in a trade with Arizona. Cashman said that the Yankees could have decided to “take a nose dive,” but tanking would not have served the team’s fan base—particularly their loyal season-ticket holders, most of whom seemed to understand and embrace the shift to a new generation of players. Patching the ship with free agents in the post-Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera era had not yielded the desired results; they had played nine postseason innings since 2012.
“Brian and his staff and the organization are trying to put this team in a good position to have a long run of not just playing well, but winning championships,” Joe Girardi said. “It’s not about being a second Wild Card team and winning one game, or losing one game. We want to win championships. That’s what we’ve always been about. And I think what we’re trying to do is position ourselves to do that.”
Now without two of his big three bullpen arms, Girardi installed Dellin Betances as the closer for the rest of the 2016 season. The six-foot-eight Betances, a proud Dominican whose 265-pound build and high 90s fastball juxtapose against his gentle bilingual monotone, seemed to be stunned by the Miller trade. Though Betances said that he was “trying to get over the fact that we traded the best of the best,” the Yankees believed that Betances was capable of handling the ninth inning.
Betances was excellent in twelve August appearances, pitching to a 0.68 ERA, but his statistics took a hit as September dawned. In eleven outings after August 31, Betances allowed 13 runs (10 earned) in 9⅓ innings for an obscene 9.64 ERA, tagged with two losses and a blown save. Those numbers resurfaced the next spring in a conference room of the Vinoy Renaissance hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida, where Betances and the Yankees clashed in a four-hour salary arbitration debate over $2 million.
Shortly after a three person panel of arbitrators determined that Betances’s 2017 salary would be $3 million and not the $5 million sought by the player, the team’s beat reporters were ushered into a tiny office at the rear of the George M. Steinbrenner Field press box. They exchanged quizzical glances while Yankees president Randy Levine took the verbal equivalent of a victory lap over a speakerphone, stating that Betances had been “a victim” of agent Jim Murray’s “attempt to change the marketplace in baseball” by requesting closer money for a setup man.
“It’s like me saying, ‘I’m not the president of the Yankees, I’m an astronaut,’” Levine said. “Well, I’m not an astronaut, and Dellin Betances is not a closer, at least based on statistics.”
Betances had the deepest connection to New York of any current Yankee, having been born in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood and raised in the Lillian Wald Houses on the Lower East Side. His father, Jaime, has navigated the city streets for more than two decades as a livery taxi driver, and a ten-year-old Betances was in the Yankee Stadium bleachers for David Wells’ 1998 perfect game against the Twins—he still has the $7.00 general admission ticket stub. Betances played high school ball at Brooklyn’s Grand Street Campus before the Yankees called his name in the eighth round of the 2006 draft.
It had been a dream story, but this arbitration process served as an official introduction to the business side of the sport. Incensed by Levine’s comments, Betances held a media gathering of his own as soon as the Yankees were off the field, saying that the team seemed to value him only as a setup man. Betances suggested that he might become more “selfish” as a result. Though Betances remained under team control until 2020, he acknowledged that the experience made the idea of free agency somewhat more palatable.
“They take me in a room and they trash me for about an hour and a half,” Betances said. “I thought that wasn’t fair. I felt like I’ve done a lot for this organization, especially over the last three years. I’ve taken the ball, time after time. Whenever they needed me, I was there for them. I never said no.”
While Betances’ feelings clearly needed to be massaged, the moves worked out exceptionally for both the Cubs and Indians, who rode Chapman and Miller to a historic World Series showdown between the two clubs with the longest championship droughts in the sport.
It seemed fair to wonder how the eliminated playoff clubs might have fared had they pursued either reliever more aggressively; the Dodgers, for one, balked at the Yankees’ asking prices for both Chapman and Miller before being bounced by the Cubs in a six-game National League Championship Series.
“I’m happy for both of those players and I’m happy for both of those teams, because they paid a steep price for instant impact,” Cashman said. “We drove the hard bargain for impact down the line. Hopefully everybody gets what they wanted out of this thing.”
When the Indians celebrated their American League Championship Series victory over the Blue Jays, owner Paul Dolan acknowledged that there had been a high price paid, but they had viewed Miller as the reason that they were celebrating their first pennant since 1997.
“Yeah, years from now I suspect we’ll look at some of these guys that we traded and say, ‘Why did we trade them?’” Dolan said, expressing hope that Cleveland would be able to point to a few championship trophies as the payoff.
The ripple effect of those 2016 moves were evident. Frazier and Torres were widely regarded as the Yankees’ top prospects, and neither had been in the organization before July. In Game 7 of the Fall Classic, Chapman served up a game-tying homer to Rajai Davis, then was credited with the win as the Cubs celebrated their first title since Theodore Roosevelt was in office.
