Inside the Empire

by Bob Klapisch

  As their stars faltered, so did the Yanks: they played .500 ball for an entire month. The team was on fumes by the All-Star break, and no one needed the reset more than Judge. He’d gotten only two games off the entire season and looked frankly gassed. Beginning in June, when he hit .234, his drives stopped carrying out of the park. He was asked if his shoulder was acting up. He said no, he was just missing good pitches. In any case, a break was what he needed. He skipped the Home Run Derby, hit a dinger in the AL’s 8–6 win, and came out of the gate in the second half with a pair of three-hit games and his first homer that counted in three weeks.

  Then, on July 26, in a home game against the Royals, Judge was clipped by a pitch. The high heat from Jakob Junis barely missed his jaw, catching him on the heel of his right hand. The crowd at the Stadium went stone silent. Judge managed to take his base, then left the game soon after. X-rays showed a fracture at the top of his wrist; that ulnar styloid chip would cost him almost two months.

  The news could have been much, much worse, of course: he’d narrowly dodged a beaning and months of rehab. But the timing of the injury was bad indeed—the Yanks were gearing up for a series in Fenway that would probably tell the tale. Yes, they’d still have fifty games to play, but that four-game set in Boston now loomed as make-or-break. If they won three of four, they’d chop the lead to three and declare that they were in this till the end. Conversely, losing three (or more) meant waving the flag and resigning themselves to a wild-card berth.

  Though no one seemed to notice till after the All-Star break, the A’s were gaining fast in the wild-card hunt, and the Mariners, recovered from their beatdown in the Bronx, were running neck and neck with them. A one-game play-in was a bleak enough prospect for a Yankee team on course to win a hundred. Missing a wild card altogether would be a debacle for the ages and would put Cashman and his culture under the lens. He probably wouldn’t be the scapegoat, though; that would be his nice-guy rookie skipper. You could almost see the headline write itself: “Beleaguered Boone Blows It Down the Stretch.”

  Cashman did, of course, summon reinforcements: he made three deals to patch his pitching staff. J. A. Happ, the cerebral lefty, was a front-end starter who seemed to save his best games for the Sox. Lance Lynn and his burly heater were acquired from the Twins; he’d had five terrific seasons in St. Louis before falling on his face in Minnesota. Both men were upgrades over Gray and cost the Yankees little in long-term assets. Zach Britton, the Orioles’ closer, came more dearly: Cashman sent three of his B-plus chips in Josh Rogers, Cody Carroll, and Dillon Tate. That trade struck observers as a peculiar one: Cashman was splurging on an area of strength instead of dealing for a need. He also neglected to add a veteran bat, someone like Steve Pearce, whom the Red Sox grabbed. But the questions about his choices would have to wait. Cashman hunkered down until mid-August.

  Thus fortified, the Yanks put a nice run together, including their first win streak in weeks. Happ pitched superbly in his Bronx debut, going six strong for his eleventh win. Tanaka beat the Orioles for his seventh in a row, a twelve-start span in which he missed a month but chopped his ERA by two runs. Torres was back and heating up, Andújar had hit his way up to the six-hole, and Stanton quietly became their bedrock player, raising his average fifty points. To be sure, they missed Judge, and they didn’t try to soft-pedal it. “Look, Aaron is great: he slugs and gets on base,” Boone said. “We’re not the same team without him.” “The whole dynamic of how pitchers attack us changes with him gone,” said Stanton, who was suddenly pitched around in Judge’s absence.

  They also rued heading to Boston without Sánchez: he owned the Sox in that park. He’d posted a .973 OPS up there and hit a homer every ten at-bats. In the absence of two of their stars, though, the Yanks had held the line. Their power numbers were down, but they’d won some close games and climbed back to thirty games over .500. That was their toughness showing, a fuck-you pride that said, We concede nothing, you bastards.

  They’d march into Fenway with their chests stuck out and send their best soldier to the mound. Sabathia—who else?—was going in game 1.

  6

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  “We Might Be a Little Short This Year”

  The Yankees went to Boston in a vulgar mood, furious at themselves for looking ahead. In the final leg of a critical home stand, they’d turned in a shameful, who-cares showing against the worst team in baseball, the Orioles. Sonny Gray, who’d seemed to save his season with three solid wins in a row, went out and pitched himself off the rotation, getting rocked for seven runs in two-plus innings. It might have been his last start ever in the Bronx, where his ERA was 7.71. If so, he certainly sent up an unexpected salute: he cocked his cap and smirked at the crowd of forty-seven thousand when it booed him to the showers.

