TAMPA — Ever initiate a workplace conversation with someone standing about 15 feet away?
You probably have. But it requires a significant volume level, and that in turn requires a significant comfort level.
Earlier this spring, in the home clubhouse at George M. Steinbrenner Field, Greg Bird shouted down to Rob Refsnyder, with about 15 feet separating their lockers, concerning some mundane item. Once upon a time in the Yankees’ universe, to do so would have meant disrupting the air space of myriad workplace lifers, including stately captain Derek Jeter. Maybe Bird wouldn’t have done so in the first place.
By now, however, you know these are not your parents’ Yankees. The youth movement has arrived in full, and on Sunday afternoon at Tropicana Field, with their game against the Rays opening the Major League Baseball schedule, these dramatically remade Yankees will start to see whether they’re ready to simultaneously develop and win.
“This is an exciting time for them,” Brett Gardner said of his less experienced teammates. “It’s an exciting time for us to be around and try to help them with that. I think it’s an exciting time for fans and the organization, too. I think we’ve got a bright future, not just long-term, but I think we’re going to have a good year this year, as well.”
Gardner, the likely leadoff hitter against Tampa Bay ace Chris Archer, speaks as a representative of this team’s minority — those players in their 30s. The team’s Opening Day roster features 17 players in their 20s and eight in their 30s. In their most recent postseason game, their 2015 wild-card loss to the Astros, the Yankees used eight players in their 30s and six in their 20s.For Gardner, 33, a career-long Yankee who debuted in 2008 and counted Bobby Abreu, Jason Giambi, Mike Mussina and new Hall of Famer Ivan Rodriguez as brief teammates, this will be a whole new world. For CC Sabathia, 36, the club’s oldest pitcher (and second-oldest player after new designated hitter Matt Holliday, who’s 37), this represents a bit of déjà vu from his time with the rebuilding Indians clubs of the early-to-mid 2000s. Except he has switched roles from up-and-comer to graybeard.
“You don’t really know what to expect, day to day,” Sabathia said of such a young team. “It makes it a lot of fun, though.”
The Yankees looked like a fun bunch late last season, after they executed a flurry of trade-deadline deals that refueled their farm system and announced their long-term intentions to the baseball world. That the team went 32-26 after selling off Carlos Beltran, Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller and Ivan Nova only strengthened their resolve and led to the offseason trade of Brian McCann to Houston as well as, in the interest of contending while reconstructing, the Holliday signing and Chapman’s return.
Now Bird, off a yearlong injury absence, appears ready to succeed the retired Mark Teixeira. Refsnyder, once an exciting prospect, has been surpassed by higher-ceiling youngsters like new right fielder Aaron Judge. Many more interesting names, like Clint Frazier, Gleyber Torres and James Kaprielian, prepare in the minor leagues as the team hopes to get under the luxury tax next winter, then spend on a free agent like Bryce Harper or Manny Machado after 2018 as a finishing touch.
The success of Phase 1, the team’s ability to stay in the race last September, “that’s why everybody’s riding so high right now,” Sabathia opined. Gardner countered: “I don’t know that it matters any at all, to be honest. Yeah, we played well. We played well the last couple of months of the season, I feel like. But the bottom line is we didn’t make the playoffs. That’s why you play 162 games and not 62.”
Gardner added: “I do think we’re going to surprise some people,” and the Yankees might be the hardest team in all of baseball to peg given their dependence on high-end youngsters.
For starters, it feels much different around here. It’s on these 2017 Yankees to turn that breath of fresh air into something really sweet.