Baby Bombers Page 24

  Late in September, the Yankees began celebrating home runs with mock dugout interviews. The idea for that running gag came from Ronald Torreyes, who served as the cameraman for each “taping” of what became known as “The Toe-Night Show.” Sitting in the dugout, Torreyes had been inspired by a Starlin Castro homer in a September 26 victory over the Rays, marking Castro’s first homer in nearly a month.

  “It was a long time coming for Castro,” Torreyes said. “When he hit that home run, the first thing that came into my mind was to get the guys together and set up an interview and ask him how he felt.”

  With Gregorius serving as the lead interviewer, the news team assembled. Torreyes first cradled a bat as a makeshift camera, then upgraded the next day, using a bulky plastic tub of sunflower seeds. Finally, someone fashioned a camera out of a pair of shoeboxes held together with athletic tape. Gregorius, Castro, Luis Severino, and Miguel Andujar created microphones out of water bottles and paper cups, allowing the players’ creativity to shine through.

  “We just grabbed whatever was over there and just went with it,” Gregorius said. “We’re trying to have some fun, trying to keep everybody loose. We’re having a really good time with it. We just ask, ‘How does it feel to hit a home run?’ ‘What pitch?’ Stuff like that. We keep it fun.”

  Since it was Torreyes’ idea, why wasn’t he in front of the camera? Torreyes explained that he’d volunteered, but Gregorius’ contributions allowed the ‘show’ to be multi-lingual; he’d speak to Castro in Spanish after one big hit, then cleanly pivot to engage players like Greg Bird and Aaron Hicks in English.

  “That’s why we have Didi around,” Torreyes said. “He can speak five, six different languages. That’s why he’s the person asking the questions.”

  Meredith Marakovits, who normally would be tasked with volleying those sorts of inquiries for the YES Network’s viewers, said that she sensed a new looseness in the clubhouse. That served to reinvigorate battled-hardened veterans like Brett Gardner and CC Sabathia.

  “It’s not as regimented as it was when I first got here in 2012,” Marakovits said. “You can see the pure excitement on a lot of these guys’ faces when they do something for the first time, that they’re experiencing it for the first time. It’s almost like a childlike joy that they exude. I can’t even envision, with some of those old teams, something like what Ronald Torreyes is doing with the camera. I can’t imagine that.”

  The reporters in pinstriped pants had plenty of opportunities to approach Judge, who snapped out of his late summer funk to assemble an awesome final month that would be his best of the regular season. Earning his second AL Player of the Month award (also June), Judge hit .311 with a .463 on-base percentage and a .889 slugging percentage, crushing 15 homers and driving in 32 runs in 27 games.

  Judge’s 15 homers were the most by a Yankee in any calendar month since Roger Maris also hit 15 in June of 1961, when the “M & M Boys” of Maris and Mickey Mantle kicked their pursuits of Babe Ruth’s single-season record into high gear. Again, Judge and the Yankees declined to say if he had gone for that cortisone injection, leaving observers to draw their own conclusions. Judge certainly appeared to be swinging without pain or discomfort.

  Snapping a fifteen game homerless stretch with a September 3 blast off Boston reliever Addison Reed, Judge reached base in twenty-five straight games to complete the regular season, helping New York rattle off a 46-30 record after the All-Star break that was second only to Cleveland (55-20) among AL clubs.

  “What I admire about him the most is, he’s going to be the same cat every day,” said Jim Hendry, a special assistant to Cashman. “He’s not going to change. He didn’t act any different when he was going through a tough time. He just hung in there. Not many kids who are his age with less than a year of service time go through what he went through in August, and then do what he did in September. You’ve got to have great makeup for that.”

  Having long since blown past Joe DiMaggio’s franchise record of 29 homers by a rookie, Judge shattered Mark McGwire’s major league rookie record for homers in a season on the afternoon of September 25, mashing his 49th and 50th home runs in a makeup game against the Royals at Yankee Stadium.

