Spring training games are underway, and the pitch clock is off to a great start as the times of the first weekend of games were quite satisfying. I also have some thoughts on the brutal Gary Sanchez trade from a year ago, and in the Memories section, with the banning of the shift a big topic, I thought you’d enjoy a story about the time the Kansas City A’s used a shift on Mickey Mantle. It happened during a three-game series at Yankee Stadium in June of 1956.

Players Need to Adjust, but Aaron Boone Thinks Clock is a Good Thing

The Yankees opened the spring training schedule Saturday with a 7-4 loss to the Phillies, and after a sluggish start, the game really started moving and was ultimately concluded in two hours, 34 minutes. Hallelujah. That’s more like it, baseball.

The longest games on Friday and Saturday were three hours, six minutes for a 10-8 Cubs win over the Giants and a 12-7 A’s win over the Diamondbacks. There was only one other that surpassed three hours, and most of the others were right around 2:30. The Angels-Mariners played a game in 2:16.

Obviously, not every game is going to be over as quickly as some of these once the season starts, but it was a clear indication that the pitch clock is going to be a great thing for the game.

One step the Yankees took in the first week of camp to help their players adjust to the new pitch clock is having minor-league umpires on hand to monitor it during live batting practice. “I think it’s been really valuable,” Aaron Boone said of the umpires presence. “It’s sparked more conversation around it. But now to get to start applying it in-game, obviously will serve us well. Important to get that going.”

In the first game, there were hardly any issues. Only one automatic ball was called, that on Yankees pitcher D.J. Snelten for not delivering a pitch on time.

“I think it’s gonna be a good thing for the game,” Boone said Saturday. “I’m sure on some level, there’s that little adjustment, but everyone in the first game is able to make it. It’s good to see an umpire behind home plate today with some experience with it (from the minor leagues), that knows the mechanics of it. And then it’s just good to see how the dead time restarts and everything. I thought from that standpoint, it was a good first day.”

Isiah Kiner-Falefa told reporters one of the biggest issues he sees will be getting the signs in a timely fashion, both in the field for positioning and at the plate from the third base coach. Otherwise, he loved the pace.

“For me, a couple times I caught myself picking up our coaches for positioning and then I looked up and I was like, ‘Oh wow, our pitchers are already on their way home,’” Kiner-Falefa said. “So the tempo’s a lot faster. Infielders, we’re going to love it. We’re always going to be ready now.”

However, the adjustment is going to take time, and that played a big role in the Braves game against the Red Sox Saturday. The Braves scored three runs in the bottom of the ninth to tie the score at 6-6, they had the bases loaded with two outs, and the batter, Cal Conley, was looking at a 3-2 count. And then, Conley didn’t get himself situated in the batters box within the required eight seconds, the ump called an automatic strike, the Braves rally died and because it’s spring training the game - which was played in 2:39 - ended in a tie.

Friday, in the Padres opener against the Mariners, Manny Machado came to the plate in the bottom of the first and started his at bat in an 0-1 count because he didn’t get into the box on time. When the games start counting, oh boy, there’s gonna be some chaos but hey, tough.

Jayson Stark of The Athletic ran the numbers on the 19 games that were played Friday and Saturday and there were a total of 34 clock violations, or 1.79 per game. That’s actually pretty good, but one thing to keep in mind is this: The vast majority of the players in these games were minor leaguers who have already been playing at this pace. The MLB vets are the ones who are going to have to make the big adjustments, but his is what spring training is for, to work out the kinks and get used to the timing.

➤ We are coming up on the one-year anniversary of the trade that sent Gary Sanchez and Gio Urshela to the Minnesota Twins in exchange for Kiner-Falefa, Josh Donaldson, and Ben Rortvedt. And as I said at various points last season, even though Sanchez is no longer a Yankee, he’s still killing them because the three players who came to New York have been, well, to be kind, not so good.

The only reason that trade happened is because the Yankees knew they had to move on from Sanchez because he was just so bad. They needed him gone, and quite frankly, Sanchez needed to get out of New York and try for a fresh start elsewhere. However, that sense of desperation to be rid of a problem created a poor environment in which to make a deal because the Yankees didn’t have much leverage. And sure enough, that trade has been a disaster in every way, and mind you, not just for the Yankees.

Predictably, Sanchez sucked last year for the Twins and they didn’t bother re-signing him when he became a free agent in November. Neither has any other team; he’s still a free agent, though he will play for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic next month. And Urshela wasn’t very good either, so after the season the Twins traded him to the Angels. So, the Twins got nothing out of the trade.

