WIN & THEY’RE IN:
Kids’ mojo is rising at right time
They are growing up before our eyes. It may well be this magical mystery Yankee joy ride comes to a screeching halt at the hands of Justin Verlander Friday night and this ALCS results in one of those affairs in which the home team wins every game. I’m just not seeing it that way — and I suspect a whole lot of other people, even outside the Bronx and the New York metropolitan area, don’t either.
What I’m seeing — and feeling — is a growing mojo among Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Greg Bird, Didi Gregorius &Co. — that, guided with inspiring veteran leadership from Brett Gardner, Todd Frazier and CC Sabathia, has made for an intangible force that is starting to run amuck. We’re witnessing a young team, which no one in the preseason thought was ready for prime time, playing with increasing confidence after twice being seemingly unfazed at falling behind 0-2 in the postseason to two of the very best teams in baseball.
In the ALDS against Cleveland, much of the time the trio of Judge, Bird and Sanchez couldn’t have looked much more vulnerable, striking out 33 times among them in the five games. All the while, however, they were subtly making adjustments, and against the Astros they have combined for four homers and 13 RBI in the first five games.
“These are the things the fans don’t see,” a Yankee insider was telling me Thursday. “Our scouts, Jay Darnell and Matt Daley, spent a couple of months with the Astros and did a fantastic job scouting this team. At the same time our hitting coaches (Alan Cockrell and Eric Thames) are working with these kids every day, making adjustments, moving up on the plate etc. But so often in today’s baseball, in which kids are rushed to the majors and arrive there with a sense of entitlement, they don’t want to listen to advice. These kids are different. They listen.
“As lost as Judge in particular may have looked against the Indians, he was gradually getting a sense of the strike zone, and still getting his walks, and you’ll notice he never seemed panicked or even frustrated. To be honest, nobody around this team was remotely panicked down 0-2 in either series.”
Much of that has to do with the veterans, Gardner, Frazier and Sabathia, from whom the kids have taken their lead. Though he’s only 2-for-19 in the ALCS, Gardner, with his grinding approach at the plate, has consistently shown himself to be the toughest out in the Yankee lineup. You think the kids don’t see that? Frazier, on the other hand, has been the kids’ non-stop cheerleader, an effervescent force of nature in the dugout and the clubhouse who, after coming over from the White Sox July 19, picked up where Matt Holliday left off as the team leader.
From the pitching side, Sabathia has merely led by example, refusing to succumb to age and a gimpy knee in giving the Yankees three vintage top quality postseason starts. Don’t think that, too, hasn’t been a source of inspiration to the kids, particularly, one would think, Luis Severino, who, if he is able to out-pitch Verlander, would add further luster to a stellar sophomore season in which he, as much as any of them, has grown up Nbefore our eyes. o matter what happens in Houston, this Yankee team has already given their fans one of the most inspiring and fun seasons in memory. But if they do prevail and move on to the World Series — as I believe they will — they might want to consider losing the first two games in Los Angeles. Just to keep their mojo going.