Tag: Shohei Ohtani

The Head and the Heart

(This story originally appeared in the October 2021 edition of Yankees Magazine.)

The first thing I’ll say about this story is that it’s a real bummer that it ended up being somewhat regrettable. It was a piece for our October magazine about how dominant Gerrit Cole had historically proven to be in the biggest, most emotional moments. It dropped on Oct. 5, the morning of his AL Wild Card Game start in Boston.

Then Cole had nothing, the Yankees lost, and there was no reason ever to think about the story again.

That’s a shame, and not just because it would have been fun to see a long postseason run from this team (if only for more opportunities to watch Giancarlo Stanton crush balls to far off planets). But also, there’s a lot in here that I really like. Gerrit is a great interview subject. He is so open about the art of pitching, about how he approaches hitters and what he’s thinking. Yet ever since he got to New York, he’s been mostly relegated to Zoom pressers, where it’s hard to get real emotion and insight.

Talking to him in the Yankees’ dugout, I was really interested in one particular quirk, the way he totally clams up after his best starts. It’s easier to get him to talk after a middling effort than it is when he dominates Shohei Ohtani, and I wanted to know why that was. Over the course of this feature, I think you can see Gerrit kind of gaming it out in his head, trying to figure it out himself.

The other thing that I did here was I tried to get as many individual quotes as possible from people around the game, all of them answering the same question: What is it that Gerrit Cole does best? It’s a simple question, but I wanted a variety of answers, and I got them. I had one person tell me that it’s just that he gets the most strikeouts, another person who said that he’s the most prepared pitcher in the game, and finally, my favorite, a quote about him essentially being the smartest bully. I loved that part of the story, and the way that we designed the piece around those quotes in print.

Cole is signed in New York for years to come, and I have to think that we’ll see better postseason starts from him (we certainly saw some great outings in 2020). I think that eventually we’ll learn that his hamstring was much worse than he let on, and that it impacted him a great deal down the stretch in 2021. Either way, I can’t wait to get more chances to talk baseball with the Yankees’ ace, because he’s a true pitching genius.

https://www.mlb.com/news/yankees-magazine-gerrit-cole

Master Craftsman

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

I hope I’m wrong when I say this, but I’m not sure I’ll ever get to work on a more interesting reporting project. I had been circling something like this for a while, hanging out with a minor league roving instructor as he moved from town to town coaching different players. Between the Drew Henson scouting story that I wrote in 2016 and my feature last year about Donny Sands learning how to play catcher, I’ve long been fascinated by the people behind the scenes, the ones who help the players develop into major leaguers.

When I started asking around the Yankees front office, a bunch of people pointed me toward Danny Borrell, one of the team’s two pitching coordinators. I had never met Danny, had never heard of him, and didn’t really know what to expect. But he was open to the story from the start, and agreed to let me tag along on two trips — Staten Island and Pulaski.

The night before we started, he emailed me to say that he was actually going to be in Charleston instead of Pulaski, that something really big was happening. Normally, when big things happen around the team, we’re told to stay away. This was a rare case when I was being told that something huge was happening, and that I should make sure I was there for it. It was a no-brainer. 

He wouldn’t tell me what the big news was until after it happened, so we spent the first few days just watching the way he interacted with all the young minor leaguers — Short-Season A-ballers in Staten Island, then Low-A players in Charleston. It was fascinating. Danny would strap on catching gear and catch all the bullpens (despite being A: left-handed; and B: a former pitcher). He just has the most positive way about him, always laughing, joking, teaching. The best thing about writing minor league stories is that you really get total access. I have never stepped in the bullpen at Yankee Stadium, but while I was following Danny around, I was basically standing next to the pitchers as they were doing their workouts. It was awesome.

Danny let me hang out in meetings, he let me stand over his shoulder as he watched video with players, he let me stay next to him while he watched the games. The only time he told me he needed me to stay away for a few minutes was when they had the big meeting. As it turned out, they were taking Dermis Garcia — a pretty substantial prospect in Charleston — and letting him try to pitch. Garcia has never pitched, but his arm from third base was incredible, and Borrell had long been pining to get him onto a mound. And after Brian Cashman and his team spent time in the offseason pursuing Shohei Ohtani, they were encouraged enough by the idea of a two-way player to see if Garcia might have the chops to handle it. So they presented it to him, he enthusiastically accepted, and the next day, we stood right along the bullpen as Garcia threw off a mound for the first time in his life.

This story was an absolute joy to write, everything I could have hoped for and more. I don’t think I’ll ever have access like this again. I’m happy with how it came out.

https://www.mlb.com/news/danny-borrell-molds-yankees-young-pitchers/c-287603796