Inside the Empire

by Bob Klapisch

  “Really? Folks were projecting you in the World Series. Don’t you have to go deep in October?”

  Scoffing: “Nope. Don’t care what folks project.”

  “So you could lose the wild-card game and still feel you’re moving in the right direction?”

  He gave that bullfighter stare of his, as in, Really? You gonna go there with me?

  “Do I think our roster’s improved this year? Yes, I do. Do I think our operations are better? Yes. Does that guarantee anything in October? No. Last year we took out the Cleveland Indians, a team that was rated better than us. Then we took Houston to seven games in a series they were heavily favored. Doesn’t matter if you’re the first or second wild-card team: you have a chance to be the last team standing.”

  At that point, he jumped rhetorical horses, likening a baseball season to racing’s Triple Crown. “You got the Preakness, the Derby, and the Belmont. The last one’s a marathon, the other two are sprints. That’s why it’s so hard to win ’em all: it takes a horse with a lot of different skills. What I care about now is the second and third season”—meaning the divisional and championship round, then the World Series. Boston was “on fire,” he said, and “all respects are due there,” but “hopefully they peak” before October. And anyway, “the seventh month is a different deal”: a short track with strong clubs bunched together. “At the end of the day, the team that wins that one is the group that gets healthy and hot.”

  Next on the list of questions was Boone. How was Cashman feeling now about his hire in light of these last few weeks and, well, Boston?

  “Very thankful,” he said flatly. “Today, August 16, I feel as good as I did when the interviews finished” (the previous fall). “He’s already a good manager, and he’s going to be really good. I hope he’s here ten years. Or more.”

  “Right. But in situations where the team is struggling, is it necessary that he find another voice? Maybe call a meeting, show a different side?”

  “Different how?”

  “Well, not to knock the food cart over, but—”

  “You’re asking would I want him to turn over the spread? Yeah, if it’s part of his personality. But I don’t know if that’s in there and I don’t care. There’s strength in not doing something fake because you’re getting pressure from the press. His players count on him having a steady hand, and that’s the trust factor there.”

  For three months, he said, Boone’s team took the field feeling like it couldn’t lose. Then “the perfect storm blew through his office”: Sánchez, Judge, Tanaka, and Torres all missed lengthy stretches, and a slew of lingering hurts (Frazier, pitcher Tommy Kahnle, Sabathia, et al.) robbed him of roster depth. Currently, Stanton was nursing a hamstring, so Neil Walker and Shane Robinson were forced to play right. Doctors had just sidelined Ellsbury for the year, so he couldn’t spell Hicks or Gardner. Consequently, Boone had to walk the line between “competing and protecting his guys”—giving Gardner a night off in game 4 against Boston, or sitting Walker a day just as he caught fire. “People don’t know what goes on behind the scenes with players. The trainer might be telling us, ‘Back off or we’ll have a problem.’ Sometimes you lose the battle to win a war.”

  Which segued, sort of, to his deadline moves. Cashman was saluted for his pickups of J. A. Happ and Lance Lynn, starters who could carry him into October—or through it, if luck allowed. Happ had been a godsend in his first four starts, winning all four with a two ERA and giving Boone length each time. But Lynn had been the bigger surprise: a last-second grab in the checkout lane, he’d made three starts, all quality wins. In exchange for the two starters, Cashman had cleaned out his closet. He sent the ill-starred Brandon Drury and Quadruple-A type Billy McKinney to Toronto in the deal for Happ; traded old friend Tyler Austin, who needed a change of scenery, and Luis Rijo, a Development League reliever, to the Twins for Lynn; and made three other moves to declutter. Off went end-of-the-pen types Adam Warren to Seattle, Chasen Shreve and Giovanny Gallegos to St. Louis, and Caleb Frare, a Double-A reliever, joined the White Sox. In return, Cashman freed up multiple roster spots—and reaped a fortune in international slot money.

  In baseball, as in most sports, good teams go through cycles. If they’re lucky, they get a five-year window to win a couple of pennants (and maybe a Series). Then their premier vets get old, their homegrown stars hit the free-agent market, and salary constraints dictate who they sign and who they don’t. Nor can they reload through a channel of cheap talent. The annual amateur draft is weighted progressively: the bad and middling teams get to pick before the good teams and grab the best high school and college kids. That leaves the strong clubs one viable option: the international amateur market. But there too, hard limits apply.

