The Yankees fumbled their way through a 10-18 August, barely resembling the team we saw in the first half or what we think a championship team should look like. The roster is filled mostly with players who don’t have championship experience to lean on. And to this point the trade deadline acquisitions of Frankie Montas, Harrison Bader, and Scott Effross have added next to nothing.
Looks hopeless, doesn’t it? I agree. These Yankees look nothing like a team prepared to go deep into October. But neither did the 1996 Yankees.
That’s right, the team that kick-started a dynasty. That team taught us two valuable lessons to keep in mind as we hit the final month of this season:
1) That a team can blow a 12-game lead in 6 weeks and still win a World Series.
2)That trades can look awful for weeks and still be winning moves by the end.
On July 28, 1996 the Yankees led the AL East by 12 games. Forty-three days later—on September 9—their lead was just 2.5 games over the Orioles, thanks mainly to a 13-17 record in August.
However, that Yankees team rebounded to win 13 of their last 20 and held off Baltimore to win the AL East for the first time in 15 years.
Included in those last 13 wins, they took 2 out of 3 from the Orioles at Yankee Stadium, one of which was a game in which massively disappointing free agent Kenny Rogers threw shutout ball into the 6th inning while Orioles starter and future Hall of Famer Mike Mussina was chased after just 2 innings.
The awful trades? First, the 5-player deal that sent Gerald Williams and Bob Wicksman to Milwaukee for Pat Listach, Rickey Bones, and Graeme Lloyd.
Related
Bones did nothing and Listach was sent back as damaged goods, so Lloyd was all the Yankees really had to show for the deal. Now, we all know Lloyd was the indispensable lefty reliever who didn’t give up a run in 13 postseason appearances for the 1996 and 1998 championship teams.
But do you remember that he pitched to a 17.47 ERA in 13 regular season games after being acquired in late August? Would you have cared to guess then that Lloyd would be a fixture at Yankees Old Timer’s Days over two decades later?
And then there’s David Weathers, who pitched to a 9.35 ERA in 11 games after being acquired from the Marlins in July. Not only did he actually make the postseason roster, but he pitched to a 0.82 ERA over 7 appearances to help the Yankees win that World Series.
In August and much of September 1996 the Yankees looked like an over-achieving first-half team that had made questionable pitching acquisitions. They had some good players, sure. But it was a core of players that had won nothing together and a manager that had zero postseason success.
Somehow Joe Torre and the rest of the 1996 Yankees found their way through the long, hot summer and wound up being paraded through the Canyon of Heroes that fall, and a few more times after that.
And at this same point in the season, there is zero chance we saw it all turning out that way.
Reggie Jackson once spoke of the power to change the script, and both Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone have referred to that in the past. This Yankees team is still in first place, so they have the power to change this script. But time is definitely running out.