Baby Bombers Page 23

  “We need to get as many wins as we can against these guys, and it showed that we’re willing to fight back. That was also very important,” Hicks said. “It feels good to be able to be around the guys and to see their smiling faces again.”

  The Red Sox took two of three games in that weekend series, with twenty-year-old Boston rookie Rafael Devers turning around a 102.8-mph Chapman-fastball for a game-tying home run on August 13. The Yanks lost in ten innings, and it was crushing; instead of being 3½ games back of the Red Sox, the Yankees were now staring at a 5½ game deficit, the farthest they’d be out of first place all season. Devers became the second left-handed batter to ever homer off of Chapman, joining Luke Scott, who did it for the Orioles back on June 26, 2011.

  “It would’ve been better if it was 3½, but I’ve seen 5½ games go away in a hurry,” Chase Headley said. “There’s a lot of baseball to be played. We play them quite a few more times. We’re going to need to play well against them, but this was an opportunity that we didn’t take advantage of to make up a little bit of ground.”

  Sweeping the Mets in a four-game, home-and-home Subway Series proved to be a momentary salve, as Judge offered a reminder that—slump not withstanding—he was still capable of feats most big leaguers could only dream of.

  Crossing borough lines to play at Citi Field on August 16, Judge stole the show, crushing a Robert Gsellman slider toward the third deck in left field. It was retrieved in the far-off Section 536, and Mets left fielder Yoenis Cespedes did not bother to turn his head, declining to move an inch in pursuit. Judge dropped his bat and ran immediately.

  “When you hit it and you kind of know you got one, you just run the bases,” said Judge, who said there was no temptation to watch the flight of his drive. “They all feel the same. Usually when you get it on the sweet spot of the bat, you don’t really feel it.”

  Judge returned to the dugout, finding his teammates still gawking at the incredible feat, pointing and debating where the ball had actually landed. Statcast calculated the moonshot at 457 feet, a number that raised eyebrows in the clubhouse. Didi Gregorius guessed 530 feet, while Jaime Garcia said that it looked more like 550.

  “If that ball only went 450, then no ball is ever going over 500 feet, because that ball was crushed,” Headley said.

  Since Judge preferred not to talk about his own homers, he didn’t mind when his muscle was overshadowed by Sanchez’s bat catching fire. Sanchez became the sixth player in franchise history to hit 12 home runs in the month of August, and the first since Alex Rodriguez in 2005. Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and Babe Ruth were among the bold-faced names who had also accomplished the feat, with Ruth slugging 15 in August 1929.

  Maybe Alex Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez had something to do with the surge. Following Girardi’s harsh evaluation of Sanchez’s defense, the catcher said that a midtown Manhattan power lunch with the celebrity couple had helped to clear his mind, with the trio huddling at the Casa Lever eatery at the corner of Park Avenue and East 53rd Street.

  “We talked a lot about pretty much everything,” Sanchez said. “Everything that comes from him, it’s positive. We talked a little bit about defense, creating a routine, following your routine, preparing for games. We keep talking—we’ve had phone calls here and there. And his girlfriend was there, J-Lo. She gave me some advice. She’s a superstar at what she does, she’s a great singer and great actress, and Alex is a superstar in baseball. Any advice coming from them, I will listen to them.”

  One-third of Sanchez’s August homers came off Tigers pitching over the course of three games at Detroit’s Comerica Park, and that sparked one of the team’s most cohesive experiences of the year. Playing a getaway day matinee on August 24, Sanchez’s fourth-inning solo drive to left-center field off Michael Fulmer proved to be the final straw for Detroit.

  In Sanchez’s next at-bat, he was drilled in the left hip by a Fulmer pitch. Sanchez glared as he walked to first, eyeing Fulmer as the hurler shook his hand, later claiming that he’d experienced a “zap” of his ulnar nerve. Tommy Kahnle wasn’t buying it. The right-hander retaliated in the bottom of the sixth, firing a 96-mph fastball behind Miguel Cabrera, prompting home plate umpire Carlos Torres to eject Kahnle and Girardi.