  In its quest for “comparative parity,” MLB imposes stringent caps on what teams can pay teens from Cuba (and Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and the other Latin countries). Thanks to the recent collective bargaining agreement (CBA)—the worst deal in decades for the players—clubs are allowed to spend $4 million to $6 million total in a calendar year. That’s a far piece from the days of José Abreu ($68 million from the White Sox in 2013), Yasiel Puig ($42 million, Dodgers, in ’15), and Yoán Moncada ($31 million, Red Sox, ’15). To be fair, if you’re twenty-five or older and have played in a recognized professional league for six or more years, you can still get an Abreu/Puig–type deal. But why the union didn’t advocate for younger prospects is hard to comprehend—and beyond the scope of this book.

  Of course, all CBAs offer loopholes to the rich, and no one works those seams smarter than Cashman. The rules allow him—for the moment at least—to acquire other people’s money in trades. In 2018, he netted the maximum, $3.75 million, in those deadline dumps of spare relievers. That brought his total budget to almost $9 million, of which he’d already spent $5 million. He wasted not a second in spending the rest. On July 29, he signed Osiel Rodriguez, a sixteen-year-old Cuban who stands six-three and throws 97 from various arm slots. (Think El Duque Hernández, but half his age and bearing a legitimate birth certificate.) Three days later, he bagged Alexander Vargas, also sixteen, a Cuban shortstop with limitless range who runs a 6.5 sixty. Between them, he paid out $3.3 million—and restocked his talent pond.

  “In this world order, with the rules that hinder you, the only way to improve is to max out,” said Cashman. “We’re projected to win a hundred games [in 2018], so we’re not picking high in the draft. And if we stay healthy the next few years, we’re not picking high then either. Now, did I help Seattle with Adam Warren? Maybe. He could come back to haunt us. But my only thought is, How can I help us, and meanwhile take care of the future?”

  The conversation wrapped with the biggest deal he made—and a still bigger deal that went poof. Zach Britton, the closer who once saved sixty straight but who’d missed half of 2018 rehabbing his Achilles tendon, came over from the Orioles, at a price. Cashman paid with kids he had real plans for—Dillon Tate, the whippet lefty from the Carlos Beltrán deal, and Cody Carroll, a find in the 2015 draft who’d become a lights-out short man stashed in Scranton. (Josh Rogers, the third piece, was a fifth or sixth starter likely ticketed for the Rule 5 draft.) Britton had been mostly lousy since the deal—bouncing his bowling-ball sinker in the dirt and walking the eighth and ninth hitters—but would probably get his act together by September and be another nuclear warhead in late innings.

  “We evaluated the market as being weak in starters, which made us dream, ‘Let’s reinforce our pen,’” said Cashman. “Again, it’s all about run prevention,” be it early or late in games. Unable to shake loose a playoff ace, he’d chosen to “close the gap” at the other end. On the subject of aces, it was learned from a source that he’d checked in on Madison Bumgarner. The answer coming back: not available. “They can’t move him,” says our source at the Giants. “He’s their Derek Jeter, in so many words.” When Bumgarner hits the free-agent market, the Giants “think they can re-sign him.” And with Jacob deGrom, th
e Yankees never got to first. The Mets wouldn’t even discuss him.

  “Insane,” says an inside source. The Mets had “the best trade currency on the market,” “a broken-down farm system” that they had to fix, and no money to spend on Bryce Harper or Manny Machado over the coming winter. But “instead of creating magic” with deGrom and Syndergaard, “they pulled a Donald Trump and tripled down on what failed the last two years.” Upshot: they’d field the “same team next year. Teams came away scratching their heads.”

  Finally, on the trade that never was: “What about Machado? Were you in?”

  Cashman, sighing: “Yeah, we tried.”

  “Were you close?”

  “I thought we were going to wind up with him. But . . .”

