2009 Yankees: Stars Were Stars, But Contributions Came From So Many Places

Welcome back to the next chapter of 2009 Yankees: The Last Championship - a week-by-week remembrance of the year in which they gave us their most recent World Series title. To win a championship, you need the entire roster to contribute, and a shining example of that for the 2009 Yankees was this night against Baltimore when pitchers Sergio Mitre and Alfredo Aceves, who weren’t even on the team for Opening Day, helped deliver the victory that sent the Yankees into first place for good.

NEW YORK (July 21, 2009) - Every championship team, regardless of the sport, has star players who do the bulk of the heavy lifting, a core group that is instrumental to whatever level of success is achieved.

For the 2009 Yankees, the names were plentiful and they included Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, Robinson Cano, CC Sabathia and Mariano Rivera. When you can roll out talent like that - Hall of Famers and Hall of Very Gooders - yes, winning is going to happen and sure enough the Yankees won the World Series.

But the stars can’t do it all, especially in baseball, because each star is only going to bat four or five times a game, or make a few plays in the field, or throw a certain amount of pitches that impact the difference between winning and losing. We’ve seen plenty of star-studded teams who never a won thing, several of them in the last 14 years who call the Bronx home.

The best teams win championships because they also get contributions from all levels of the roster, and in 2009, there could not have been a better game to illustrate this point than on this Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium during a 6-4 victory over the Orioles.

Right-hander Sergio Mitre was recalled from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre earlier in the day to essentially audition to become the Yankees’ fifth starter in place of injured Chien-Ming Wang. And in his first major league appearance in 22 months, Mitre gave the Yankees 5.2 solid innings.

Then, when Mitre began to falter and gave up a two-run single which allowed Baltimore to get within 6-4 in the sixth, Joe Girardi called on right-hander Alfredo Aceves to put out the fire, just as he had done several times already in what was becoming a breakout season for him.

Aceves got out of Mitre’s jam, pitched a 1-2-3 seventh, and pretty soon Rivera was closing it out with a 1-2-3 ninth to secure what turned out to be a momentous victory because it catapulted the Yankees into first place. While no one knew it at the time, they were never knocked off that perch the rest of the season.

“Yeah it feels great that there’s nobody in front of us, but it doesn’t mean anything at this point in the year,” said Jeter, always willing to throw a bucket of water on the fire. He was speaking the truth, but first place was still first place, and the manner in which the Yankees got there behind two pitchers who certainly weren’t being counted on for much made it a meaningful milestone.

Mitre, a native of San Diego, had been the Cubs’ seventh-round draft pick in 2001 and he made his debut in Chicago during its infamous 2003 season. That was the year the lovable losers from the North side won the NL Central and very nearly made it to the World Series until, well, Steve Bartman tried to catch a foul ball and everything went to shit against the Marlins, the team that went on to win the NL pennant and then defeat the Yankees for the championship.

Mitre moved on to Florida in 2006 and with Girardi in his only season as the Marlins manager, Mitre struggled to a 5.71 ERA in 15 appearances. Girardi was one and done in Florida so he was gone in 2007 when Mitre became a fixture in the rotation as he made 27 starts and went 5-8 with a 4.65 ERA, but then his career was put on hold when he missed all of 2008 due to Tommy John surgery.

On Girardi’s suggestion, the Yankees signed him as a free agent for $1.2 million in November 2008, but his first season in pinstripes was delayed because he had to serve a 50-game drug suspension. Once he got going he made seven starts at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and went 3-1 with a 2.40 ERA and a 1.000 WHIP, numbers the Yankees could not ignore, especially given the hole in their rotation with the loss of Wang.

Following a masterful eight shutout innings on July 12, Mitre’s name began to surface as a possible call-up and Girardi confirmed that just before the All-Star break, saying, “He’s definitely an option. I don’t see him pitch on a daily basis and I don’t see his velocity and command, but I get reports. That’s more for the people outside of this room to make that judgment.”

After the break, the Yankees came out smoking as they swept Detroit, then beat Baltimore in the first game of this series, and it wasn’t until this night that they needed a fifth starter, and Mitre was the man. He showed up at the stadium just before 4 p.m., found his locker stall, and only then did it start to sink in that he hadn’t pitched in a major league game in 22 months.

“I didn’t feel like my feet were on the ground today,” he said, explaining his excitement. “It has been a long way back. I don’t look at myself as I’m here to fill in. I know I can pitch here, it’s just a matter of staying healthy. That’s been my biggest problem throughout my career. Hopefully I get the ball every fifth day.”

After the game Girardi wasn’t ready to pronounce him the permanent fifth starter yet, but he acknowledged, “I thought he did a nice job. He almost got through six so I was happy with his performance. That’s a big lift for us. He came up and he did what we needed him to do tonight, and that’s all that we’re asking him to do.”

Mitre, who ultimately did serve as the fifth starter for the duration of the year, already had notable big league experience on his resume, but that was not the case when Aceves joined the Yankees midway through 2008.

Aceves made his professional debut in the Mexican League as a 19-year-old in 2002 and spent most of the next six years there, sitting out 2004 due to an arm injury. As he was toiling in his homeland, he continually dreamed about the major leagues and wondered whether he would ever make it.

The Yankees gave him that chance when they signed him for $450,000 in the spring of 2008, and so began a rather stunning ascent. He blew through High-A Tampa and Double-A Trenton and by the early summer, he was at Triple-A S/WB.

