Baby Bombers Page 8

  Once a touted prospect who was considered a possible heir apparent to Jorge Posada, Romine had been designated for assignment prior to the 2015 season, a procedural move that exposed him to waivers and freed any other club to make a claim. They all passed, and Romine returned to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, where he resurrected his career by earning selection to the International League’s All-Star Game.

  Upon his return from those festivities in Omaha, Romine’s heart sank, learning that Sanchez had been promoted from Double-A and would take Romine’s job as the RailRiders’ everyday catcher. Romine respected Sanchez’s talent and understood why the organization wanted to accelerate his development, but he also had hoped that his play was being noticed by the decision-makers in the front office.

  “It put a chip on my shoulder––a positive chip,” Romine said. “Sometimes, you can put a negative one up there and it can go against you in certain ways. I just put a positive one up there. I know what I can do when I stay within myself.”

  Though the Yankees weren’t ready to use Sanchez at the major league level, some of their competition was willing to. The untouchables in the system at that time were listed as Greg Bird, Aaron Judge, Jorge Mateo, and Luis Severino, but Cashman would listen if one of his GM counterparts mentioned Sanchez’s name. Cashman said that he received “some very strong proposals” to trade for Sanchez, but the Yankees ultimately rejected all of them.

  “You walk through the process, dissect it, and walk away from it,” Cashman said. “We were never close to doing anything, never brought anything to ownership, but a lot of different clubs tried to push a lot of different concepts that made us go through the process and go through offers. When Gary started turning the corner in Double-A, he entered the category that he was going to be a success or a failure here in New York.”

  Following his spring stall-out in 2016, Sanchez played in seventy-one games at Triple-A. The opportunity to play every day had served as a blessing in disguise for the twenty-three-year-old, who posted a .807 OPS with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, accumulating valuable reps that would not have been available if he were backing up McCann in New York. Having Sanchez lose the spring battle to Romine also created an inadvertent long-term benefit for the team, as it delayed Sanchez’s free agency until after the 2022 season.

  The Yankees called up Sanchez for a one game cameo on May 13, plugging his right-handed bat into the DH spot against nasty White Sox left-hander Chris Sale. Sanchez went hitless in four at-bats that night, then was summoned for good prior to an August 3 Subway Series game at Citi Field, in which Sanchez notched his first big league hit—a seventh inning single off Mets reliever Hansel Robles.

  Finally, Sanchez had a chance to begin showing why the organization had been so excited about his progress. Over the final eight weeks of the regular season, Sanchez equaled a dusty record that had been set by outfielder Wally Berger of the 1930 Boston Braves, hitting an incredible 20 home runs in his first 51 big league games.

  Bursting onto the big league scene late in 2016, Gary Sanchez was the fastest player in baseball history to reach 11, 18, and 19 home runs in terms of games played. (© Rich L. Wang)

  When Alex Rodriguez played his final game on August 12, the veteran slugger remarked that Sanchez’s loud bat had helped to nudge him out the door. Sanchez had gone 4-for-5 in a win at Fenway Park two nights earlier, a performance that included Sanchez’s first big league homer, an eighth inning solo shot off Red Sox reliever Junichi Tazawa.

  “The game is tough. I saw Gary Sanchez have a series in Boston and I looked at him and said, ‘I can’t do that anymore,’" Rodriguez said. "And I was happy about it. I’m at peace.”

  Sanchez’s homer off Tazawa was the first installment of a barrage that would see him take seventeen different pitchers deep, with Cody Martin, David Price, and Marco Estrada each serving up a pair. Sanchez hit a sizzling .389 with 11 homers in August, earning selection as both the AL’s Player of the Month and Rookie of the Month. Sanchez was the first Yankees catcher to win either award.

  “Gary’s been doing this from Double-A, Triple-A, and now he’s up here to do it on the big show,” Aaron Judge said. “It didn’t matter who was throwing, what the count was, what the situation was. He was going to go with his plan and he was executing it. That’s tough to do at the major league level, and he did it for a month and a half there.”