  The beef between the clubs actually stretched back weeks, when Kahnle had hit Detroit’s Mikie Mahtook on July 31 in New York. Fulmer had responded by plunking Jacoby Ellsbury the next inning, which appeared to settle the matter—at least, until Sanchez’s muscle show in Motown.

  Aroldis Chapman emerged from the bullpen to relieve Kahnle, and during the on-field delay, Cabrera approached Austin Romine and exchanged words with the catcher. When Romine removed his mask, Cabrera responded by shoving Romine, landing a punch before the players wrestled on the dirt near home plate.

  “He said, ‘You have a problem with me?’ and I said, ‘This isn’t about you,’” Romine said, “And then he pushed me. It felt like he wanted a confrontation there, and I just tried to defend myself the best I could.”

  Both benches cleared, as did the bullpens, led by David Robertson’s high-socked, high-stepping sprint across the grass. Members of both teams created a pile on the infield grass, and replays clearly showed Sanchez—the Yanks’ DH that day—arriving on the scene, delivering at least two punches to Cabrera’s body. Cabrera and Romine were both ejected.

  An August 24 scuffle between Yankees catcher Austin Romine and Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera prompted both benches to clear on a wild afternoon of punches and hit batsmen at Detroit’s Comerica Park. (© Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports)

  “I have a really good relationship with Romine,” Sanchez said. “At the moment of everything, instinct takes over. I went out there to defend my teammate, my team. Definitely the situation got out of control a little bit there, but at the end of it all what you’re trying to do is trying to go out there and protect your team, defend your guys.”

  Sanchez was also captured on video punching infielder Nick Castellanos at the bottom of the pile, and Cabrera challenged Sanchez to try doing it “face-to-face” next time. Pedro Martinez was among those who wondered if Sanchez’s actions would hurt his reputation, tweeting, “Cheap shots will stay around the league forever. I think Gary Sanchez could be badly remembered for this for a long time.”

  Girardi disagreed, defending his catcher by invoking Jorge Posada’s name.

  “I knew another catcher who had a lot of fire and a lot of fight in him,” Girardi said. “He ended up being a great player who could one day wind up in the Hall of Fame, and his number’s retired in Monument Park. And that’s what we loved about Jorge. Learning how to control it as you go through in the game and as you grow up is important, but the kid plays with a lot of passion. He’s going to protect his teammates. He loves his teammates, he’s got a lot of fire and fight and I like that about him.”

  The day was not over. In the seventh inning, Dellin Betances drilled catcher James McCann in the helmet with a 98-mph fastball, clearing the benches again. Betances pleaded his case, pointing to the scoreboard, which read 6–6 at the time. With warnings having been issued, though, Betances and Yanks bench coach Rob Thomson were both ejected.

  “That’s the last thing I want to do,” Betances said. “At that point, I felt like everything was over. I was disappointed because it was a tie game and we’re out here trying to fight for a playoff spot, and for me to get thrown out there, that shouldn’t have happened.”

  Detroit returned fire once more in the eighth, as Alex Wilson plunked Todd Frazier in the left hip. The benches cleared again when Frazier took a few steps toward the mound, with Wilson and Tigers manager Brad Ausmus both ejected. Brett Gardner was among the most incensed players on the field, shouting obscenities at Ausmus while being restrained.

  The Yankees lost the game, 10–6, and it took days for Major League Baseball to sort through a mess of umpire reports and video footage. Once the appeal process had been completed, Sanchez was suspended for three games, sitting out a
n entire series against the Orioles. Romine was suspended for one game, while Cabrera received the harshest penalty, slapped with a six-game ban. Seven others were fined, but not suspended.

  “I think, honestly, it brought us together and closer with the guys,” Todd Frazier said. “You see guys come together—you don’t want to see it during a brawl, but those things kind of kick-start a team and get them going.”

  Still jockeying with the Red Sox in the AL East, the Yankees made good use of a new weapon in right-hander Chad Green, who had quietly become the most dominant pitcher that no one had heard of. Pitching in the first game of an August 30 doubleheader against the Indians, Green became the first player in big league history to record seven strikeouts while facing eight or fewer batters in a game.

