TAMPA – Jimmy Key ran cool, Orlando Hernandez hot. David Cone could talk to reporters on the day he pitched – heck, it felt like he might walk out to the mound with you, if you so desired. Bernie Williams was polite, but reserved. Hideki Matsui was a deep thinker, David Wells was not. Masahiro Tanaka was stoic, Johnny Damon showy.
I have spent more than three decades regularly around the Yankees and have been endlessly fascinated by if a type works in this environment – an anti-Gallo, so to speak. And I am not sure that there is a one-size fits all quality, as the previous paragraph accentuates.
Derek Jeter’s brilliance, for example, was in how uncomplicated he made everything and Gerrit Cole’s is how complex he makes everything. Jeter was see ball, hit ball – there were days he didn’t know the opposing pitcher until he reached the ballpark. Cole is see ball and imagine two dozen new things he could do to manipulate it – and you can believe he knows more about opposing lineups than he does his own children.
Players emit something in this atmosphere to emphasize whether they are going to make it. Let’s say I had lots of dubiety about Carlos Rodon when the Yankees were recruiting him, it continued through his pinstriped debut season and Wednesday, after he gave up a homer to the Rays on his first and last pitch, it sure sounded afterward like he was trying to convince himself it was no big deal as much as reporters.
Juan Soto gives off an opposite vibe – like a guy dropped on a Broadway stage and feeling like he will nail every line; like he was born to be there.
“I’d be shocked beyond belief if he did not handle this well,” said Pat Roessler, the Yankees assistant hitting coach.
Roessler feels like the right person for this assignment. This is his 13th year in the Yankees organization. He worked four years as a Mets hitting coach. So he knows the Yankees and New York. And he knows Soto, serving as a Nationals hitting coach during Soto’s final 2 1/2 seasons until he was traded to the Padres.
“This guy’s played in the World Series and played well,” Roessler said.”He’s been on the big stage. He’s had the spotlight on him wherever he has been. He has had to be The Guy. He has been the headliner trade guy two times. He is so locked into his routine and what he does. He is so locked into his at-bats. All the outside noise doesn’t get to him.”
Aaron Boone believes Soto will thrive in New York, but also feels that the New York/Yankees being an overwhelming element can be overblown, noting that baseball is tough and “players struggle in Cincinnati. Players struggle in Seattle.” But he also added, “There is something to (the scope of being a Yankee).”
There is the history. The 27 championships combined with the legacy of George Steinbrenner that infused a title-or-bust mentality that is fueled by the largest fan base and media contingent – entities able to grow louder and more critical than anyplace else. The booing at Yankees home games has, if anything, come quicker and meaner in recent years.
“I can’t put my finger on it (what succeeds with the Yankees),” Boone said. “The guy you think might handle it poorly, doesn’t. And vice versa.”
Paul O’Neill, flammable and sensitive, would have seemed wrong in so many ways to thrive in New York. But he was from Cincinnati and felt the fishbowl of having to perform before friends and family with the Reds. The enormity of New York and the clubhouse starpower allowed him to meld into the chorus initially to gain a foothold.
I think it helps to be raised in the organization because – among other items – a player will have a couple of spring trainings as a prospect before returning to the minors and, for example, grow accustomed to the large media group and see how their more experienced teammates navigate it.
A youngster will grow up learning some random June 2 game is treated as a do-or-die event by fans and media – there are no unimportant days. Many who had problems as Yankees came from elsewhere and failed to get their arms around that – Kenny Rogers and Sonny Gray come to mind. Players as talented as Randy Johnson and Alex Rodriguez either tried to fight against all that comes with being a Yankee or overcompensate/overthink it. A-Rod often succeeded because he was just so darn talented, but self-created problems by acting confident when he clearly was putting on a bad show.
Soto has the overtly confident thing too – the batter’s box shuffle when he takes a pitch or the t-shirt he wore emblazoned “The Generational Juan Soto”. But it does not feel like camouflage to hide uncertainty. Again, it is just a sense for now until more is seen and learned, but Soto feels like the rare bird who can steely focus and yet somehow still feed on the moment – the kind you think will not be cowed by being a Yankee. The kind who when he fails, you won’t think it is because he is scared.
“It won’t overwhelm him. He will be energized by being a Yankee,” Roessler said. “He’s just very confident in his abilities. That is not going to change.”