  Quickly elevated to the number three spot in the lineup, Sanchez also set a record for the fewest games played by any player to hit 20 homers in a season (previously Giancarlo Stanton, who hit 27 in 74 games in 2015). The only other Yankees to ever hit 20 home runs between August 10 and the end of any season were Babe Ruth (1927) and Roger Maris (1961), so Sanchez was in fantastic company.

  “I think everybody on the team calls ‘home run’ when he steps up there,” said fellow rookie Tyler Austin, who made some history of his own by belting back-to-back homers with Judge on August 13 of that 2016 season. “When you get on a roll like he’s on and the way he’s swinging the bat, I feel like every time he steps in the box, it could be a home run.”

  In 229 plate appearances, Sanchez produced an impressive .299/.376/.657 slash line, with 32 of his 60 hits going for extra bases. T-shirts bearing Sanchez’s uniform No. 24 became a hot seller while the Yankees gained steam in the postseason chase, and those who witnessed the early installments of Sanchez’s rise were not surprised by what they were seeing.

  “There’s no better teacher than experience,” Rowson said. “He continues to make adjustments at every level. You have to change your swing at times as you progress. You tend to make your swing a little bit shorter. You’re not swinging as hard as you can for the long ball all the time.”

  The Yankees were equally pleased with Sanchez’s demeanor behind the plate, as he’d frequently pop-up mid at-bat to wrap an arm around a hurler and go over their next pitch sequence. Starlin Castro compared Sanchez’s throwing arm to that of the elite Cardinals backstop Yadier Molina, and in a telling take of Sanchez’s focus, CC Sabathia said that he was able to navigate through his starts without shaking off a single one of Sanchez’s signs.

  “He has good suggestions, which is rare for a young catcher,” Sabathia said. “That makes you feel good and confident that he knows what he wants to call.”

  With Major League Baseball continuing to operate on an unbalanced schedule, the Yankees play against their American League East rivals (nineteen games against the Blue Jays, Orioles, Rays and Red Sox each) more than the teams in other divisions. Having to see Sanchez so frequently was an unsettling thought to Rays manager Kevin Cash, who said that he spent a half of an inning on the bench discussing the catcher’s breakout with first baseman Logan Morrison during a September 2016 series.

  “We were trying to figure out if we’ve ever seen anybody come up and do something like this,” Cash said. “What a talented player––offensively, defensively. We saw as strong an arm as I’ve ever seen from a catcher. And then, offensively, he just has a very, very good approach at the plate and a ton of power.”

  Gary Denbo, who was then the Yankees’ vice president of player development, said that he believed the organization’s coaches deserve applause for helping Sanchez realize his potential. Denbo specifically mentioned catching instructors Jason Brown, Michel Hernandez, Julio Mosquera, and Josh Paul as being crucial, as well as Al Pedrique and hitting coaches Marcus Thames, P.J. Pilittere, and Tommy Wilson.

  “They spent hours and hours with this guy,” Denbo said. “He’s matured mentally and physically and he’s become one of the best young players in the game. We’re very proud of that.”

  Sanchez finished second to Tigers pitcher Michael Fulmer for the American League’s Rookie of the Year Award, receiving four first place votes, twenty-three second place votes, and two third place votes (full disclosure: one of Sanchez’s second place votes was cast by the author of this book). Upon returning to the Dominican Republic in the winter, Sanchez focused on strength work, saying that he needed to
prepare his body to catch more than 100 games in 2017.

  Though Sanchez remained a man of few words, exhibiting an introverted demeanor when surrounded by microphones and notepads, his success quickly made him recognizable on the streets of New York. During a staged January 2017 visit, Sanchez stunned the lunchtime crowd at a Bronx bodega when he donned a chef’s hat and stepped behind the counter to slap together ham and cheese sandwiches, part of a promotion that the Yankees launched in part to sell the city on their next generation of stars.

  “I don’t feel any pressure to be ‘the guy’ off the field,” Sanchez said. “On the field, you’re trying to win games and that’s the focus. I don’t feel any pressure at all. I’ve got to keep doing the same things I’ve been doing. Just to play baseball is what I know how to do.”

