Baby Bombers Page 7

  “He’s also a big guy that plays the outfield, so I pay attention to what he does and try to take that into my game,” Judge said.

  Shortly after Judge accepted a $1.8 million signing bonus, he was invited to suit up for batting practice with the big league squad prior to a June 2013 game against the Athletics at the Oakland Coliseum. Judge remembers being awestruck when he entered the clubhouse, looking around the room at some familiar faces he’d once removed from foil packs of trading cards.

  “Mariano Rivera, Robinson Cano, Andy Pettitte, those are guys that I grew up watching,” Judge said. “Now they’re coming to me saying, ‘Hey, my name’s Andy. Great to meet you, Aaron.’ Andy Pettitte? I know who you are! It’s just pretty surreal that those guys are coming up to me and introducing themselves. It shows you what kind of class act guys they were.”

  Gardner watched Judge take some of his BP swings, offering praise as the young prospect cleared the distant fences with ease. Gardner remembers his initial reaction as being, “Man, this is a big kid. He’s a football player.”

  When Gardner grabbed his glove and jogged to the outfield, Judge followed. The outfielders were preparing to take ground balls in center field from coach Rob Thomson, who was swinging a fungo bat near second base. As Gardner recalls, the very first grounder Judge fielded as a member of the Yankees organization took a bad hop and skipped toward the wall.

  “It rolled right under him,” Gardner said. “He completely missed it, completely whiffed on it. Thoms has got a great sense of humor; he threw his bat down and maybe even kicked some dirt. He made Aaron think that he was mad at him or upset with him, and I was out there laughing. It was a pretty cool moment to see him that very first day, and to see how far he’s come.”

  At the moment when Judge chased that ball in Oakland, the Yankees’ farm system appeared to be stronger than it had been in some time. Sanchez was two months from being promoted to Double-A Trenton, Severino was about to make his stateside debut in the Gulf Coast League, and Bird was mashing in the heart of the lineup for Class-A Charleston. The footsteps were still too far away to be heard in the Bronx, but the Baby Bombers were on their way.

  CHAPTER 4.

  Unleash the Kraken

  The jewel event of each Major League Baseball offseason is the Winter Meetings, a four day extravaganza that transforms a sprawling hotel and conference center into a bizarre melting pot of team executives, player agents, prospective free agents, current managers, managerial hopefuls, caffeinated reporters, resume-clutching job seekers, and commission-hungry vendors hawking the next great pitching machine or t-shirt cannon.

  In another time, they were vital for a team to cross the finish line on transactions. In December 1975, White Sox general manager Roland Hemond found a seat in the lobby of the Diplomat Hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he plugged in a rotary telephone and set up a handmade sign that read, “Open for Business.” Hemond instructed Buck Peden, the team’s publicity director, to ring that line every half hour to make it look as though the team was extremely busy. The ruse worked; the White Sox made four trades that day.

  Now that text messaging has replaced landlines, Brian Cashman views the meetings more as a “necessary evil,” often secluding himself in the team’s suite while appearing only sparingly in the lobby, restaurants, or the bar. It is not uncommon for room service to be called upon for each meal of Cashman’s day, which generally includes at least one formal session with the media. Reporters are invited upstairs in hopes of tracking down a morsel that hints at the negotiations (or lack thereof) taking place between teams and players.

  At times, Cashman opts to skip the briefing altogether. That had been the case in 2008, when he slipped away from the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas and showed up on CC Sabathia’s doorstep in Vallejo, California, authorized to dangle $161 million of the Steinbrenner family fortune that would make the six-foot-six, 300-pound left-hander the best paid starting pitcher in history. Cashman recognized the palatial estate from an episode of “MTV Cribs,” and after a two hour meeting in the hurler’s living room, Sabathia agreed to accept the cash. Sabathia’s teddy bear personality—and, of course, the 19 wins that tied for the big league lead—would be vital as the Yankees secured their twenty-seventh World Series title that autumn.