  Chad Green’s 13.43 strikeouts per nine innings in 2017 invited comparisons to Mariano Rivera’s stellar 1996 season, when the future Hall of Famer whiffed 10.87 batters per nine innings. (© Keith Allison)

  In twelve appearances from August 23 through the end of the regular season, the twenty-six-year-old allowed one run with two walks and 28 strikeouts in 17 innings. Green finished the year with a 5-0 record and 1.83 ERA, enjoying six appearances with at least five strikeouts. That invited comparisons to Mariano Rivera’s lethal 1996 season, in which he had nine such games while setting up for closer John Wetteland.

  “I’ve heard that. It’s not something I can really put a finger on," Green said. "I’ve always been a fastball pitcher. I guess something just clicked. The location is probably a little bit better this year, I think, but other than that I’m not really doing anything too different than I’ve done in the past with it.”

  Green had garnered the Yankees’ attention as a minor league starter in the Tigers system, where they ignored his 5-14 record for Double-A Erie in 2015 and instead focused on his command of the strike zone. Green was acquired in December of that year along with right-hander Luis Cessa, a converted infielder who got his start in the Mets’ system, in a swap for left-handed reliever Justin Wilson. Some wondered at the time if the Yanks intended to flip the young pitchers elsewhere; no, Cashman said, they desired Cessa and Green for their own use.

  “I had Chad Green as a starter, and I still think he’s a starter,” Cashman said. “But the way this team was set up, when we had some injuries and needs, he just kind of filled in. He’s clearly a different animal out of the bullpen. In most cases, relievers are failed starters, but he’s not a failed starter. He just happened to be needed in a long, multi-inning type relief period when we called him up, and then he just excelled to such a rare degree that it was hard to take him out of it.”

  A product of Greenville, South Carolina who left the University of Louisville as the school’s all-time ERA leader (2.38), the course of Green’s career had changed while he and his wife, Jenna, were returning from their honeymoon in Jamaica. The Tigers hold their spring training in Lakeland, Florida, a forty-five-minute cruise up Interstate 4 from George M. Steinbrenner Field, but Green said he sensed a different vibe in his new workplace very quickly.

  “With the Yankees, winning is just kind of expected,” Green said. “I came up with the Tigers and it’s just different. Maybe it’s more expected here in the minor leagues than other places. There’s a reason that the Yankees have won twenty-seven world championships. It’s not something that’s discussed, but I guess you just kind of know. They preach winning in the minors so when it gets up here, it gets more natural because it’s expected up here. I think it all starts down there, watching guys like Judge and Gary and those guys have success up here. Monty and Sevy, there’s a lot of guys. I think it all starts in the minors with the personnel and the staff they have there.”

  Green traced his big-league experience to a late-night load of laundry, during which he received the call that he had waited a lifetime for. Severino had been placed on the disabled list with a triceps strain, and Green rushed to join the team, making his big-league debut by pitching four innings at Arizona’s Chase Field on May 16, 2016. It went by in a blur, and if he were to watch the game video now, Green said that the rookie on the mound that day would be nearly unrecognizable.

  “I didn’t really know what I was doing,” Green said. “You feel like you’re good enough to pitch in the big leagues, but that day, that’s not really how I pitch at all. The breaking ball wasn’t very good, the fastball wasn’t very good, I didn’t think. I was working on things at the time, so looking back, it was just different.”

  Green had pitched out of the bullpen in college, which provided something of a model to work with. Sabathia had seen flashes of Green’s talent before spring training, remarking that Green’s stuff was “unreal,” but the hurler’s confidence didn’t completely set in until the midpoint of 2017. On more than one occasion, catcher Austin Romine gushed about a disappearing fastball that was giving opponents fits.

  “It just jumps on you,” Romine said. “I don’t know how else to put that in words. It comes in and it keeps its velocity and kind of jumps at you, instead of a normal fastball coming in. I know we’re searching for an answer; I can’t give you one. It gets on me, so I know it gets on hitters.”