  Seemingly at ease behind that bodega counter, Sanchez was about to get settled behind home plate at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees had made their intentions clear at the tail end of the ’16 season, when Cashman said that the starting catcher job had become Sanchez’s to lose. By trading Brian McCann to the Astros for a pair of young pitching prospects, the Yankees announced they were ready to send Sanchez into 2017 as the unchallenged starter.

  “We can count on him being one of the top five hitting catchers in the AL at very least, with a great arm and defense,” Cashman said. “He’s extremely bright, and one of the better intellectual young hitters that our staff has come across. It took a little longer than we wanted, but he was projected to be a middle of the lineup type hitter and a very exciting defender. Boy, what he did was amazing.”

  CHAPTER 5.

  Bird is the Word

  The home run that helped clinch the fifty-third postseason appearance in Yankees history was launched from Greg Bird’s bat on the afternoon of September 24, 2017, a three-run shot to right-center field off the Blue Jays’ Joe Biagini. While Didi Gregorius and Ronald Torreyes raised their arms and clapped in the first-base dugout at Toronto’s Rogers Centre, Bird cracked the slightest sliver of a smile, satisfied in having reminded his team why they were correct to not have given up on him.

  Bird had always seemed to exude patience, but the past two years had tested that admirable character trait. After surging onto the big-league scene with 11 homers at the tail end of 2015, Bird lost all of 2016 to injury and was slammed with more bad fortune early in 2017, when the impact of a seemingly innocuous foul ball wound up erasing the twenty-four-year-old from the lineup for more than two-thirds of the season.

  So, while his teammates gleefully sprayed each other with Bottega Prosecco and created a miniature Lake Ontario in the center of the clubhouse carpet, Bird made sure to savor the moment for a few extra beats—articulating his excitement while staying true to his tranquil demeanor.

  “Whatever your job is, you’ve got to do your job,” Bird shouted over the celebration, while cans of Budweiser exploded around his head. “At points this year, my job was to get better and try and come back. Just to be back now is huge for me.”

  After sitting out all of 2016 while recovering from right labrum shoulder surgery, the disabled list was the last place that Bird expected to be in 2017. Mark Teixeira had marched into retirement on a high note, hitting a September grand slam off Red Sox hurler Joe Kelly for his 409th and final big-league homer, opening the door for Bird to take over as the next in a succession of terrific Yankees first basemen. Bird’s eight spring training homers raised optimism that he could be a worthy successor to the likes of Don Mattingly, Jason Giambi, and Teixeira.

  Then came a March 30 exhibition against the Phillies in Clearwater, Florida, the Yankees’ final game in the Sunshine State before their bags were packed to head north. Batting in the third inning against veteran right-hander Joaquin Benoit, Bird hacked at a pitch and sensed a lightning bolt of pain rush through his right ankle. He winced and hobbled around the batter’s box but remained in the game, working a walk before yielding to a pinch runner.

  In the clubhouse, Bird had the ankle wrapped in ice and thought little of it, believing it was another in the long line of bumps and bruises that come with playing every day. A precautionary set of X-rays were taken, which came back clean, and Bird had no reason to assume he had sustained anything other than a particularly nasty contusion.

  His concern grew when the ankle throbbed throughout April, a month in which Bird managed six hits in sixty at-bats (.100). Bird was placed on the disabled list in early May, beginning a quest for answers that would necessitate office visits with no fewer than seven noted orthopedists.

  After Bird’s discomfort aborted a twelve-game rehab stint in early June, there was at least one moment of frustration in which an unnamed Yankees insider questioned Bird’s desire to return, telling the New York Daily News, “You really have to wonder what’s with this guy. You’d think with Judge and Sanchez, the guys he came up through the system with, doing so well up here, he’d want to be a part of this. Apparently not.”

  Bird wisely refrained from returning fire, though he was clearly irked.

  “I want to play. I’ve always wanted to play since I can remember,” Bird said. “I love baseball. For me, I’m doing everything I can to get back. That’s pretty much all I know. I would hope people see that.”

  Cashman dabbled with first base alternatives, giving 184 at-bats to the strikeout-prone Chris Carter before trading with the Brewers for minor leaguer Garrett Cooper and offering a chance to fourth-stringer Ji-Man Choi. Cashman maintained that Bird was still the team’s best choice for the present and the future.