A 108-year drought was unfathomable, but Cashman believed that his actions had moved the Yankees closer to their next celebration. His own pinstriped championship dry spell had now reached the age of a first grader, all of seven years old.
“Clearly Cleveland and Chicago are getting what they bargained for,” Cashman said, “and we expect over time with all the cast of characters—not just the ones we got in these deals—that we’ll be having a much better, [more] impactful future than we would have had.”
Cashman viewed the team’s outlook as being brighter than at any time since his days serving as the farm director underneath Gene Michael, who was widely credited as the architect of the 1996–2000 dynasty. That occurred in large part because Michael was able to fortify the farm system over the two plus years while George Steinbrenner had been banned from day-to-day management of the club for consorting with a known gambler.
“When I started with the Yankees back in the day, that was some of the best young talent we had,” Cashman said. “A
nd I think our system now that is currently in play is starting to hopefully mirror what that system started to produce, which propelled us into the ’90s. We’re trying to get back to a situation where we can build an uber team, a sustainable one. I think the fans should be excited by that.”
Tim Naehring was. Having been recently promoted from a professional scout to the Yankees’ vice president of baseball operations, Naehring now enjoyed access to the team’s secure database of player evaluations, both inside the farm system and across the industry. Previously, he’d only been able to peruse his own reports, but now Naehring was free to dig into what everyone in player development and scouting was feeding to the mother ship.
“As I started to read what we had, I was very excited,” Naehring said. “It was the first year in a number of years that I actually went out and scouted all these guys with my own eyes. I told Brian Cashman, probably a month into the season, I was very impressed with the level of talent that we had throughout the system—Triple-A all the way down.
“The culture in our minor leagues, as far as how they went about their business, day-to-day individual work and how these guys were developed as individuals; it was very refreshing to see how well-oiled a machine it was. The environment that Gary Denbo and his staff had put in place and continues today, it’s a good working atmosphere for these guys to develop as young men and start their baseball careers.”
• • •
The Yankees had swallowed hard to make the pivot from a veteran-laden roster, creating a collection of young talent that promised more tomorrows than yesterdays, but there was still one expensive loose end to tie up. Alex Rodriguez had more than a year remaining on the ten-year, $275 million contract that he had signed following his 2007 American League Most Valuable Player campaign, a deal negotiated after news of his opt-out from his original Yankees contract leaked during Game 4 of that year’s World Series between the Red Sox and the Rockies.
At the time, even with some viewing Rodriguez as a “clean” successor to Barry Bonds’ career record of 762 home runs, there were those within the Yankees brain-trust who believed the organization would be ill-advised to continue the relationship. Cashman was one of those voices, but he had ultimately been overruled by ownership. Less than two years later, on a February morning in Tampa, Cashman listened as Rodriguez held a press conference in which he admitted to having used performance-enhancing drugs during his three seasons in Texas. Cashman reacted as though someone had spiked his coffee with lemon juice.
“This is Humpty Dumpty,” Cashman said then. “We’ve got to put him back together again and get him back up on the wall.”
They had, to some extent. On one occasion, Cashman acknowledged that the Yankees would not have won the 2009 World Series were it not for Rodriguez, removing his glittering championship ring and resting it on a table in front of him for emphasis. But the Yankees were now carrying a diminished version of that player on their 2016 roster.
Despite having improbably repaired a litigious relationship with Major League Baseball and the Yankees to enjoy a resurgent 33-homer campaign in 2015, the forty-one-year-old’s playing time had dwindled. He’d once seemed to be a lock as the fourth player to hit 700 homers, joining Bonds (762), Henry Aaron (755), and Babe Ruth (714), but A-Rod’s chase stalled at 696.
On the evening of August 12, a crowd of 46,459 witnessed the end of Rodriguez’s eventful career, concluding a bizarre week in which he and the organization had jointly announced that the fourteen-time All-Star would be released from his contract following that game. As part of the agreement, Rodriguez would stay on to serve as a special advisor and instructor for the Yankees through the final day of 2017.
Alex Rodriguez hit 351 of his 696 regular season home runs in a Yankees uniform, playing 12 seasons in New York after being acquired from the Rangers in February 2004. (© Keith Allison)
Threatening skies had cleared for Jeter’s farewell on the captain’s final day at the Stadium in 2014, but they did the opposite for Rodriguez. Loud thunder-cracks and a torrential downpour seemingly appeared out of nowhere to interrupt an on-field ceremony, forcing all involved to scurry into the dugout for cover. Rodriguez quipped that it had been a “biblical” storm, but it passed quickly. In what was the 2,784th game of Rodriguez’s career and his 1,509th as a Yankee, he laced a run-scoring double off Chris Archer in the first of four at-bats before giddily returning to his locker, retrieving a glove to play third base for one batter in the ninth inning.