  Another year, Cashman teased the visitors to his suite by conspicuously leaving a piece of paper on his desk with the names of second baseman Robinson Cano and right-hander Chien-Ming Wang, two of his top prospects at the time. Cashman linked them in a phantom negotiation with the Milwaukee Brewers for right-hander Ben Sheets: “They get Cano & Wang. We get Sheets.” One reporter spied the note and surreptitiously placed a notebook over the transaction, hoping to hide it from his competition. Cashman allowed the group interview to run for several minutes before laughing, admitting to the prank out of fear that the reporter would begin to chase down the false rumor. In hindsight, the deal would have been a slam-dunk for Milwaukee.

  It was during one of those relaxed interactions that a nickname was born. The 2015 Winter Meetings were held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, a glass-enclosed labyrinth with an indoor river where guests can literally go for days without a breath of outside air. That hermetically sealed structure is where Cashman first uttered his desire to “unleash the Kraken, which is Gary Sanchez, on our roster in 2016 if I can.”

  Brian Cashman has served as the Yankees’ general manager since February 1998. He joined the organization as an intern in 1986 and is currently the longest-tenured GM in baseball. (© Keith Allison)

  “Release the Kraken!” had been a line in the 1981 fantasy adventure movie The Clash of the Titans, spoken when Zeus (played originally by Laurence Olivier and later by Liam Neeson in the 2010 remake) orders that a giant sea monster be set free. Cashman said that he actually pulled the reference from the 2006 flick, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, which features a scene in which Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow character encounters the colossal octopus.

  “It came to me from the movie—‘Release the Kraken!’—which was a beast that would unleash fury on its prey,” Cashman said. “For some reason, it came to me that Gary Sanchez was a mystical beast, that his bat could unleash fury on his opponents. The one thing that we always talked about when we saw him coming through the system was that the ball off his bat sounds different. The crack of the bat, the Kraken being a mystical beast, it all fit.”

  The Kraken handle would have staying power; in time, Didi Gregorius would begin using a squid emoji in his postgame tweets to celebrate Sanchez’s accomplishments, and Sanchez had an octopus-themed bat crafted for the Home Run Derby in 2017. The Yankee Stadium scoreboard also played the Neeson clip at key points in games, surely generating quizzical stares from fans who hadn’t been tracking the offseason of 2015–2016 closely.

  Viewed as the front-runner to serve as Brian McCann’s backup when the 2016 Yankees began to gather in Tampa, Sanchez arrived early and wowed observers on a back field of the player development complex, unloading a barrage of batting practice homers that forced those peeking through a chain-link outfield fence to take cover.

  The potential for a new wave of talent excited the Yankees, who commissioned a fun video in which their clubhouse was transformed into a preschool playroom. Dressed in their pinstripes, Sanchez pushed a toy dump truck across the carpet while Aaron Judge stacked brightly colored blocks and Luis Severino stomped with a plastic dinosaur.

  “These guys are taking the ‘Baby Bombers’ title way too seriously,” manager Joe Girardi deadpanned, crossing his arms while bench coach Rob Thomson looked on disapprovingly.

  Their acting was passable, but unfortunately, the rest of Sanchez’s spring failed to live up to that promise. Pressing to secure the job, Sanchez instead punched his ticket to the minors by producing two hits in twenty-two Grapefruit League at-bats (.091).

  “The offensive numbers were not very good,” Sanchez said. “I worked really har
d every day with my hitting coach….I felt fine playing defense. I felt great. At the same time, I also felt great in my at-bats. It’s just that I didn’t get the results that I wanted.”

  He would in time. Summoned to the big leagues for good in August, Sanchez embarked on a remarkable march through the history books with a home run hitting frenzy that captivated much of baseball. For the organization, their patience had been rewarded, dating to the $3 million signing bonus that his natural gifts warranted at age sixteen.

  • • •

  When a seventeen-year-old Gary Sanchez joined the roster of the Yankees’ Class-A Staten Island affiliate for a sixteen-game cameo late in the 2010 season, his defense left much to be desired. Josh Paul, Sanchez’s first manager, once told ESPN that Sanchez “couldn’t catch a fastball down the middle” in those days. Right-hander Bryan Mitchell wasn’t quite so harsh in assessing of Sanchez’s receiving skills. A frequent minor league teammate of Sanchez early in their respective careers, Mitchell said that Sanchez’s tools had been obvious.

