Aaron Houston for The New York Times
From left, Ian Kennedy, Alan Horne and Jeffrey Marquez are a combined 23-8 for Trenton.
Kennedy also went 6-1 for Class A Tampa.
Yankees Pin Their Hopes on Pitching and Patience
By TYLER KEPNER
TRENTON, July 3 — Tony Franklin has wandered the minor leagues for 38 years, watching teammates advance to the majors and teaching prospects to do the same. He is a wise 57 years old, and these days, he carries himself with a carefree air not often seen in a manager.
Franklin knows how good he has it as the manager of the Trenton Thunder, the Yankees’ Class AA affiliate in the Eastern League. He has seen enough pitchers to understand what a precious thing he has now.
“Every manager should have the opportunity to have a pitching staff like this at least one time in their career,” Franklin said Tuesday at Waterfront Park. “It’s pretty special to know you’ve got a great opportunity to win each and every night.”
Franklin spoke after a shutout victory against the Harrisburg Senators. Joba Chamberlain had worked six innings and struck out 12, two short of the Thunder record. [Brett Smith would toss a rain-shortened no-hitter the next night, and the team now has a nine-game winning streak.]
The staff’s earned run average, 2.57, is the lowest of any full-season minor league team. No wonder the Thunder is already selling playoff tickets.
“You compare what our staff’s bringing to the table to what a lot of other teams are, and it’s no contest,” said the Trenton right-hander Alan Horne, who is 9-3. “A lot of teams are scratching to get two or three quality starters, and we have six.”
Chamberlain, Horne, Smith, Ian Kennedy, Jeff Marquez and Jason Jones lead a Trenton staff that is the nexus of the Yankees’ recent emphasis on developing pitching. In a dreary season for the major league team, the Trenton pitchers have been the organization’s highlight.
Every team knows the importance of pitching. But under General Manager Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ strategy of taking risks on amateur pitchers and exceeding industry standards for bonuses seems to be working. It suggests that the Yankees may not be down for long, and other teams have noticed.
“He recognized a few years ago the need to fortify his system and has taken advantage of every opportunity possible to infuse talent into it,” Cleveland Indians General Manager Mark Shapiro said.
“The system is now one of the stronger ones in the minor leagues, and at some point, as those players become major-league-ready, the Yankees will have the most deadly combination of depth of young talent combined with elite payroll resources at the major league level.”
When Cashman assumed greater authority over baseball operations in 2005, he wanted clearly defined roles for others in the department. With Damon Oppenheimer running the draft and Mark Newman overseeing the farm system, the Yankees have steadily raised their profile in the minors.
In 2004, Baseball America ranked the Yankees 27th in minor league talent. Before this season, they ranked seventh. While the system is thin in position players, Cashman is closely guarding his pitching depth as the trading deadline nears.
“Everybody wants to win every day, and it’s tough to be patient and hold on to some of these guys,” said Newman, a senior vice president in his 19th season with the Yankees. “But this is as much pitching talent as we’ve had since I’ve been here, and in the long term, we know how quickly pitching can change the nature of the landscape.”
The Yankees used their first pick in 2006 on Kennedy, from the University of Southern California, and their second on Chamberlain, from the University of Nebraska. Both right-handers started this season with Class A Tampa and earned a quick promotion.
“I like Kennedy a lot,” said the former Yankee Tim Raines, now a coach for Harrisburg. “He reminds me a lot of Mark Prior. Maybe he doesn’t throw as hard or have the stuff yet, but I think he’s got a chance.”
Prior led the Cubs within five outs of the World Series in 2003, when he was 18-6. The Yankees had drafted him five years earlier, but by the time they relented and offered him a $1.5 million bonus, Prior had decided to go to Vanderbilt, where he was a freshman all-American before transferring to U.S.C.
The case was a lesson for the Yankees: when a pitcher is worth it, show him the money, even if it angers the commissioner’s office. The Yankees are not popular with Bud Selig for “going over slot” — paying more than the standard bonus for a player’s draft position — but they do not seem to care.
The Yankees chose pitchers with 14 of their first 18 picks in 2006. They paid Kennedy $2.25 million, Chamberlain $1.1 million and the high school right-hander Dellin Betances, an eighth-round draft choice from Grand Street Campus in Brooklyn, $1 million.
