Yankees' J.C. Escarra is a great story, but he highlights some major bench issues
The Yankees’ J.C. Escarra reacts on second base after his double against the Arizona Diamondbacks during the seventh inning of an MLB game at Yankee Stadium on Thursday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
After two losses to Arizona in which they struck out a combined 30 times, the Yankees found the winning formula on Thursday night.
No, not more torpedo bats.
Playing J.C. Escarra.
Escarra, the Yankees’ 29-year-old Uber driver-turned-backup catcher, made his first big-league start and picked up his first MLB hit in the Yankees’ 9-7 victory over Arizona at Yankee Stadium.
In the two games in which Escarra has appeared this season, the Yankees have outscored their opponents 29-16. They led 9-3 after four innings on Thursday and survived a seventh-inning grand slam by Arizona’s Geraldo Perdomo.
Escarra laced a double into the rightfield corner in the seventh for his initial big-league knock.
And he’s 2-0 where it counts: the win-loss column.
“It was amazing,” said Escarra, who said he is going to give the ball to his father. “It was joy. It was joy.”
In terms of human-interest stories, you can’t find one better than Escarra, whose journey from doing odd jobs to independent ball to the Yankees’ Opening Day roster is the stuff baseball movies are made of.
But the Yankees are about winning. That’s the story their fans signed up to watch. Leave the movies to Lifetime.
There’s another side to Escarra’s story, one that has to do with why the Yankees, with a recent estimate by Forbes of a franchise value of an MLB-record $8 billion, have a 29-year-old former Uber driver who had never appeared in the majors before this season as their backup catcher as part of an underwhelming bench.
The Yankees turned off the payroll spigot at some point in this offseason — about the time they realized they couldn’t unload Marcus Stroman and his $18 million salary — and have gone into the season with a bench that is unbecoming for a team with a $305 million payroll and World Series aspirations.
The Yankees’ bench, to be kind, is inexperienced, mismatched and too lefthanded. The dollars saved and the talent not acquired to support Messrs. Judge and Volpe and Bellinger et al could come back to bite them over the long season.
There’s Pablo Reyes, a 31-year-old infielder/outfielder. Reyes is hitless in six at-bats and made two errors at third in his only start.
Oswald Peraza made the squad mainly because he is out of options. Once a bright enough prospect to start a postseason game, Peraza is hanging on to his big-league life by a thread.
And outfielder Trent Grisham — a lefthanded hitter on a roster that already tilts leftward — went into Thursday with a career .214 batting average in nearly 2,000 at-bats.
Thursday also was Grisham’s night, however, as he started in center and went 3-for-4 with a two-run homer and an RBI double.
“This is what he’s capable of,” manager Aaron Boone said, although Grisham’s large offensive sample size to date would suggest otherwise.
Grisham’s home run, combined with a three-run blast by Aaron Judge and a two-run shot by Jazz Chisholm Jr., gave the Yankees 22 home runs, the most by a team in the first six games of a season.
Even with Thursday’s output from Grisham and Escarra, you’d have to assume the Yankees will fortify the reserve crew as the season goes along.
Catching back up with Escarra: He went into Thursday with a total of one big-league game and two hitless at-bats. Those ABs came Saturday, when he entered as a pinch hitter and caught the final two innings of the Yankees’ 20-9 victory over Milwaukee.
“We were all excited,” Judge said of Escarra’s double. “We’re all pulling for that guy. We all know his story.”
Escarra might work out to become the best backup catcher in baseball. What a happy ending that would be. But what would happen if Austin Wells were injured and Escarra became the No. 1?
Remember, it was the Yankees’ choice to go into the season with an inexperienced, lefthanded-hitting No. 2 after they traded Jose Trevino and his $3.4 million salary to Cincinnati.
Does having a good backup backstop matter? Well, ask Mets fans how they felt during spring training when they learned that Francisco Alvarez would miss at least the first month of the season with a broken bone in his left hand.
Then ask them how much they have enjoyed the early-season work of Luis Torrens, who was traded to the Mets by the Yankees for cash considerations last May.
In the Mets’ 6-5, 11-inning victory over Miami on Wednesday, Torrens — who is batting .313 — started a three-run eighth-inning rally with a pinch-hit single. In the bottom of the inning, he made a sweeping tag of an off-line throw to record a (replay-assisted) out to keep the score tied.
Pete Alonso’s tying three-run home run in the eighth was the big blow, but without Torrens’ contributions, the Mets might have been coming home for Friday’s Citi Field opener with a 2-4 record instead of 3-3.
The Yankees need more than great stories on their bench. They need production like they got on Thursday.
Or they just need to keep playing Escarra, apparently.
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
