TAMPA — At some point over the next few days, Aaron Boone will call a player into his office or pull him aside and inform him that he is making the Opening Day roster for the first time in his big league career.
It will happen for Oswaldo Cabrera, though that isn’t much of a surprise by now.
It may happen for a reliever or two such as Greg Weissert or Matt Krook.
And it will happen for a shortstop to be determined, either Oswald Peraza or Anthony Volpe, after they compete in a battle that the Yankees insist they will take down to the wire.
“To be able to tell someone they’ve made an Opening Day roster for the first time, or they’re coming to the big leagues for the first time, whatever it may be, those are cool days,” Boone said Thursday. “Because mostly you’re sending guys back [to the minors], and especially at the end, guys who are more in the running.”
That likely will be the case for whoever doesn’t win the shortstop job, which will be a difficult conversation regardless of who it is.
But telling a player he has made the Opening Day roster is one of the more rewarding parts of the job for Boone, who gave the news to Ron Marinaccio, JP Sears and Clarke Schmidt last season.
Before he got the job of telling players their fate, Boone was once in their shoes.
After making his MLB debut in 1997 and getting a cup of coffee with the Reds, he entered spring training in 1998 thinking he was probably “a long shot” to make the team because they had Willie Greene at third base and wouldn’t want the 25-year-old Boone not playing every day.
But late in the spring, amid a team-wide hitting slump, Boone hit three home runs off closers, including a grand slam off Randy Myers and a ninth-inning blast off Dennis Eckersley. It was enough to have Boone break camp with the Reds for his first Opening Day, even if he got sent back to the minors a few weeks later.
“But it was pretty cool,” Boone said. “Opening Day in Cincinnati is a really big deal. Back then it was still always the first game of the year. My brother [Bret] was the second baseman on the team. So it was pretty neat and exciting to be a part of that.”
For Nestor Cortes and Aaron Hicks, their first Opening Day rosters doubled as their first call-ups to the big leagues.
Cortes was with the Orioles in 2018 as a Rule 5 draft pick, but still didn’t know his roster fate when the team broke camp. The Orioles flew to Baltimore with a few extra players as they weighed their decision ahead of Opening Day before Cortes was called into manager Buck Showalter’s office and learned he had made the team.
“I was like, ‘I wish you would have told me in Sarasota,’” said Cortes, referencing the team’s spring home. “Just walked out of the office and called my parents. It was a good moment.”
Hicks had not played above Double-A when he arrived at Twins camp in 2013, but he won the starting center field job with a strong spring.
With a few days left in camp, Twins manager Ron Gardenhire called Hicks into his office and told him the news. Hicks’ first call was to his dad.
“I called my dad and he said, ‘I knew you were going to make the team. I mean, you’re hitting like .380 with eight homers,’” Hicks said. “I was still kind of waiting [to find out]. I came from Double-A, so. You can have a great camp coming from Double-A and still not make the team.”
Last year, Boone gave Marinaccio the news on the final day of camp, taking him into the manager’s office and telling him he was coming to New York.
The reliever from New Jersey was speechless, but soon enough, he had to find words as he called his fiancée and his parents to fill them in.
Now, during the coming days, a few new Yankees will join the club.
“It’s gonna be something they’ve never experienced before,” Cortes said. “For me, growing up, I was a huge baseball fan. So I didn’t even imagine what it would feel like to be on an Opening Day roster. For them, I think it’s going to be the same way. Guys that are here look like they’re big baseball fanatics. I’m excited to see how they’re going to react when they get to New York.”
‘When the guys leave’
There will be a sense of relief for most Yankees on Monday when the team breaks camp and heads north, finally finished with the days of PFPs and games that don’t mean anything.
But for Scott Effross, the day will come with some different feelings.
Five-plus months out from undergoing Tommy John surgery, Effross has welcomed having the clubhouse at George M. Steinbrenner Field packed with teammates over the past five weeks. Soon, though, the Yankees reliever will have much less company in Tampa as he continues the grueling rehab process from the elbow surgery that ended his season prematurely last year.
“Every now and then I get bummed, obviously,” Effross said recently. “Being around the guys now, I won’t be able to compete with them this summer. But just being here and being in camp and seeing everybody again, I’m really trying to enjoy it and embrace being around them. It’s quasi-normal, I guess, within camp. Really trying to enjoy that.
“There’ll definitely be mental hurdles that have already popped up or will pop up. But try your best to take it a day at a time.”
Effross has learned to appreciate the small victories along the way in his recovery, but a bigger one came recently when he was cleared to begin a throwing program on March 6.
“It’s an important step,” he said that week. “I think they’re all kind of equally important, but this is, I guess, the most fun one.”
The Yankees acquired Effross from the Cubs at last year’s trade deadline, and got a glimpse of how he could impact their bullpen before injuries got in the way — first a shoulder strain in late August and then the UCL tear that necessitated Tommy John surgery.
Since then, Effross has picked the brains of many former TJ patients, including former teammates Chad Green (who signed with the Blue Jays and is about four months ahead of Effross in his comeback), Jameson Taillon and Justin Steele (of the Cubs) and current teammates such as Clay Holmes.
“Unfortunately, a lot of guys have had it, but fortunately, a lot of guys have really good perspectives on how to handle it,” Effross said. “I think probably the biggest [takeaway] is truly just trying to take it a day at a time. I know it’s kind of cliché, but the more you try to not focus on the big picture and say, ‘OK, I had surgery then, I should be ready to go by this date.’ Really try to break it up into, ‘What’s my next benchmark? What can I do next? How do I win each day and compete against myself?’ I think that’s probably the biggest thing.”
Effross still has a long way to go in his recovery. Tommy John surgery typically has a recovery timeline of 12 to 18 months, putting Opening Day in 2024 as a reasonable target for Effross’ return.
Until then, he will mostly be rehabbing in Tampa at the Yankees’ player development complex, seeing his teammates when they come to play the Rays and making occasional visits to New York during the season.
“I’ll be interested to see when the guys leave how that shakes up what my days look like then,” Effross said. “But just try to focus on as much as I can, within reason, and listen to my body and be smart and get the most out of each day.”
Volpe and service time manipulation
In years past, the Yankees might have had extra incentive — not that they would admit it — to keep Volpe in the minors for a few weeks to start the season before calling him up if and when they believe he is ready.
But thanks to the new collective bargaining agreement from last year, the Yankees could benefit from making the call to have Volpe be their Opening Day shortstop — beyond however many wins he might help them rack up.
The new CBA included a Prospect Promotion Incentive (PPI), which was aimed at curbing the service time manipulation that teams have done in recent years — a memorable instance involved the Cubs and Kris Bryant — to keep players in the minors just long enough to not burn an extra year of team control.
According to multiple reports, the PPI rewards teams with an extra draft pick if they promote a player with less than 60 days of service time and keep him in the majors for a full year, as long as the player fulfills certain criteria:
1. The player is included in a preseason top 100 prospect list published by at least two of Baseball America, ESPN and MLB.com. Volpe enters this season ranked 14th by Baseball America, third by ESPN and fifth by MLB.com.
2. The player wins Rookie of the Year or finishes top three in MVP voting or Cy Young Award voting before reaching salary arbitration.
For the record, Peraza also would qualify for this, though he would be less of a favorite to win Rookie of the Year.