Tag: Austin Romine

The Understudy

(This story originally appeared in the July 2018 issue of Yankees Magazine.)

I’ve always wanted to write a story about the sensation of being a big-league backup. The fact is, though, most guys don’t want to talk about it, for obvious reasons, and it’s hard not to come off as a bit of an ass when you’re asking them.

This season, though, Austin Romine was thriving in his role as Gary Sanchez’s back-up, and I felt that I had a good enough relationship with Austin to give it a try. What ensued was a really interesting, sometimes uncomfortable conversation with one of the most interesting guys in the Yankees’ clubhouse. Romine was very clear that the team is best when Gary Sanchez is catching, and he understands his role. But he also acknowledged that no one wants to play for the B team.

Of course, all this was before Sanchez got hurt, and Romine was thrust into the starting role, which, conveniently, was a hypothetical we discussed.

I really liked the conversation, and I appreciated Romine being willing to have the chat. Hope you’ll read and enjoy.

https://www.mlb.com/yankees/news/austin-romine-thrives-as-a-backup-catcher/c-284048780

Heat Check

(This story originally appeared in the June 2018 issue of Yankees Magazine.)

I’ve wanted to write about fastballs for a while, and the Yankees make for good subjects. In Aroldis Chapman, they have the hardest thrower in MLB history. Luis Severino throws harder, more consistently, than any other starter in the game. So I wanted to answer a question with this story: What does all that speed actually add up to?

The fact is, every pitcher in today’s game is throwing gas. You just don’t see the “crafty lefty” all that much anymore, nor are there really any more knuckleballers coming up. The fact is, if you want to hit in the majors these days, you’d better be able to handle the heat.

So this story looks at how the speed works. What’s the difference between 90 mph and 100 mph? Austin Romine says that it all just feels fast once it gets above 95, but what does that difference actually mean? How do hitters time pitches that come in faster than they can blink?

Chapman’s past makes him hard for me to write about, so I’m happy that this didn’t turn into a simple profile of the guy, or any kind of celebration. I used his (for obvious reasons) as a jumping-off point, a way to tell the story about the incredible fastballs that have taken over today’s game.

Hope you’ll read and enjoy.

 

https://www.mlb.com/yankees/news/aroldis-chapman-leads-charge-for-flamethrowers/c-279908136

A Change is Gonna Come

(This story originally appeared in the June 2017 edition of Yankees Magazine.)

Spring Training is often a time when I go around fishing for stories. The clubhouses are filled with players, and there are fewer amenities off-limits to media, which means that the players are generally more accessible. And they’re usually in a good mood, so you can be a bit more playful in terms of what you’re looking for. Where I’ll head to a clubhouse during the regular season with a definite idea for what I need and who I want to speak to, I’ll often just seek to chat with anyone I see during spring training. You never know what can come up.

So this year, with Commissioner Rob Manfred showing a willingness to evaluate the game’s practices (see: the odd new intentional walk, which I’m still not used to), I felt like it would be cool to talk to basically every player on the team about the same subject: What would they change if they could do anything?

A couple of interesting things happened: One, the morning after my first day of question the guys on the team on the topic, The New York Times ran a big package on the same idea — what would baseball writers change? So that bummed me out a bit. But the more players I asked, the more interested I got in how different the answers were. Some guys were totally selfish and playful — make the strike zone bigger, a few pitchers said; let me get a strikeout with one strike. Other players were totally into the idea of developing the ideas beyond the superficial. For instance, Brett Gardner and I got into a back-and-forth about his idea of limited pickoff attempts. How could you do that practically in a way that wouldn’t just eventually give a runner a free base? It was an interesting chat.

There was one topic I wanted to pursue further that I wasn’t able to. I noticed, anecdotally, that almost all of the Latino players I spoke with weren’t at all willing to criticize the game. Not in any way. Their quotes were all “I’m so lucky, this game is so great.” I tried to push further — was it too simplistic to attribute that feeling to their culture? Was there some other connection that I was missing? In the end, I dropped it. No one wanted to help me get into their own psyches on the matter, and I didn’t want to go psychoanalyzing them. I wish I would have been able to.

Either way, there’s some stuff in here I really like. I think that the Chase Headley stuff was really intriguing — he is a great guy to talk to, in that he’s completely willing to break down his swing and his thinking on everything. And he was very frank on both sides of the argument he was making, even as I pointed out that he was contradicting himself. I think he didn’t care, and I kind of think that made it feel authentic.

Anyhow, I hope you’ll read and enjoy.