Oh, except this: They managed to sucker the Yankees into taking Donaldson and the two years and $50 million he had remaining on his contract, then watched him have the worst offensive season of his career in the Bronx. By the end of the year, Yankee fans were booing Donaldson as much as they used to boo Sanchez.

Kiner-Falefa was a decent enough hitter despite his absence of power, but he also proved incapable of being a reliable shortstop, regardless of what the Yankees’ “proprietary metrics” showed. We all have eyes, and we all know he was an error machine. This season, he’s in a battle with rookie Oswald Peraza for the starting job and if the Yankees are smart, they give it to Peraza and relegate IKF to the utility role he belongs in.

And then lastly, the piece of that trade that the Yankees were most excited about, Rortvedt, has been a complete bust. The catcher is built like an NFL linebacker which I’m sure makes him proud when he looks in the mirror. However, all that muscle means nothing if you can’t get on the field, and Rortvedt can’t.

Within a couple of weeks of joining the Yankees he suffered an oblique injury, and that prompted the Yankees to trade for Jose Trevino, which actually worked out well. When Rortvedt was just about recovered and was starting to get ready to play, he hurt his knee and it required microscopic surgery and more injured list time. Ultimately, Rortvedt never played for the Yankees in 2022, his only action coming in the minor leagues.

And now, Rortvedt, who was supposed to compete with Kyle Higashikoa for the backup job behind Trevino, is out again. He had surgery to repair an aneurysm in his left shoulder and will essentially miss all of spring training, meaning he probably won’t be playing anywhere until at least May, maybe June.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the very definition of an awful trade, and what’s remarkable is that it has been awful for both teams. More often, one team gets over on the other. Not the Yankees and Twins. But, as I said, at least Sanchez is out of our lives.

There’s virtually no chance that Jasson Dominguez, one of the top prospects in the Yankees system, will be in New York this season. He’ll probably start the season at Double-A and if he shows well, the 20-year-old would likely get some time in Triple-A as well. Let’s hope his progress stays on course because he might be a fun player to watch when he finally makes it to the big leagues. This is what he did Saturday in his second at-bat. (If you click the video, remember that it will take you to a new screen).

➤ There’s plenty of time for things to go wrong with the injury-cursed Yankees, but the early reports on reliever Michael King have been promising. The fractured elbow which knocked him out of the 2022 season in late July is healed and he is reportedly throwing without issues. If King can return to the form he showed pre-injury, that would be a big boost for the bullpen.

➤ One name to watch in the bullpen is lefty Matt Krook. A former fourth-round draft pick of the Giants in 2016, Krook had never been included on a 40-man roster during stints with the Giants and Rays before coming to the Yankees in 2021.

He started 24 games combined at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and Double-A Somerset that year and compiled a 2.89 ERA, a 1.189 WHIP and an 11.2 strikeouts per nine innings ratio. Then last year, all with Scranton, his numbers dipped as he had a 4.61 ERA, 1.392 WHIP and a 10.1 strikeout ratio.

Still, last November, the Yankees didn’t want to risk losing Krook in the Rule 5 draft so they protected him by putting him on the 40-man roster. “It was awesome,” Krook said the other day. “I’ve been in the minor leagues for a long time. So to get that call and get added and for them to believe in me meant a lot. It felt really good.”

If he excels this spring, he might make the team as a lefty bullpen option because the only reliable lefty reliever the Yankees have is Wandy Peralta. Last year, lefties hit just .172 against Krook and Boone said that Krook was in the running to be added to the playoff roster. “He’s a real problem for lefties,” Boone said last week. “He’s an interesting guy, and if nothing else is a built-in problem for lefties.’’

The Day The A’s Shifted Mickey Mantle

When the MLB season opens next month, the new rules banning defensive shifts will be in place, meaning there must be two infielders on each side of second base, and they have to have their feet on the dirt cutout when each pitch is delivered.

Shifts were a big part of defensive strategy for much of the previous decade plus, and they were particularly harmful to left-handed batters because with the shorter throw to first from the second base side of the infield, teams would often place a fielder in short right field which robbed lefty swingers of many, many line drive or ground ball base hits.

No more, which is a good thing for baseball.