  To be fair, they should have saved some of that hate for Gray’s teammates. Twice, Torres failed to cover a base, and the first of those brain-farts led to a five-run inning. And twice the Yankees flopped with the bases full in a game they’d lose, 7–5. (Neil Walker bounced into a double play, and Stanton struck out swinging.) That ran the team’s fail-streak to oh-for-fifteen with the bases loaded and highlighted the lineup’s yearlong struggles with runners in scoring position (RISP).

  For four months, the Yanks ranked last in the majors, hitting .161 with RISP. The Red Sox, who were first, featured three of the clutchest bats in the game—Xander Bogaerts, Andrew Benintendi, and J. D. Martinez. To compound their sins, the Yanks had lost that day to a pitcher who’d struggled all year. Alex Cobb didn’t sign till the last week of March, and it showed in his numbers: he was 2-14 with a six-plus ERA. But he held the Yanks to a run in six innings before his bullpen made life interesting in the ninth. Here was another dismal habit of the Yanks: their hitters saved their worst for brand-Z starters. Joe Biagini (1-6, 6.88 ERA), Andrew Cashner (3-10, 4.83), Kendall Graveman (1-5, 7.60), Jakob Junis, the Judge-plunking heel (6-11, 5.00)—the Yankees lost to them all, and meekly too, scoring four earned runs in twenty-four innings. That failure to beat up no-name pitchers boded ill for the opener against the Red Sox. Chris Sale, the seven-time All-Star, had been scratched from the start with a bout of shoulder soreness. His replacement was Brian Johnson, a back-of-the-bullpen lefty who’d—naturally—blanked the Yankees in three appearances.

  In the clubhouse before game 1, the Yankees paced like boxers, beaming bad intentions. Then they went out throwing haymakers at the Sox and bulled them against the ropes early. Didi, batting third, hit a three-run rocket before Johnson recorded an out. Hicks blasted another bomb in the second inning, a solo shot that cleared the pen in right. Far from exalted, though, the Yanks looked rattled: Sabathia, their savior, had nothing. He labored mightily in the first, walked a run home in the second, then fell apart in the third. His cutter leaked over the heart of the plate, and the two-seamer skewed wild outside. The Red Sox saw this and spat on the latter, waiting for the cutter down the middle.

  Then, once on base, the Sox acted on something else: Sabathia was tipping his move to home plate. Afterward, the Sox kept mum on what they’d spotted. After all, they’d get Sabathia twice again in the regular season. But they ran on him at every chance, showing their elder no respect. Betts stole easily after leading off the first, and then, after a Steve Pearce bomb in the third, Martinez, the lead-legged slugger, swiped second.

  Sabathia was both flustered and embarrassed. The bill of his cap poured off perspiration. After Martinez stole, Blake Swihart nubbed a roller to the mound. Sabathia sailed his throw past Greg Bird’s head. After three, Boone was forced to pull CC, who’d thrown seventy-seven pitches and was flying blind without his cutter and two-seamer.

  In came Jonathan Holder, one of the season’s sweet surprises. An unknown quantity when the Yanks broke camp, he’d climbed what Cashman calls “the credibility tree” with dozens of no-fuss innings. For three months, he’d expertly mixed his plus fastball with a chin-to-shin changeup. But he’d never pitched at Fe
nway in a pressure game, and on this night the moment overwhelmed him. The Sox ignored his heater and swung at his change, spraying bullets off the left-field wall. Holder faced seven batters and retired none; all of them would end up scoring. It was misery to watch the poor kid implode, but more painful was the way his team responded. Boone stared impassively from the top step of the dugout as Holder took his lumps. Neither he nor Rothschild went out to nurse him through it. So, too, Boone’s fielders. They stood at their positions, grooming dirt with their cleats. None of them checked on Holder at the mound.