  McGwire had hit 49 homers in 1987 for the Oakland Athletics, a tally that Judge equaled with a third inning blast off Royals starter Jake Junis. Kansas City had been the last remaining AL team on Judge’s hit list; with that, he’d now homered against every AL club in 2017. Judge eclipsed “Big Mac” in the seventh inning, going deep off Trevor Cahill.

  Like much of the baseball world, McGwire had been enthralled with Judge’s pursuit of his record. Now the Padres’ hitting coach, McGwire had witnessed Judge’s 49th homer on live TV before beginning his drive to Dodger Stadium for that night’s game. Somewhere on the freeway, McGwire heard his cell phone chime, with an alert from MLB’s At Bat app informing him that Judge had gone deep again for number fifty.

  Via Matt Holliday, who passed along Judge’s cell phone number, McGwire reached out to congratulate Judge on the accomplishment.

  “I couldn’t be happier for him,” McGwire said. “The future for him as a bona fide home run hitter is bright. Who knows what the number is going to be? Watch out, seventy-three. Seriously. The home run is back. It’s awesome. People love seeing home runs. They love seeing the power pitcher and the power hitter. And it couldn’t be any better for the game.”

  Thirty-three of Judge’s homers came at Yankee Stadium, surpassing a franchise record for home runs hit at home in a single season. The previous mark had been held by Babe Ruth, who hit thirty-two homers at the Polo Grounds in 1921, when the Yanks shared the upper Manhattan facility with the New York Giants. By the Yanks’ final series with the Orioles, manager Buck Showalter had seen enough of Judge, who hit eleven of his homers off Baltimore pitching while compiling a .429 average and 1.049 OPS.

  With Clint Frazier on third base and the Yankees trailing by two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning on the afternoon of September 17, Showalter ordered closer Zach Britton to issue a two-out intentional walk to Judge, a head-scratching move that brought the potential winning run to the plate. Showalter said that he had to “pick your poison there,” and he preferred to have Britton face Gary Sanchez rather than allow Judge another opportunity to inflict damage.

  “It came up heads today,” Showalter said. “Tomorrow it might be tails.”

  Judge finished the year as the second rookie in history to record at least 100 runs scored, 100 RBI, and 100 walks in a single season, joining Hall of Famer Ted Williams (1939). The slugging outfielder became the eighth Yankee (rookie or veteran) in team history to accomplish the feat, joining Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, and Mickey Mantle, as well as Charlie Keller, Jason Giambi, Bernie Williams, and George Selkirk.

  Before Judge, no player had led the American League in the three “true outcomes” (plays that only involve pitcher, catcher, and batter)—home runs (52), strikeouts (208), and walks (127)—since Mantle in 1958.

  Cashman said that as high as the Yankees’ scouts had been on Judge, there was nothing in the draft database that predicted anything like Judge’s final 2017 line.

  “I don’t think we had anybody having fifty-plus home runs on his ledger, ever,” Cashman said. “He’s physically capable of all that stuff, and there’s a lot to dream when you see the physicality, but I don’t think anybody would have expected that. I’m not sure anybody would ever expect that from anybody.

  “We felt, by our scouting assessments and his development, that he would be an above-average right fielder and an above-average offensive player. That would be a lethal combination for us for years to come. But an MVP candidate, especially in his first year? That moved the needle a lot more than anyone would have expected.”

  Judge’s homer total would have been higher if he hadn’t lost one to the April 16 fan-interference replay snafu that credited him with a triple, plus leaping catches by the Red Sox’s Jackie Bradley Jr. (July 17), an
d the White Sox’s Melky Cabrera (June 29). Reminded of the bizarre triple, Judge chuckled.

  “I’d almost forgot about that,” Judge said. “The biggest thing is winning ballgames. This is the right time to get hot. It’s coming down to the wire and I’m going to try to do whatever I can to help the team be in a good position going into October.”

  Gardner said that there was more to Judge’s game than home runs and walks, and some of Judge’s most impressive work took place off the field, where he brought a positive attitude to the stadium every day. By September, Sabathia said that he sensed Judge had already developed into one of the team’s leaders.