  He’d reached out to the Orioles and been told by their reps that they wanted “a ton of pitching” back. Fine, thought Cashman: he offered them a fair package that included the kids he’d send for Britton. Then, “at the last second, the Orioles pivoted and decided they wanted a position player as the primary.” Same old Orioles, in other words: chaos and incompetence in a rich Béarnaise. Meanwhile, they screwed a pair of partners at the trading deadline. When the Dodgers swooped in with a deal the O’s preferred, Baltimore never informed the Phils or Brewers. Cashman noted: “I remember talking to the Phillies, like, ‘Dude, he’s a Dodger. They told me two days ago.’ But the Philly guy’s like, ‘What! No way! I’m still talking to them.’”

  It was time to wrap up. The Rays were in for a day game, and Cashman wanted to watch first pitch. Tentative plans were made to meet in late October and debrief him about the season.

  “Thanks,” he said. “But just remember what I told you: that seventh month’s a very different deal.”

  7

  * * *

  * * *

  Night School

  Nobody wants to cover baseball in August: it’s the school-detention month of the regular season. Your friends are at the Cape with their restive kids, or they’ve stashed them at camp to go hike the Adirondacks and wash down pan-fried trout with a tart rosé. You, on the other hand, are brined in your own juice as you stand there, sweat-soaked, watching BP. The field is a furnace, it’s three hours till game time, and the players you need to talk to are sick of your face, having answered the same questions for five months. You know they have nothing to say, and they know you know it. But the game is on the schedule, and so you hover. Damply.

  Beyond the heat and tedium, the hitters are exhausted. Imagine wielding a sledgehammer for five straight months, with no weekends off or personal days. The act of swinging a bat many, many dozens of times a day is hell on your ligaments and spine alignment. Everything hurts on these guys, especially hips and wrists. There used to be a cure for that—first, greenies and steroids, then Adderall and HGH. Now there’s only Red Bull and Tylenol. Neither of those boost one’s mood around writers.

  The Yankees, more than most, had cause for the August blues: their players kept dropping like flies. While they treaded water till Judge and Sánchez returned, down went Sabathia with a flare-up of arthritis. A week later, it was Didi, upended on the base paths and sidelined with a badly bruised heel. The day after Didi, Aroldis Chapman motioned that he had to come out of a game. All year long, he’d battled inflammation in his left, or push-off, knee. “Previously, I’ve been able to manage it,” he said, “but the pain was more than usual.” The Yanks placed him on the ten-day disabled list. They weren’t optimistic that he’d be back that soon.

  In total, seventeen Yankees had hit the DL since the team broke camp in March. Eight were on the current list, including three who were done for the year (Ellsbury, Montgomery, and Heller). Clint Frazier, who was still in concussion protocol, hadn’t even resumed “baseball activities.” Judge’s wrist was worse than the Yanks were letting on, and Stanton (hamstring) was a bad step away from being lost for a month. The deepest lineup in baseball now had the density of a Pringle: essentially, it was Andújar, Stanton, and . . . stand by.

  In addition, Gardner hadn’t hit a lick since May. At thirty-five, he looked, frankly, finished. Bird was a basket case, taking strikes down the middle and chasing balls a foot off the plate. Torres was healthy, but his batting average wasn’t. For most of the summer, the Magic Rookie had ridden the interstate, hitting .145 and rolling over sliders instead of slapping them to right for hits. Aaron Hicks, their sixth hitter, had been bumped up to third and in this, his best year, was struggling to hit .250, despite his .366 on-base percentage.

  One night David Cone was remarking about the run of injuries the Yankees had suffered since June. Cone, who’s fifty-five but looks like he could still go an inning if the Yankees made a call to the TV booth, is the best and brightest of the five-too-many analysts who work the team’s broadcasts on YES. (Why do the Yanks employ seven color men? Because they can, of course.) Cone was asked if he could think of a club as good as this one that had been so undone by bad luck. “Well, yeah, one,” he said. “My ’87 Mets. Our whole rotation was DL’ed that year—including [Rick] Aguilera, the sixth starter.” That Mets group aside, though, he couldn’t recall the likes of this, particularly in a team so young. “I mean, Judge, Sánchez, Didi, Frazier—they’re all just kids, more or less.”