As the right-handed hitting Mikie Mahtook stepped in, Rodriguez not-so-quietly rooted for Betances to record a strikeout. Why? Rodriguez later revealed that his last time in the field—May 19, 2015—had also been his last time strapping on a protective cup. Betances took care of his concerned teammate, freezing Mahtook looking at a curveball.
“I was very stressed and I got really low,” Rodriguez said. “I screamed to Betances the same thing that, ironically, Cal Ripken screamed to Roger Clemens in the All-Star Game in 2000 when we switched [positions]. He said, ‘Strike him out, Roger.’ I said exactly the same thing.”
Rodriguez’s departure, followed by Teixeira’s upcoming retirement, would leave two players in uniform from the last group of Yankees to claim so much as a single postseason victory. Though Brett Gardner and CC Sabathia were the only men remaining from that 2012 roster, the next generation of winners was about to enter the building.
CHAPTER 7.
Passing the Torch
The championship rings grew more ornate as the Yankees morphed into what would be referred to as “the team of the decade,” but for those lucky enough to score more than one of those treasures, the 1996 version with a half-carat diamond at its center and twenty-three diamonds ringing the outside stands apart as one of the most special in franchise history.
“It was the first. You never forget your first,” Derek Jeter said. “Everything was new: going to cities on the road for the first time, playing in different stadiums, playing against guys you watched on television at a young age. That was the beginning. The Yankees hadn’t won in a long time.
“You remember the excitement in the stadium, you remember the excitement in the city. You’re walking the streets and people are recognizing us for the first time; it’s kind of awkward. This was a special group because The Boss said if he won, he’d keep us together, and we continued to win. You never forget that first time.”
Jeter was on the left side of the Yankee Stadium infield during the afternoon of August 13, 2016, mere hours after his longtime frenemy Alex Rodriguez had hunched over near that very spot, filling the back pockets of his uniform pants with souvenir dirt. No matter what transpired in the game against the Rays, it had already promised to be a memorable day. With temperatures inching into the mid-nineties and some puffy cumulus clouds looking on, preparations were underway for the Yankees to celebrate their history as few organizations can.
Twenty years prior, the roots of a dynasty had taken hold when the Yankees defeated the Atlanta Braves in a six-game Fall Classic, memorably ending when third baseman Charlie Hayes settled underneath a Mark Lemke pop-up in foul territory at the original Yankee Stadium. The title was the Yankees’ first since 1978, and elation was in the crisp October air. Wade Boggs made an impromptu decision to join a mounted NYPD officer for a victory gallop around the stadium’s warning track, the future Hall of Famer momentarily forgetting that he happened to be deathly afraid of horses.
There was no cavalry protecting the outfield on this day, only thirty-two members of the team that enjoyed a ticker-tape parade through Manhattan’s Canyon of Heroes, donning untucked pinstriped jerseys emblazoned with their old uniform numbers and a commemorative “96” patch on the left sleeve. Assembled behind the loading dock gate in left-center field before being called one by one across the grass, they smiled and laughed, dusting off their inside jokes as though they’d wandered into a time warp.
If the players had glanced up to read the current Yankees’ starting lineup, th
ey would have seen that their old teammate Joe Girardi was sending out a batting order that slotted first baseman Tyler Austin seventh and right fielder Aaron Judge eighth. Both were about to make their major league debuts, and that realization inspired something approaching the intersection of awe and jealousy in some of the old-timers.
“I definitely believe these youngsters have a great opportunity to shine,” Jorge Posada said. “The moves that the Yankees have made, it will create a lot of opportunity for the youngsters to play the game and show that they are capable to play in the big leagues. They will definitely need some older players that can lead them, but at the same time, they’re rebuilding and doing what is right for the team.”
The “Core Four” of Jeter, Posada, Andy Pettitte, and Mariano Rivera drew some of the loudest ovations that afternoon, as did Boggs, David Cone, Dwight Gooden, Paul O’Neill, Darryl Strawberry, Bernie Williams, and manager Joe Torre. Coming off a heartbreaking loss to the Mariners in the 1995 American League Championship Series, those ’96 Yanks had found their identity in a blend of proven veterans and promising rookies. They adopted a rallying cry from infielder Mariano Duncan, whose enthusiastic nature and heavy Dominican accent helped modify a phrase that would appear on T-shirts that season: “We play today, we win today, das it!”
And they did plenty of that, posting ninety-two victories before powering past the Orioles and Rangers in a pair of memorable playoff series. Aiming to end an eighteen-year title drought, George Steinbrenner had entrusted the lineup card to Torre, who hadn’t yet compiled anything resembling what would be a Hall of Fame managerial resume. Torre inherited a club that went against the grain of the game’s mid-1990s power surge; these Yankees would get the job done with pitching, clutch hitting, and intangibles.