  “He always had a great arm,” said Mitchell, who was traded to the Padres in December 2017. “His hitting was another level above what you’d see that young. I think you always knew the potential that he had.”

  Though he would take mandatory English classes after games, Sanchez struggled with loneliness once the stadium lights were turned off and he had retreated to his quiet apartment or hotel room. The place where he seemed to be most comfortable was in the batter’s box, where Sanchez had an intrinsic feel for what needed to be done.

  Disciplinary episodes peppered Sanchez’s progress through the minor league ranks. The most notable incident took place when Sanchez was with Class-A Charleston in 2011, with reports suggesting that he sulked after manager Aaron Ledesma wrote John Ryan Murphy’s name into the lineup at catcher for a second consecutive game. Sanchez declined to enter a game as a replacement, and when a coach asked him to warm up a pitcher in the bullpen, he had refused to do so.

  The Yankees responded by bouncing Sanchez back to their minor league complex in Tampa for what amounted to a ten-day attitude adjustment. Personally disappointed by his performance to that point, Sanchez returned to the South Atlantic League hungry and belted 13 homers with 31 RBIs over his final 50 games, earning two turns as the league’s Player of the Week.

  “I remember that I was told that this kid needed a lot of help with his work ethic,” said Al Pedrique, who joined the Yankees organization as a minor league manager in 2013. “At times during the games, he didn’t run balls out. I remember having a conversation in spring training with Gary that I was there to help him get better, but we’ll do things the right way, the professional way. At times, he was stubborn. He wanted to do things his way.”

  While with Double-A Trenton in 2014, Sanchez was also hit with a five game suspension for what manager Tony Franklin called “a violation of some of our guidelines.” Declining to provide specific details of the infraction, Franklin told the Trentonian that Sanchez needed to conduct himself “like a professional at all times.”

  “He grew up, like all of us have to at some point,” said Twins hitting coach James Rowson, who served as the Yankees’ minor league hitting coordinator from 2014–2016. “Sometimes the spotlight is on you when you’re that talented and you’re coming up in the New York Yankees organization. You may do something immature here or there, but nothing out of the ordinary. He was just a kid who was being a kid.”

  Rob Refsnyder said that he first saw Sanchez play in 2013, when the two were teammates with Class-A Tampa. Refsnyder recalls Sanchez “oozing” talent, instantly showcasing the best arm and raw power that the infielder had ever seen. While some wondered if Sanchez was destined to become another Jesus Montero, a promising catcher whose career fizzled soon after being traded to the Mariners following the 2011 season, Refsnyder saw few signs of the moodiness that Sanchez was reputed to exhibit.

  “People are blown away by this, but Gary is one of my favorite human beings on the entire Earth,” Refsnyder said. “No exaggeration. I love Gary. He’s an awesome guy, he’s an awesome husband and father. I consider him one of my closest friends in baseball still. I know Gary got a lot of flak about work ethic and stuff like that, but to this day, I’ll swear by it—Gary is one of the best teammates I’ve ever had.

  “I saw that guy go like 0-for-20, terrible at-bats, at-bats that a player would be sulking or consumed by. He was on the top step, giving high fives. I learned a lot from Gary. If you go 0-for-4, it’s a shrug of the shoulders, kind of an ‘I’ll get them tomorrow, I’ll figure it out.’”

  Gary Sanchez received a $3 million signing bonus in July 2009. Pictured here with the Tampa Yankees, Sanchez was consistently rated among the organization’s most exciting prospects. (© Bryan Green)

  Sanchez said that he was in the process of becoming a more mature player even before he followed a hallway of fluorescent lights into a Trenton, New Jersey hospital room during the 2015 season, where Sanchez’s wife, Sahaira, gave birth to a daughter that the couple named Sarah. As Sanchez snipped the umbilical cord, he admired the girl’s cherubic face and made a silent promise to be the best father he possibly could.