  “It’s a young team. He came up with a lot of the core,” Sabathia said. “I think it’s just a natural thing that happened. I guess it’s just the way he goes about his business and works hard every day. Guys follow that. You get in a routine, start doing your thing and guys see him having success. I guess it could be his size, but I think it’s just his personality. You can talk to him. I think he’s a good teammate and a good friend.”

  To the Yankees’ frustration, the Red Sox kept pace with their splendid September. Boston answered New York’s 20-9 record after September 1 by going 17-11, good enough to hold on and clinch the American League East by two games over the ninety-one-win Bombers. But for the first time in three seasons, and the second time in the last five years, the Yankees could call themselves a playoff team.

  “All we needed was an invitation,” Todd Frazier said.

  They officially clinched with a 5–1 win over the Blue Jays on September 23, heading for a showdown with the Twins in the AL Wild Card game. With plastic sheets covering their lockers in the tight quarters of the visiting clubhouse at Rogers Centre, the Bombers gleefully doused each other while Didi Gregorius shot video with an expensive camera, dodging the droplets. Tommy Kahnle rolled his body over the middle of the saturated carpet, literally soaking up the experience.

  It was a night that the youngest Yankees vowed never to forget, while some of the veterans seemed to be holding something in reserve for the future.

  “I told some of these guys, ‘It’s a lot more fun to celebrate at home than it is here in Toronto,’” Gardner said. “Our clubhouse is a lot bigger and there’s a lot more room. I think we realize that there’s a lot more work to do, but I think it’s important for us to celebrate and to realize that it’s a big accomplishment to make it back into the playoffs. There’s only ten teams that get to play in the postseason and we’re going to be one of them.”

  CHAPTER 14.

  Lights, Camera, October

  Luis Severino brimmed with confidence as he stood in front of his Yankee Stadium locker, having been informed that his next assignment was to start the AL Wild Card game against the Twins. He had never pitched in a playoff game of any type during his career, going all the way back to his childhood; the closest he had come was sitting in the bullpen, on the roster but unused, for the 2015 postseason contest against the Astros.

  It spoke volumes that the Yankees were comfortable placing all of their trust in Severino with everything on the line—especially after some had suggested one year prior that the organization might be wise to cut their losses and declare Severino a reliever for life.

  “It’s a real honor,” Severino said. “Last year they didn’t trust me to start a regular game and right now I have the opportunity to open the postseason. I feel proud of myself and the team too. At the end of the season, [pitching coach] Larry [Rothschild] told me to go and work out because I was going to be a starter and fight for a spot in spring training. That’s what I did.”

  The Yankees had home field advantage on their side, with the October 3 showdown set for Yankee Stadium because Joe Girardi’s club finished with six more victories than the Twins’ eighty-five during the regular season. But that had been no guarantee during New York’s previous experience in a Wild Card game, and Brian Cashman said that he was far more nervous watching the two teams take batting practice than he would have been suiting up for a jump off the side of that Connecticut office tower.

  “See, I like rappelling off the building,” Cashman said. “Now I do, anyway. I don’t like these nine innings, but I’m thankful to have the chance to be on pins and needles. That’s what you work for. There’s no safety net in the cage match.”

  When playing head-to-head during the regular season, the Yankees had taken four of six games from Minnesota, including polishing off a three-game sweep in an 11–3 rout on September 20 that included back-to-back homers by Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez. Sanchez’s 33 homers in 2017 set a new record for a Yankees backstop, eclipsing the thirty hit by Yogi Berra (1952, 1956) and Jorge Posada (2003).

  Severino had started that game, his only career appearance against the Twins to date, but he had been worn down by an epic thirteen-pitch battle with Joe Mauer that ended with a run-scoring single. Severino was lifted after throwing forty-six pitches in the third inning, having allowed three runs and five hits in his second-shortest start of the season.

  Still, the Yankees believed Severino was the right choice for the must-win game.

  “Just what he’s done all year; he’s been dominant, he’s attacking hitters,” Aaron Judge said. “He’s always getting in the good counts. Every time I look up there, it’s always 0-1, 0-2. He’s never falling behind a lot of hitters. When you’ve got his repertoire and his stuff and you’re getting ahead of guys like that, good things will happen. He just dominates.”

