In the end, Gary Sanchez had become such a toxic subject for the Yankees that it was almost impossible to remember why there had been such a groundswell of excitement and hope surrounding him in the first place. In the end, his offensive regressions and defensive transgressions had become the equivalent of a 1-2 action shout.
For Yankees fans. And for Sánchez, too. After things finally got so bad for Sanchez last year, her body language and his frame of mind almost made it one of the saddest questions an athlete from New York has had to ask in a long time:
How long am I supposed to apologize for that first month?
That first month. You remember? At the time, in August 2016, it was like taking a real-time home movie of the first ballpark of a Hall of Fame career. The Alex Rodriguez saga was finally over. The Yankees, for one of the only times in history, had been sellers at the trade deadline. Sanchez reported to work Aug. 4, went 2-for-4 with a double and never stopped hitting.
The first home run came on August 10, an impressive blast to deep center field at Fenway Park off Boston’s Junichi Tazawa. He hit two against the Blue Jays, two more against the Mariners. But it wasn’t just about power: On August 28, after 90 plate appearances in his August test, Sánchez was hitting .425 with a 1.426 OPS. He was playing solid defense, showing off a great arm.
He finished the year with 20 home runs in 201 at-bats. Despite playing only 53 games, he finished second in Rookie of the Year voting, behind Detroit’s Michael Fulmer. One scout, asked point-blank about Sanchez’s roof, simply pointed beyond the Yankee Stadium fence, toward Monument Park.
“Out there,” he said, shaking his head.
You remember?
Six years later, Gary Sánchez settled into the home team’s dugout bench at Target Field in Minneapolis. He wore two things notably absent from his time as a Yankee: a beard, which is taboo in the Bronx. And a genuine look of relief. He is now a Minnesota Twin, which means he plays for a first-place team, just like his old teammates. Six years later, Sánchez is a lever in a good machine. It is no longer a foundation
“A lot of adrenaline, but at the same time excited,” Sánchez said, a couple of hours before the Twins played the Yankees. .229/.289/.446 in the game, all accompanied by positive words from his manager, coaches and teammates. “I have a lot of friends on that other side.”
The divorce, finalized on the first day of spring training this year, has been beneficial to both parties.
The Yankees signed the entire left side of the infield in Josh Donaldson and Isiah Kiner-Falafa. Sanchez had to migrate a thousand miles away from Yankee Stadium, which for a brief, brilliant moment had been his kingdom to rule but, in time, became a gauntlet of boos and bile mainly due to a cutting line his last four years was unsightly (.201/.299/.444) and a defense best described as “indifferent.”
So it was that Sánchez joined a curious generation of New York athletes whose stars had shone against the sky, but only briefly. Sanchez’s arc in New York wasn’t all that different from Matt Harvey’s (save for catastrophic injuries): impressive early speed and some success later, ending with barely a whimper with exile to the Midwest.
You can also add Kristaps Porzingis to that list, who somehow went from being one of the two or three most popular athletes in all of New York to a dead outcast to us, even as he was rehabbing from a broken knee. His later work in Dallas and Washington still occasionally hints at his former unicorn manager, but Knicks fans have surely moved on.
Sanchez? He came before Aaron Judge. Based on that first month, he was supposed to be a judge. And when Judge became the instant phenom that he became, that didn’t help Sanchez’s case one bit. He had that first month: he put it on the shelf along with Kevin Maas from 1990 and Shane Spencer from 1998. He’s a twin now. No hype, he’s just a veteran player, trying to prove that he belongs. And August 2016 he feels like he did 30 years ago.
Reference-nypost.com