Brian Cashman had never seen Aceves pitch in person; he had only watched highlights and he signed the kid because he trusted that his scouts had made the proper evaluation. But on July 22, 2008, Cashman made the two-hour drive to Scranton because, “I just wanted to get my eyes on what the buzz was all about.”

That night, Aceves wasn’t great as he gave up two runs in three innings while working on a 65-pitch limit, but Cashman saw that the stuff was lively and Aceves was eventually called up on Aug. 31, making his MLB debut with two perfect innings at the end of a 6-2 loss to Toronto.

He followed that on Sept. 4 with a five-inning relief appearance during which he allowed just one run in a 7-5 loss to Tampa Bay and it dawned on Girardi and the braintrust: Why not give him a look as a starter since the Yankees were essentially out of the playoff chase?

That turned out pretty well as he started four games before the end of the season, the Yankees won all of them, and Aceves was the winner in his first start on Sept. 9, a seven-inning gem in Los Angeles when he gave up just one run on five hits. Slightly overshadowing his achievement, that same night, Jeter moved past Babe Ruth and into second place on the Yankees’ all-time hits list behind only Lou Gehrig.

Girardi acknowledged Jeter, saying, “That’s a pretty big name to be passing” but more important from a team perspective, and certainly the Yankees future, was the performance of Aceves.

“He told me he was going to give me seven today; I should listen to him more often,” Girardi said. “He was great. He’s had a lot of success in his first year and if you continue to have success you’re going to get opportunities here and a chance to show what you can do. I like his makeup and I like his stuff To be able to come up from A-ball tells you something of what’s inside him. The kid’s got a lot of heart.”

That night at Angel Stadium, Aceves said he needed 27 tickets to hand out to his family, including his parents, who were traveling up from Mexico. “It’s another challenge for me,” he said before he took the mound. “I compete against myself, I don’t compete with anybody. I wanted to see how hard it is. Now that I’m here, I’m not thinking like that. Now I’m thinking about how I’m going to pitch. I’m making my plan.”

When the Yankees signed CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, plus were still believing that Phil Hughes or Ian Kennedy would secure rotation spots, there was no room for Aceves at the start of 2009, but he was called up in early May and it proved to be one of the most significant promotions of the season. Rather than start, he became a key member of the bullpen because he could give Girardi whatever he needed ranging from a quick platoon matchup to long relief.

By the end of June he had earned five victories with just one loss, his ERA was a sparkling 2.16 and once Wang went down, the Yankees reflected on Aceves’ starts the previous year and gave him the first crack at grabbing the fifth spot in the rotation. He started against the Twins on July 9 and struggled, but even worse, those 3.1 innings and 65 pitches knocked him out of commission for a few days and Girardi realized his bullpen would be weakened and that Aceves was far more valuable in that role.

That’s why the Yankees gave Mitre a look because they wanted to keep Aceves in the Swiss Army knife role. By season’s end, Aceves was 10-1 with a 3.54 ERA and 1.012 WHIP in 43 games and 84 innings.

“He knows how to pitch,” Girardi said. “He was a big part of our success. He held teams down and gave us opportunities to come back. I’ve always had a lot of confidence in him.”

Here’s how the rest of Weeks 14 and 15 went for the Yankees:

• July 17: The Yankees emerged from the All-Star break and opened a lengthy homestand that sent their season soaring as they won the first eight, and nine out of 10. “When you get four days off to get your body back to normal, and you get rested going into a 10-game homestand, it’s great,” Girardi said. It began with a 5-3 victory over AL Central-leading Detroit when Teixeira hit a dramatic go-ahead three-run homer in the the eighth.

• July 18: In a terrific pitchers’ duel, Sabathia threw seven shutout innings to beat Justin Verlander 2-1 with Alex Rodriguez homering and Melky Cabrera singling home Cano for the only Yankee runs in the seventh.

• July 19: The sweep was completed with another 2-1 victory as A-Rod and Teixeira hit solo homers and Joba Chamberlain turned in 6.2 excellent innings before turning it over to Phil Coke, Hughes and Rivera to finish off.

• July 20: A third straight 2-1 victory, this one over the Orioles as Hideki Matsui walked it off with a solo homer in the bottom of the ninth. Andy Pettitte gave up a home run to Nick Markakis in the first and then nothing else, but it was Aceves who got his sixth win because he was the pitcher of record in the ninth.

• July 22: The Yankees used five hits and a walk to score four runs in the first and then held off a late Baltimore push to finish another sweep with a 6-4 victory.

• July 23: The A’s were next at the stadium and they jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead on Sabathia, but Teixeira’s two-run homer keyed a four-run fourth inning, and he added an RBI double in the fifth for a 6-3 victory.

• July 24: Johnny Damon drove in three runs, Jeter had three hits and two RBI, and Jorge Posada homered to back another strong seven-inning outing by Chamberlain in an 8-3 triumph.

• July 25: The winning streak ended at eight as the A’s erupted for six runs in the seventh off Pettitte and Aceves for a 6-4 victory. Jeter and Teixeira each homered in the eighth, but it was too little, too late.

• July 26: The homestand ended with a 7-5 victory as Cano’s three-run double capped a four-run first inning, and Jeter keyed a three-run sixth with a two-run single. Across the 10 games the Yankees outscored their three opponents 48-31, they improved their record to 60-38 and extended their lead over Boston to 2.5 games. “We came off the break and played some good games and won some tough games. We’re doing a lot of things well right now,” Posada said.

NEXT SATURDAY: Joba Chamberlain represented so much hope when he came up to the Yankees in 2007, but then a few screwy things happened that in effect set him on an unfulfilling path whereby he never realized his full potential during his time with the Yankees.