2009 Yankees: The Melk Man Delivers Again

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. Today, Melky Cabrera produced the latest in a series of huge hits to lift the Yankees to a comeback victory over the Rangers.

NEW YORK (June 4, 2009) - When Melky Cabrera was told by Joe Girardi at the end of spring training that Brett Gardner had beaten him out for the starting center field job, he admitted that the news hit him like a punch in the gut.

“I didn’t see that coming,” Cabrera said. “I’m not mad about it. I’m going to try to make the best of it. I’m going to keep working hard, going to the batting cage and when the manager gives me the opportunity I’m going to be ready and do the best that I can.”

He wasn’t kidding.

In the first two months of the 2009 season, Cabrera delivered four victories to the Yankees with his clutch late-inning hitting, the latest being a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth that produced an 8-6 victory over the Rangers, completing a Yankees rally from a 5-1 deficit.

“What can you say about Melky? He’s always coming through for us,” said Mark Teixeira of the 24-year-old who was now 14-for-29 in late-inning situations, and who improved his slash line to .311 average/.360 on-base/.473 slugging with six homers and 22 RBI in 48 games.

“It just seems like he’s the guy coming up for us hitting in the clutch,” Nick Swisher said. “Once again, the Melk Man delivers. The dude is having a good year. He’s hitting over .300, he’s driving in runs, getting huge hits for us. He’s doing exactly what he needs to be doing.”

Cabrera had earlier hit a two-run walk-off homer in the 14th inning to beat the A’s 9-7 on April 22; he hit a two-run walk-off single off Twins star closer Joe Nathan on May 15 for a 5-4 victory; and on May 23 his walk-off RBI single against Brad Lidge beat the Phillies 5-4.

In this victory - which enabled the Yankees to win their seventh series in the last eight and pulled them back into a tie atop the AL East with the Red Sox - Cabrera roped a 1-1 pitch from C.J. Wilson over the wall in left field after his best friend on the team, fellow Dominican native Robinson Cano, had drawn a leadoff walk.

“We got another big hit from Melky; he has a knack for doing that,” Girardi said. “One of the things he’s done real well is that he hasn’t overswung, because last year there were times when his swing would get big. That’s trying to hit home runs, and home runs don’t usually come on big swings.”

Cabrera’s career was at an inflection point in the spring of 2009. After two nice seasons as a mainstay in the Yankees lineup when his cumulative slash line for 2006 and 2007 was a solid .277/.343/.391 for an OPS of .734, Cabrera had taken a step back in 2008. As in all the way back to Triple-A.

He had scuffled along during the first four months, and then came the crash. In the first 12 games he played in August he batted .115, with all three of his hits coming in one game. All those oh-fers dropped his average to .242 and the Yankees decided that he needed to go down to get himself straightened out.

Cabrera was gone for a month, during which the Yankees fell hopelessly out of the playoff chase. With Scranton/Wilkes-Barre he hit .333 in 15 games so the Yankees brought him back in the hope that his good work would translate in the majors and in 12 September games, mostly as a defensive replacement, he went 6-for-13 and finished the year at .249.

That would turn out to be lowest single-season mark of what became a 15-year big league career.

Gardner had earned his first significant playing time in 2008 when Cabrera was in the minors, so they came to Tampa in the spring of 2009 prepared to do battle for the only position that was up for grabs. Cabrera did nothing to lose, but in the end Gardner simply did a little more and he was named the Opening Day center fielder, though Girardi made it clear that Cabrera would still have a role.

First of all, Gardner wasn’t ready to be an every-day player, but also, left fielder Johnny Damon and designated hitter Hideki Matsui were both 35 years old and would need days off, and Swisher, the new right fielder, was coming off a 2008 season having hit .218 for the White Sox. No doubt, there were going to be opportunities for Cabrera, but no one could have envisioned how dramatically he would take advantage of those.

“Our plans are to take Melky with us,” Girardi said after the spring. “Melky has a lot of important things to do for us. He’s a switch hitter, we can put him anywhere in the outfield, and he can run. What happens April 6 doesn’t mean that’s what’s going to be happening on June 1. It’s hard not to be disappointed if you’re a player that wants to play every day. Any player is going to be upset with that decision. That’s the competitive nature of human beings.”

