Darren O’Day has pitched just one inning since April 29 due to a rotator cuff strain, but despite being away from his new team for most of the season, the veteran still stood up and spoke out at the Yankees’ players-only meeting earlier this week.
The righty reliever has had to weather the challenge of making his mark in a new clubhouse after missing more than two months of the season and rehabbing away from the club, but the 14-year veteran still brings plenty of experience that gave him the confidence to speak his mind about what has been a disappointing season for the Yanks so far.
“When you come to a new team, you want to build some relationship currency with your teammates, and that’s done off the field, spending time and talking with them,” O’Day said. “But it’s also performing on the field. Until you really get out there and go through the night game/day game slog, the long flights, all that sort of stuff, the hardships that bring you together, you’re not really a teammate. I missed some of that stuff unfortunately, but…I wanted to share some things I’ve seen on our team and on successful teams I’ve been on before, and unsuccessful teams I’ve been on before as well.”
O’Day has been on a number of successful teams since beginning his big-league career in 2008. He was a part of the 2010 Rangers, who made it to the World Series, and was facing off against the Yanks in the ALDS two years later with the Orioles. Last year, he pitched for the Braves in the NLCS against the Dodgers. With a wealth of previous experience when it comes to different playoff teams and locker rooms, O’Day was still a strong candidate to speak at Tuesday’s meeting despite his brief stint as a Yankee so far.
O’Day didn’t come to the meeting with a clear-cut solution to the Yankees’ woes, just a reinforcement that eventually, if in the right mindset, players will almost always return to their potential.
“There’s no secret to it,” O’Day said. “There’s no magic bullet, really. All the guys that are in this locker room are here for a reason. The guys that are in this locker room are here for a reason. It’s not because they’re bad baseball players, it’s because they’re really good. Sometimes we dwell on our failures and it locks us up from our regular level of performance. We have the talent in here, we just have to complete the job when the time comes.”
O’Day signed with the Yankees to try and get back to a World Series, and if Tuesday’s meeting could give the team a boost to find itself before the season slips away, he was going to make sure his voice was heard, regardless of his familiarity with the rest of the players involved.
“Everybody comes here to New York to win,” O’Day said. “When we don’t do that as often as we want, it’s a great time to meet, and it was productive. It’s good to get on the same page as players and to hear what your teammates are thinking, and to kind of be a two-way street instead of keeping your thoughts to yourself.”
“We had a lot of good words that were said. I’m really happy we had that meeting.”
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