But anyone who thought that manager Joe Maddon and the ever-irritating Rays invented the shift in 2008, the year Tampa Bay went to the World Series, which spawned a revolution as every team began copying the strategy, the shift dates back to 1941 when Boston’s Ted Williams faced it during his iconic season when he hit .406, the last player to top .400.

With Williams tearing up the American League, Chicago White Sox manager Jimmy Dykes deployed three infielders to the right side in a game on July 23, 1941 at Fenway Park. Williams shrugged his shoulders and promptly punched a hit to left and as the White Sox were chasing down the ball Williams cruised into second with a double. Dykes never used it again. No one did until 1946 when Lou Boudreau – then the Cleveland Indians player-manager – brought it back.

In the first game of a July 14, 1946 doubleheader Williams hit three home runs and drove in eight to lead Boston to an 11-10 victory. In his first at-bat in the nightcap Williams ripped a double down the right field line, so when he next entered the batters box he stared out at an alignment that featured only one fielder on the left side, left-fielder George Case who was playing what amounted to a very deep shortstop. Everyone else was stationed on the right side including shortstop Boudreau who was playing where the regular second baseman would have been playing. Appropriately, Williams grounded out to Boudreau.

For much of the rest of his career Williams saw various forms of a shift when he came to bat with no one on base. The shift cost Williams a few hits each year, but as great a hitter as he was the Splendid Splinter usually found an open space to hit through. “I know this,” Williams once said. “I beat that damn shift a lot more than people realize.”

What I never realized until I did a little digging is that Mickey Mantle - who was a dead pull hitter from both side of the plate - had to occasionally hit against the shift and the first time occurred on June 5, 1956. That was in the midst of his Triple Crown MVP season, a year when Mantle was nearly unstoppable and once again it was Boudreau - by then managing the Kansas City A’s - who tried to slow down the runaway train that was Mantle.

With right-hander Lou Kretlow on the mound at Yankee Stadium, and the switch-hitting Mantle stationed in the left side of the batters box, the A’s went into shift mode. In the bottom of the first Mantle came up with two outs and nobody on base and the field began to resemble a merry-go-round as Kansas City players scurried to seemingly obscure stations.

Second baseman Jim Finigan backed into short right field and was replaced at second by shortstop Joe DeMaestri. Third baseman Hector Lopez moved into shallow center field, left fielder Enos Slaughter came in to play a deep shortstop, center fielder Johnny Groth moved to deep left-center and right fielder Harry Simpson played the gap in deep right-center. The only players who remained in their traditional positions were Kretlow, catcher Tim Thompson and first baseman Vic Power.

Mantle struck out in his first two at-bats against the shift, then didn’t see it in his last two at-bats as he came up with runners on base in both the sixth and eighth innings. He flied out in the sixth, but no shift would have stopped him in the eighth when he launched his 21st home run of the year, a two-run blast into the right-field seats that nonetheless could not prevent a 7-4 Yankees loss, one of only four they suffered in 23 games against the lousy A’s that year.

“I’d been mulling it over in my mind for a long while, and then it came to me,” said Boudreau. “I was having a late lunch and I began toying with a pencil on the back of a menu. I marked down X’s like a football coach designing a touchdown play.”

In those first two at-bats Mantle tried to bunt down the third-base line for an easy infield single but couldn’t get it down. That was no surprise because while Mantle was an excellent drag bunter from the left side, he admittedly struggled to push bunts the other way.

Boudreau knew this and it played right into his strategy. First of all, he certainly didn’t mind Mantle wasting strikes trying to bunt. Second, if Mantle did happen to bunt successfully for a hit, Boudreau preferred him on first base as opposed to jogging around the bases after another tape-measure home run.

“Sure, Mantle can bunt,” Boudreau said. “But when he’s batting left-handed can he push a bunt down the third-base line? Frankly, I don’t ever remember seeing him do it. I wouldn’t dare use a shift of this sort on Yogi Berra. He’s a spray hitter. But Mantle’s power is to right-center and left-center. When he rips one down the line he’ll overpower you anyway. I know there is no one in baseball today who can belt a ball harder than Mantle. Harder than Babe Ruth? I can’t say because I didn’t see the Babe.’’

The next day, Boudreau used the shift on Mantle again, and the above illustration shows the positioning of the players.

After a few games of seeing Mantle trying to outsmart Boudreau, Casey Stengel pulled aside his slugger and told him “Don’t be trying to hit ground balls (to the left side). That’s the reason he’s doing that. He wants you to bunt or hit ground balls. He wants you to hit singles. We want you to hit home runs.”