When Girardi broke the news, Cabrera said he was told that he would play once or twice a week, “probably playing the seventh or eighth inning, pinch-hitting or pinch-running” and that’s what happened early. Eight of his first 14 appearances in 2009 were as a pinch-hitter or defensive replacement, but after his big hit against the A’s, Girardi started finding ways to get him into the starting lineup in one of the outfield spots.

That’s what Girardi appreciated most, the fact that Cabrera was disappointed and his response was to stick with it and force Girardi to play him, both in 2009 and in 2008 when he was demoted to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

“I think that’s a wakeup call for anyone,” Girardi said. “Usually when you have a position for a couple years you plan on being there for a long time. I think he took the right attitude. He was upset that he got sent down, but he took the attitude that, ‘I’m going to show you I deserve to play.’ And he’s been great.”

Since his walk-off hit against the Twins through the home run against the Rangers, Cabrera hit safely in 12 of 16 games and he was leading the Yankees with a .311 average.

“I knew the chance would be here,” he said. “(Girardi) always said I was going to be a guy that was going to help the club win.”

Cabrera’s heroics on this night helped to mask what was yet another worrisome start for Chien-Ming Wang. He gave up five runs on seven hits and a walk in 4.2 innings and his ERA - which was 34.50 after a disastrous first three starts - was still ass ugly at 14.46.

“I thought he threw the ball pretty decent today,” Girardi said, trying to put a happy face on the outing. “I know people are going to see the results and say, ‘Oh boy, he gave up five runs,’ but we’ve had other pitchers give up runs, too. This is a guy we believe in who was the ace of our staff the past three years. This was definitely something to build on.”

The last batter he faced, Nelson Cruz, hit a solo homer to left-center to give Texas a 5-1 lead, but in the bottom of the fifth, the Yankees took Wang off the hook by scoring five runs, the big blow a three-run double by Teixeira.

The Rangers pulled even on Ian Kinsler’s solo homer off Alfredo Aceves in the sixth, but then Cabrera came through and Mariano Rivera worked himself into a jam in the ninth before retiring Cruz and David Murphy to end it.

Here’s how the rest of Week 9 went for the Yankees:

• June 2: Jorge Posada’s throwing error in the fourth inning ended the Yankees MLB record streak of 18 errorless games, but it mattered little during a 12-3 blowout of the Rangers. Derek Jeter raised his team-high average to .319 with three hits, Posada went 3-for-5 with a homer and four RBI, and Matsui hit a three-run homer.

• June 3: Andy Pettitte gave up all four runs in the first two innings and the Yankees lost 4-2 to the Rangers. The Yankees made a key decision on this day, too, as they announced that Wang would return to the rotation and Phil Hughes would go to the bullpen. As it turned out, Wang only pitched one more month before his season ended, but Hughes’ move stuck all season and he became a key late-inning reliever.

• June 6: After the first game of the series was rained out, the Yankees suffered a 9-7 loss to the Rays at the stadium. They had just tied the game at 5-5 in the eighth, only to see Rivera get shelled for a stunning four runs in the ninth, one unearned on an error by A-Rod. “You don’t see it very often, so when it happens you’re a little bit shocked,” Girardi said of Rivera’s performance. This was only the fourth time in 864 games to date that he allowed four or more runs.

• June 7: Down 3-1 in the eighth, the Yankees rallied for a 4-3 victory. After Damon and Teixeira singled and A-Rod walked, the Yankees scored three runs on a bases loaded walk to Cano, an error by third baseman Willy Aybar, and a go-ahead RBI grounder by Matsui as he beat out a double play. Rivera then bounced back to throw a 1-2-3 ninth for the save.

• June 8: Home Run Derby broke out at the stadium as Damon, Teixeira, Jeter and Swisher all went deep during a 5-3 victory which delivered another series win. It set the stage for their trip to Boston who they were 0-5 against thus far. “We’re a different team because we’re finding ways to win,” Girardi said of his first-place team which had won 19 of 25 and was now one game up on the Red Sox.

NEXT SATURDAY: The 2009 Subway Series got off to an incredible start as the Yankees rallied to win the first game in the bottom of the ninth inning on a gaffe that will live in infamy for the Mets.