  By the time the carnage had ended, the Yanks were down six runs. They crypt-walked through the next five innings: no anger, no pushback, not even a dust-off pitch after Pearce bashed his third of three homers. After the game, the Yanks sat, stunned, at their lockers, mouthing rote answers to pointed questions. Have to turn the page. Have to right the ship. We’re a better team than what we showed. Well, yes, they were better than a 15–7 butt-kick, but that was no comfort to all concerned. The Sox had just corroborated what everyone else knew: they were the team of the year, and maybe the decade. For months, the Yanks had watched with eyebrows arched as the Sox steamrolled the rest of the sport. Yep, they’re strong, they’d grunt, but there was always an unsaid but . . . but they’ll never do that to us. Now, after this beatdown, there was no qualifying clause. Instead, the unsaid thought was: They’re just better. Only Gardner, the salty vet, summoned any outrage. “It might be one loss, but this is tough to forget. We can’t let it continue tomorrow.”

  At the postgame dais, Boone was grilled on why he’d left Holder in to take a beating. He could have spoken the truth—I was trying to save my bullpen. We’ve got three more games here. Instead, he tiptoed past the subject, saying, “I hoped he’d find it out there.” Boone called the gaffes by his fielders “frustrating,” but you heard no thread of outrage in his voice. Instead, he stuck to his Stuart Smalley routine. “I still believe in this team,” he said several times. “I know we’re really good.”

  The next night, a Friday, the other penny fell: Boone was punked by Alex Cora, the Red Sox skipper. After Gardner was hit by a pitch leading off the top of the first, Severino buzzed Mookie Betts in the bottom half. Betts fell back as if shot, but wasn’t grazed; the umpire gave a warning to both teams. Cora raced out at him, screaming blue murder. The ump tossed him from the game, but Cora wasn’t leaving till he got his money’s worth: he stood on the top step of the Red Sox dugout, shrieking “Fuck you, man! Fuck you!” at the Yankees. The Yanks players looked at Boone. Boone looked at Cora—and never said a word, let alone a fuck-you back. He was caught in the vise of his high-road brand: if he cursed out Cora, he might have saved face but been seen as fake by his team. If he took a run at Cora—as Girardi surely would have—he’d have proved a point but betrayed his own ethos. At some point in a season, every manager faces a choice between his dignity and his reputation. Boone made his choice and paid a stiff price. The Yankees went down without a peep in games 2 and 3.

  On Sunday, several hours before the capper of the series, Klapisch talked privately with one of the veterans in the Yankees’ clubhouse. It was coroner-quiet in the visitors’ room, and players dressed like they were sneaking out of a house. Klapisch asked the veteran what the hell had just happened: three games, three debacles, zero fire. The veteran looked around him and then muttered, shockingly, “Looks like we might be a little short this year.”

  Usually, when a player says such a thing, you arrange to call him later for more details. Except there is no “usual” for such a thing: players on a contender never say that. They might tell you the team’s banged up and/or battling through a slump, but here was a guy admitting, in early August, that his club was cooked. He said it in confidence, knowing he wouldn’t be named and that the quote wouldn’t run till the following spring. But he was giving last rites for a season still in progress, and for a team that would welcome back Judge and Sánchez for September and beyond.

  There’s no point rubbing salt into the wound of game 4, when Chapman gagged in the bottom of the ninth and flushed a three-run cushion. It was the first time all year the Yankees blew a game in which they took a lead into the ninth (they’d been 69-0 to that point), but somehow the 5–4 loss felt fated—or worse, beside the point. More notable by far was the team’s response to being swept four games at Fenway. None of the clubhouse leaders said what needed saying: that they’d played like garbage and disgraced themselves but would be ready, come the playoffs, when they saw the Sox again.

  In a weekend of stark surprises, this was the most revealing—the Yankees lacked that guy to send a message. Klapisch was there when Keith Hernandez ripped his Mets in ’86, calling out pitchers who phoned it in and hitters who didn’t pull their weight. And Klapisch was there in the 2000s when Jason Giambi stepped up, saying, “We suck now. Better turn this shit around fast.” On contenders, someone has to be the guy who gets his team’s attention, be it calling a players’ meeting and speaking from the heart or talking to his teammates, sternly, through the press. Maybe Judge would grow into the role in two or three years, or Cashman would add someone over the winter who had the stones and stature to take it on. For now, though, the Yanks lacked a crucial component: a hard-ass who could pull the team out of a ditch.