  But still, God help them, the Yanks were hanging around, pasting together wins with spit and gristle. They’d gone 15-5 since the catastrophe in Fenway, beating crappy teams and chipping games off the schedule till they—presumably—got whole in September. It’s easy to forget how fortune-dependent a sporting season is. You can assemble the best team in the game in December, then watch it turn to ashes in August. Cashman, to his credit, had constructed a roster that took gut-shot after gut-shot and kept coming. These Yankees were a proof-point of his working theorem: redundancy + talent = playoffs. No, they weren’t fun now, not by anyone’s standards. Even the players seemed restless for better days. But you couldn’t watch this club put one foot in front of the other and not marvel at its fuck-you toughness. They’d been built to be Mike Tyson, but Mike Tyson had no chin and stayed down when he got clocked. These Yankees got up, and every time they did so, they made you think of Vinny Pazienza. Vinny Paz, the Italian hardhead from the slums of Rhode Island, badly broke his neck in a car crash in ’91. Against medical orders—and the pleas of sweet reason—Paz was up and sparring after doctors removed the halo they’d bolted onto his skull in lieu of surgery. He won his first bout back the following year, then beat Roberto Durán, twice, for a super middleweight belt. Now, that guy was fun to watch.

  Back in the days before the Yankees played on YES and split $600 million a year with their partner, FOX—to be clear, that’s the cash flow from just their local TV deal, as distinct from what they earn on broadcasts (much more on this subject in the next chapter)—the team used to air about a hundred games a year on WPIX. A sweet, sleepy station in the New York City market, PIX built its listings around Gilligan’s Island reruns and the six glorious seasons of Superman. On days when the Yankees were sidelined by weather, PIX would run something called Rainout Theater, screening gumshoe noir from the forties and fifties or, if they were really feeling charitable, a Marx Brothers flick. Whatever they showed, it was often better than the games, because the Yankees of that era (circa 1965–1975) were mostly awful.

  So, rather than recap their August games against the dregs of MLB (after Boston, the Yankees played twenty-seven straight games versus teams with no playoff hopes), we offer our version of Rainout Theater: a spirited newsreel, RKO-style, of their rookies in the Gulf Coast League. This selection, however random-seeming, is the furthest thing from it. Those four teams in Tampa are the fruit of Cashman’s relaunch—and served as the tide pool for his 2018 Yanks. Sánchez, Severino, Andújar, Torreyes, Jonathan Loaisiga, Luis Cessa, and on and on: all of them came through the finishing school that is the Tampa baseball complex.

  Back in 2014, when he hit the reset button, Cashman tasked Gary Denbo, then his director of player development, to radically o
verhaul the Yankees’ minor league program. Between their Gulf Coast rookie teams in Tampa and their two out-of-state, low-A teams, the Yankees have 170 kids in the lower minors, the most of any franchise in the sport. Almost half those kids are graduates of the Yankees’ academy in Boca Chica, their hatchery in the Dominican Republic, which was built in 2005. Some were discovered on city sandlots, others in backwoods hamlets that don’t appear on any map. Virtually all of them were poor, and quite a number couldn’t read. Their instructors at the academy had to teach them grade-school Spanish as well as their first phrases in Eng-lish. The goal, beyond honing their baseball skills and filling out their frames with robust meals, was to raise their functioning to at least a sixth-grade level before they left the island for America.

  Between 2005 and 2014, those kids from the DR got to Tampa and were essentially cut adrift. They had to learn, on their own, how to order a meal at Denny’s, figure out the exchange rate when they sent their centavos home, and try to apply for a Social Security number. It didn’t help that some of their teammates came from places poorer than theirs. “I’ve had kids come through from [rural] Venezuela who hadn’t even seen electricity,” says Melissa Hernandez. Hernandez, a Dominican native the Yanks recruited in 2014, is their head instructor in Tampa. She’s one of twenty-five full- and part-time teachers hired by the team in the last four years. “When they get here, they’re lost,” she says. “They’ve never used a computer or gotten cash [from an ATM].” Those things are in her curriculum too. She’s as much the players’ den mom as their mentor.