  Managed by Paul Molitor, a Hall of Fame infielder during his twenty-one-year playing career with the Brewers, Blue Jays, and Twins, Minnesota had enjoyed a remarkable turnaround, becoming the first team in history to make the playoffs after losing 100 games in the previous season. Their young stars had fought valiantly after the front office waved the white flag in late July, approving a series of moves that included trading pitcher Jaime Garcia to New York.

  The youngest Yankees pitcher to start a potential elimination game since Mel Stottlemyre in Game 7 of the 1964 World Series, Severino appeared to be cool and collected on the eve of the Wild Card game, saying that he was “not nervous” at all. That changed when he arrived at the mound on a clear sixty-two-degree evening. Severino’s command was absent, and second baseman Brian Dozier crushed his fifth pitch over Brett Gardner’s head in left field for a leadoff homer.

  A pop out and a walk followed before Eddie Rosario ripped a line drive over the right-field wall for a two-run homer. The plan had been for Severino to give his team six good innings, then turn the game over to the bullpen, but that was not going to happen. By the time Eduardo Escobar flared a single into center field, Chad Green was already warming in the bullpen, and Girardi retrieved the ball one batter later when Max Kepler doubled.

  There were boos heard among the crowd of 49,280 as Severino trudged to the dugout, leaving the bullpen to soak up the most formidable task in franchise postseason history since Whitey Ford recorded four outs in the ten-inning Game 6 of the 1958 World Series against the Milwaukee Braves.

  “I tried to do too much,” Severino said. “I just didn’t command my pitches and was always behind in the count.”

  Making his postseason debut, Green and his disappearing fastball quickly turned the night around, pinning two Twins aboard with swinging strikeouts of Byron Buxton and Zack Granite. Didi Gregorius jazzed the crowd with a three-run homer off starter Ervin Santana in the home half of the first inning, and it was a brand-new ballgame.

  “It was a really great feeling for me to be able to come up big, to tie the game right there,” Gregorius said. “We got the fans and everybody right back in the game.”

  The Yankees kept coming, knocking Santana out after two innings. Gardner hit a second-inning homer into the second deck in right field, Jose Berrios served up a run-scoring Greg Bird single and a two-run Aaron Judge homer, and the Bronx bullpen was able to take it from there.

  “That’s what it’s all about, postseason baseball,” Judge said. “This is where a
lot of those numbers that are hanging out there in left field, this is where they made a name for themselves, in the postseason.”

  No pitching staff had been asked to get twenty-six relief outs in a non-injury postseason situation since Dwight Gooden recorded one out while pitching for the Indians against the Red Sox in the 1998 ALDS. Green, David Robertson, Tommy Kahnle, and Aroldis Chapman were up to the challenge. The quartet of relievers struck out thirteen Twins, allowing one run as the Yankees advanced to the American League Division Series with an 8–4 win.

  “To get through the whole postseason, you have to do it a bunch of different ways,” Chase Headley said. “This is a great way to do it the first time, but you’re not going to be successful using your bullpen for 8⅔ innings for the entire postseason. Fortunately, we have the group that can do that, but our starters will do their job.”

  Robertson had played the part of an ultimate team player since putting the pinstripes back on, disregarding his contract and career accomplishments to tell Girardi that he was always available for any situation. Nicknamed “Houdini” for his ability to wriggle free of tight spots, Robertson turned in a valiant effort, working 3⅓ innings and throwing fifty-two pitches, both career highs. Robertson’s only longer outing as a pro came on April 26, 2008, when he threw 3⅔ innings for Double-A Trenton.

  David Robertson was up for any situation after rejoining his original team in 2017, going 5-0 with a 1.03 ERA and one save in 30 appearances for the Yankees. (© Keith Allison)

  “Roles may change throughout the season, and I may be asked to do things that I’m not normally used to doing, but it doesn’t mean I can’t go out there and do it,” Robertson said. “If it’s the second or third inning and that’s when I’m needed to help us win a ballgame, that’s when I’ll pitch. It doesn’t matter to me. I just want to win another World Series.”