  “Imagine, just like that, you’re a dad,” Sanchez said. “The responsibility that comes with that, being a dad, it’s a big responsibility. It’s something that you have to take very seriously. There’s a kid now that you want to provide for and make sure that she’s comfortable and has a good life.”

  Then twenty-two, Sanchez remembers being “very surprised” when he found out that Sahaira was expecting, but “at the same time, very happy.” He recalls being afraid to hold Sarah, fearing that he would somehow harm the delicate newborn. Sanchez eased into fatherhood, and Sarah grew into an adorable toddler with curly black hair who loves to babble and play with her daddy.

  “Once she was born, it was kind of like a switch went off,” Sanchez said. “I saw the opportunity in front of me. I just decided, whatever I need to do and whatever it takes to get to the big leagues, let’s get it done now. When you have a daughter, it’s kind of like a source of energy and motivation. It pushes you to do more, to be better.”

  When Sanchez rejoined his Trenton teammates, coaches noticed Sanchez taking a more purposeful approach in batting practice, which he’d sometimes treated like a home run hitting competition. Sanchez also spent more time in the weight room and seemed to pay closer attention during games, returning to the dugout and tipping teammates off to patterns that opposing pitchers had fallen into.

  “You could tell he was a different guy,” said Pedrique, the manager of that Trenton squad. “He was more serious about his approach during batting practice, what he was trying to accomplish. During the game, he would communicate more with his teammates. He started being more aggressive handling the pitching staff and understanding the game plan for each guy. You could tell that he was growing up.”

  Posting a robust .274/.330/.485 split line between Double-A Trenton and Triple-A, Sanchez polished his defensive skills with lessons picked up from Josh Paul, instructor Julio Mosquera, and bench coach Tony Pena, prompting his first call-up at the end of 2015. Sanchez pinch-hit twice, going hitless, and was on the roster as a third catcher for the Wild Card game against the Astros. Pena said that the big-league coaches had been pleased by Sanchez’s progress.

  “Before, you had to force him to do things,” Pena said. “Now he understands that he needs to keep improving. He’s doing it. Sometimes it’s the nature of human beings. Some people grow up faster than others. I think there are a lot of Latin American players that it takes a long time to grow. I love to see the way he handles himself.”

  Sent to play against top competition in the Arizona Fall League, Sanchez sparkled, slugging seven homers while throwing out sixty-two percent of runners attempting to steal. Word filtered to Cashman that something had clicked; Sanchez knew he was probably going to be a good big-league player, but now he was determined to be great.

 
; “If you have a tool package that’s exceptional, which he does, then the sky is the limit,” Cashman said. “It’s a very difficult game, and one you can’t play unless you have talent. He has exceptional power, he’s a big man, he’s got a good arm. If you can refine your ability to sharpen the lens of your craft, you can tap into that physicality and that’s clearly what has happened.”

  When the Yankees gathered for their organizational meetings that autumn, John Ryan Murphy was listed as their backup catcher. A baby-faced twenty-four-year-old from Bradenton, Florida, the easygoing Murphy was generally regarded as a sharp defender with some offensive potential, having batted .277 with three homers and 14 RBIs in 155 at-bats during the 2015 season. Murphy seemed to be a nice player to have, but Cashman was so convinced of Sanchez’s readiness that the Yankees dealt Murphy to the Twins for outfielder Aaron Hicks that November.

  But when Sanchez flopped in the spring of 2016, the Yankees decided instead to carry Austin Romine as their backup catcher, optioning Sanchez to Triple-A.

  “Probably a guy trying to do too much and trying too hard in spring training,” manager Joe Girardi said. “That happens. It happens all the time. The key is that he learned from that.”

  While Sanchez moved his gear across the street to the minor league complex, Romine savored having finally caught a break. Then twenty-seven years old, Romine carried strong baseball bloodlines. His father, Kevin, had enjoyed seven years as a Red Sox outfielder from 1985–1991, and his older brother Andrew has played in the majors with the Angels and Tigers.