Like Prior, Betances had a scholarship to Vanderbilt. But his exorbitant bonus, considering where he was drafted, persuaded him to turn it down. He has 22 strikeouts in 18 innings for Class A Staten Island. Of Betances’ potential, Newman said, “He may have as much, or more, than any of them.”
Kennedy, 22, is 11-2 with a 1.71 E.R.A. at two levels, showing impeccable command and holding opponents to a .176 average. He is confident and inquisitive, setting goals each week to improve in a specific area.
“I always ask Scott Aldred, our pitching coach, ‘What’s the difference, what’s the big jump?’ ” Kennedy said. “And he said, ‘If you just basically execute your pitches, they’ll get themselves out, no matter what level they’re at.’ ”
Kennedy has action photos of other Thunder pitchers displayed at his locker in Trenton. The starters try to outdo one another while offering advice.
“Like tonight,” Kennedy said, before last Tuesday’s game, “I’ll just tell Joba to go after them and don’t be afraid to throw his 95, 98 right by them.”
Chamberlain did that, with 5 of his 92 pitches clocked at 98 miles an hour. But Kennedy said he was more impressed by the way Chamberlain pitched, using his breaking ball and changeup to overwhelm the Harrisburg hitters.
“This is only four years into pitching, so I’m learning,” said Chamberlain, a converted infielder and catcher. “It’s great to watch the guys before me.”
Chamberlain, 21, is 7-1 with a 2.26 E.R.A. at two levels, with 99 strikeouts in 67 2/3 innings. He pitched in the Futures Game in San Francisco on Sunday; Phil Hughes pitched in the game last season, when he was with Trenton.
Chamberlain’s father, Harlan, was born on the Winnebago Indian Reservation in Nebraska, and before every game, Chamberlain warms up to the Tim McGraw song “Indian Outlaw.” Harlan Chamberlain was afflicted with polio as a child, and Joba called him his inspiration.
“He worked his tail off for me, and that’s what I’m doing here, so he can relax and enjoy the rest of his time with us,” Chamberlain said.
In that way, Chamberlain is like his idol, Roger Clemens, who revered his late mother, Bess, whom he credited with instilling his work ethic. Chamberlain and Clemens share an agent, and Chamberlain has visited Clemens’s home in Houston. He said he absorbed all he could when Clemens pitched for Tampa in May.
“One thing he said to me was, ‘I try to beat guys physically and mentally before I even throw a pitch,’ ” Chamberlain said. “As you think about that, his name beats people. As I become older and learn how to pitch more, I’m trying to carry that along.”
Chamberlain’s stock fell in the draft because he had battled triceps tendinitis. Horne, a first-round pick out of high school, tumbled to the 11th round in 2005 after having reconstructive elbow surgery two years earlier. He received $400,000, well above the slotted value for such a low draft choice.
The Yankees are generally undeterred by elbow issues — this year’s top draft choice, the right-hander Andrew Brackman, may need elbow surgery — and when other teams pass on high-potential pitchers for medical reasons, the Yankees often gamble on them. They have the money to do so and often are drafting low.
“Where we pick,” Newman said, “there’s usually an issue somewhere.”
There is so much attrition with pitchers that it usually takes a few top prospects just to find one with long-term success. Marquez, a sinker specialist who is 9-5, said it would be “awesome” if the Trenton staff could graduate to New York together, but he acknowledges that is unrealistic.
“Will it happen? Probably not,” he said. “You never know.”
Now is the time to dream, before trades or injuries or the competition catch up. The pitching staff at Trenton could be like a snapshot in a high school yearbook, together for a moment, then scattered forever.
But the future, whatever it is, looks awfully good now. Soon these pitchers will leave Tony Franklin, and he will be proud to let them go.
“People will pay good money to see these guys at the major league level,” Franklin said. “I get to watch it for nothing, and I’m very happy about that.”
This is ungracious as a rhetorical approach, but not unprecedented. There's something in the White House water system. Presidents all wind up being gallant in their own eyes. Thursday I was reminded of President Nixon, who often noted he was resisting those who were always advising him to "take the easy way." Bill Safire used to joke that when he was a Nixon speechwriter, part of his job was to walk by the Oval Office and yell in, "Mr. President, take the easy way!"