  When a club has no in-house toughie to lean on, the manager has to fill in where he can. It’s not about knocking over a buffet table; those stunts went out with Whitey Herzog. Instead, it’s about finding a tone and a theme that cuts through the funk his club is in. But as he left Boston for a set against the White Sox, Boone was trailed by hard questions. Was he merely a nice guy built for sunny days, or was there a side of him his players hadn’t seen yet? If he suddenly raised his voice to them, would the players listen? Or would they dismiss it as a stunt and tune him out? Because make no mistake: he’d lost some equity in Boston. Cora had outmanned and outmaneuvered him all series, burning hotter and brighter for his team. It doesn’t take an SOB to run a baseball club, but you do need to be one now and then. That’s all part of the job for the good-dad skipper: sometimes you just have to lose your shit, if only to show the kids you still care.

  Ten days after Boston, an appointment was made to sit and talk with Cashman. Things hadn’t improved much since the Fenway slaughter: the Yanks had won some games against low-rent teams, then tripped themselves up in ugly losses. Judge, who thought he’d miss only three weeks, hadn’t swung a bat by week four. His prognosis was pushed to mid-September. Sánchez was jogging and taking BP, but he too was out till September. Sabathia’s knee landed him on the disabled list, Severino’s funk stretched into its sixth week, and no one had a clue what was up with Greg Bird, who continued to mark in absent at the plate.

  But Cashman bopped in that day wearing a bronze backpack, looking like he’d come from the Governor’s Ball. He joked about all the texts backed up on his queue, laughed about a prank he’d played on one of his coaches, and imitated his late great pal Gene Michael when asked about Judge’s status. “As Stick would say, ‘He’s got no pop, Cash! No pop at all in the wrist!’” Word had it that Judge was training in the pool, swinging underwater without a bat. Cashman said he hoped Judge would be right by Labor Day, but allowed he might not heal up till March. “He told us he’d play with pain, but even a checked swing . . . You never know with these things.” He had no news on Sabathia or Clint Frazier, the sweet-hitting kid who’d missed two months with slow-to-heal concussions: “It wasn’t supposed to be a long-term issue, but I guess it took a turn for the worse.”

  The medical updates done, it was time to press Cashman: What had happened to his Yanks these last six weeks? (Since June 24, they’d gone 22-21. The Red Sox were 34-9.) He conceded that the team had scuffled a while, but said, “We haven’t had our big guns in the lineup,” and, “A couple of the good young guys” had hit a wall. “Gleyber’s in a rough patch, but he is an All-Star and was leading for Rookie of the Year.” Same deal for Sevy: “It might be a function
of youth. You forget he’s twenty-four ’cause he’s been here a while, but there’s always some regression that pops up. The first half, he was lights out every time, and we know that his velo’s still there.” Cashman swiveled in his seat, checking Severino’s numbers on Statcast. “Yup: average fastball’s 97 this year. Last year, 96.8.” He entertained the notion that Sevy was tipping pitches, but said that that was “true of a lot of guys—and if you have elite stuff, they still can’t hit you.” Finally, on Bird, he admitted to being baffled. “He’s far enough past surgery [on his right ankle] that you wonder what’s going on. He says he’s pain-free, so is it a matter of not having the strength back? Frankly, we don’t know—but he’s our first baseman.”

  Cashman was prodded on what else he thought was missing. Were his hitters squeezing the bats too tight with runners in scoring position? Were they too reliant on three-run homers and crooked-number rallies? How about those losses to the O’s and Rays—was a lack of focus the issue? Cashman, to his credit, answered each question, but often not the one that was actually posed. At fifty-one, he’s much more a boxer than an ex-player; his rope-a-dope skills are spot-on. Every time you think you’ve got him pinned in a corner, he snaps your head with a counter shot and brings the fight to you. The thrust of his answers was that we had it all wrong: The week-to-week drama didn’t matter. What really mattered was where the Yanks went from here, not where they stood today.

  “Take a step back and forget what Boston’s doing—it’s a pretty special group we’ve got,” Cashman said. “We believe we’re heavyweights, but we took a shot in Boston and have a little jelly-leg now. Still, take a look at our projected record and where we are with the wild card. If you’d told me before the season that I’m guaranteed the playoffs, I’d have said, ‘Fuck yeah, man.’”