  • • •

  In Girardi’s view, the turning point of the season came after a three-game sweep by the Indians in late August, when New York was outscored 17–7 in a Yankee Stadium series that included a long and ugly rain-necessitated doubleheader. They answered by taking three out of four from Boston in the Bronx. Severino pitched a gem in the finale before the Yanks busted open their 9–2 win with a six-run sixth inning, highlighted by Judge’s 38th homer of the year.

  The Yankees checked into their Baltimore hotel around 3:00 a.m., then beat up on the Orioles in a Labor Day afternoon contest at Camden Yards. In that 7–4 win (the first game Sanchez, their hottest hitter, missed as part of his suspension), Gregorius hit his 20th homer, becoming the first Yankees shortstop ever to reach that plateau in back-to-back seasons.

  “We seemed to really get on a roll,” Girardi said. “We probably won a game a lot of people thought we shouldn’t have won when we got in so late to Baltimore. Then we just had a really good road trip. We were playing really well, we were pitching well, and everyone was contributing. It just seemed that we knew this was possible.”

  The Yankees thoroughly believed that they were capable of catching Boston, a team that had been on a similar trajectory to the Yanks. The Red Sox had developed a new core of talent with Xander Bogaerts, Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Rafael Devers, but they had to take considerable lumps to do so, absorbing last-place finishes in 2014 and 2015.

  There was a window into the future as fans delighted in contrasting Judge against budding Red Sox star Andrew Benintendi, who had been a preseason favorite for the American League’s Rookie of the Year award. The lefty-swinging, shaggy-haired Benintendi emerged as a persistent thorn in the Yankees’ sides and as a fresh face of the renewed rivalry.

  In August, Benintendi became the first player since Jimmie Foxx in 1938 to hit a pair of three-run homers against the Yankees, both coming off Severino. When someone asked Benintendi that night if he had been trying to match Judge in his own park, he replied: “No, not at all. He’s having an unreal year and he’s kind of struggling right now. I went through that for two months. I’m sure he’ll figure it out.”

  Perhaps the most bizarre “road” trip of the season took place in mid-September, as the Yankees and Rays had a series relocated to Citi Field while Hurricane Irma pounded the state of Florida. Though they were officially Rays home games, the majority of the crowd cheered for the Yankees, taking advantage of $25 general admission tickets as the Yanks took two of the three games in the Mets’ house.

  The Rays sent along their hype videos from Tropicana Field, creating the strange optic of having “D.J. Kitty,” the Rays’ unofficial feline mascot, trying to pump up the crowd on a center-field scoreboard that read, “Let’s Go Mets.” But the games went viral when the YES Network introduced
the world to the “Thumbs Down Guy,” previously known as Gary Dunaier.

  A fifty-four-year-old Mets fan from Queens, Dunaier was in the field-level seats on September 11 when Todd Frazier rounded the bases for a three-run homer off of Tampa Bay’s Jake Odorizzi. Realizing his voice would be drowned out by the Yankees fans surrounding him, Dunaier instead stood perfectly still and offered Frazier a displeased thumbs-down, like a relic out of the Roman Empire.

  Something about the combination of Dunaier’s expression, beard, teal shirt, suspenders, and red-rimmed glasses, clicked. Frazier later joked that Dunaier had seemed to “put this little pouty face on, like he’d just lost his dog or something.” The clip became an Internet sensation, and when Judge spotted one of the retweets the next day, he urged Frazier to mimic the thumbs down after his next hit.

  “It was pretty comical, so I thought it would be a good thing for Fraz to do, and it kind of caught on with the whole team,” Judge said.

  Before “thumbs-down,” the Yankees had been pointing to the dugout after each knock, something that Gary Sanchez brought with him from the 2016 season in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, when Nick Swisher insisted that the RailRiders needed a signature gesture. Judge, Sanchez, and others brought the habit with them to Yankee Stadium. The thumbs-down was a welcome upgrade.

  “I think all that stuff kind of intertwines with everything,” Frazier said. “A lot of stuff happens during the season. Lucky for us, we had some guy put the thumbs down and it kind of just took off. I know Didi does a lot of emoji things that people love. That kind of interaction, that makes baseball even better. It makes a team come together and it makes for a fun time coming to the ballpark.”