  Cashman said that Bird reminded him of former big-league outfielder Bobby Abreu, in that he could seemingly roll out of bed and be an exceptional hitter. That remained possible, but first someone would need to figure out what was keeping Bird off the field. The root of Bird’s inflammation issues was finally identified in a mid-July consultation with Dr. Martin O’Malley at New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery.

  O’Malley explained that Bird was dealing with an excess growth in the os trigonum of his right ankle, describing it to the player as an accessory bone that had been present at birth and served no real purpose. O’Malley’s suggestion was to remove the bone altogether, with the hope of getting Bird on the field within six weeks. Though manager Joe Girardi said that they couldn’t necessarily count on that timetable after so many false starts, Bird vowed that his season was not over.

  “Being able to go out and play with these guys again and be part of the team, that’s what I’m looking forward to the most,” Bird said. “I’ll have a scar. It’s a bone I won’t need. One less bone.”

  Touching base with Mets general manager Sandy Alderson in advance of the July 31 trade deadline, Cashman revealed that he had spoken about Jay Bruce, Lucas Duda, and Neil Walker, all of whom would soon be traded when the disappointing Mets turned the page toward their 2018 season. They were all capable of playing first base, with Duda the most experienced of the trio. Cashman told Alderson that he was interested but only as a rental, since Bird was supposed to be activated in August.

  “I do remember him saying, when he wasn’t getting what he needed from me in one of the conversations, ‘Are you really going to rely on Greg Bird, who hasn’t played all year?’” Cashman said. “I said to him, ‘I know this guy and I know what he’s capable of. He’s going to be healthy. He’s coming back and he will hit because that’s what he’s always done. He’s not going to need much time.’”

  • • •

  Before Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez were the celebrated young muscle in the big-league lineup, Greg Bird was being talked about as the next big thing in New York. That ripple began in the spring of 2015, when Alex Rodriguez watched a group of prospects including Bird and Judge put on a batting display at George M. Steinbrenner Field. Rodriguez returned to his locker and—unsolicited—remarked that the Yankees had something special brewing.

  Say what you will about Rodriguez’s tumultuous career, but he seemed to read the game at a different level between t
he white lines, picking up on trends and storylines quicker than his coaches, teammates, and the media. That was the case then, when Rodriguez lauded Bird and Judge as “two of the finest young hitters I’ve seen in a long time.”

  When Rodriguez made that proclamation, Bird was a few months removed from having been named the Most Valuable Player of the Arizona Fall League, coming off a campaign in which he batted .271 with 14 home runs and 43 RBIs in 102 games for Class-A Tampa and Double-A Trenton.

  “You don’t see those type of young hitters come around very often,” Rodriguez said. “We’re lucky to have two of them.”

  Born in Memphis, Tennessee, to parents Jim and Lee, Bird lived with his family in nearby Cordova, Tennessee, until age ten, when his father pursued an opportunity as a Colorado property realtor. Though he initially lamented the loss of his schoolyard friends, Bird soon discovered that life in the Rocky Mountain state suited him fine.

  “The winters were different, more snow, but it was great,” Bird said. “You’d play basketball in the street, go to the movies, normal stuff—just suburban cities. In Colorado, there’s more to do in the outdoors; go to the mountains, skiing, fishing, camping. We did that more.”

  Introduced to baseball by the 1993 movie The Sandlot, Bird swiftly moved on from Smalls, Ham, and Squints to study the Rockies’ games on television, often mimicking the left-handed swing of power-hitting first baseman Todd Helton. He remembers being enthralled by the 1998 home run chase between the Cardinals’ Mark McGwire and the Cubs’ Sammy Sosa, and later counted shortstop Troy Tulowitzki as one of his favorite players to observe.

  “My mom always tells me that I was good at watching and doing it,” Bird said. “When I started to understand how baseball worked, I just liked to watch the good hitters hit.”

  Dabbling in basketball, football, and hockey as a youth, Bird’s brooding over a poorly-timed game of hoops during his freshman year at Grandview High helped outline his future priorities. He remembers sitting in one of his classes, deciding not only that he should play baseball, but that he was going to get drafted by a big-league team out of high school.