There is a seduction to be coming a Yankee, and Mark Teixeira was enchanted before the organization had even made him an official contract offer.
Teixeira had many suitors as a free agent after the 2008 season, but kept waiting in the hope the Yankees would reconsider their payroll restrictions. Hal Steinbrenner finally broke — on the relentless urging of general manager Brian Cashman — and the only team that could find $180 million in the seat cushions did.
And the Yankees met Teixeira’s fondest dreams with the kind of seriousness of purpose that befit the son of a military man. His first year was joyous, a World Series championship and a personal second in the AL MVP voting. The history, the full stands, the playing side-by-side with elite players all met every expectation.
But there is one seduction about being a Yankee that might be too strong for Teixeira: That short porch in right field at Yankee Stadium. It has been a siren call for left-handed hitters going back to Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in the original Stadium, and it helped Teixeira pile up 39 home runs last year. However, what can turn flyballs into homers also can turn a good swing into a pull-happy mess.
“No doubt,” Teixeira said. “There are times you look at that right-field fence and you get into bad habits.”
Teixeira has been at war against those bad habits all season, fighting the urges that have led him to opening up his hips too quickly, upper-cutting his swing too much, and not letting pitches travel enough before committing. In the past few days, he said he felt a better process return to his swing and he saw a fruitful result yesterday with a blow Phil Hughes said “changed this game’s momentum.”
Jose Reyes had just hit his second homer in three innings, a two-run shot in the third off of Hughes that put the Mets up 3-1 less than 24 hours after they already had won the latest Subway Series opener. The Mets, on an eight-game winning streak, again had that magic feeling.
But Teixeira quickly derailed that mindset. With one on and one out in the bottom of the inning, Teixeira crushed a 2-1 Mike Pelfrey changeup for his 11th homer, which tied the score en route to a 5-3 Yankees triumph.
It was the kind of significant blow that has been missing in action too much this season, which has opened a debate over whether Teixeira should retain his third slot in the lineup, a debate that thrives more because of the inconsistencies and injuries of what was expected to be a wrecking-ball batting order. Yesterday, that lineup had Ramiro Pena and Kevin Russo at shortstop and third rather than Derek Jeter (out with a heel injury) and Alex Rodriguez (designated hitter), which meant the left side of the infield went from millionaires to slum dogs.
Such problems merely magnify the need for Teixeira to shake from his .224 average and sub-.400 slugging percentage. And much of his 2010 difficulty has been about what Teixeira calls “the risk/reward” of playing in this Stadium.
It is not just that right field is short, but center field and the power alleys are deep and the ball does not carry there. Teixeira crushed a shot to dead center in his first at-bat Friday that is a homer in many places, but died for the kind of out in The Bronx that only makes right field all the more appealing to Teixeira.
“I have never played in a home before where the discrepancy was so great between center and right,” Teixeira said. “So it is a constant battle every game [to not get pull crazy]. I do have 30, 40, 50 at-bats here a year where I go back to the dugout and think, ‘I am trying to pull too much.’ ”
When Teixeira’s swing is precise, hitting coach Kevin Long said, he is driving the ball to the area between the second baseman and the second base bag. Which made the homer yesterday just to the right of the Yankees bullpen in right-center so encouraging. He did not open up quickly on a soft pitch. Instead, he let Pelfrey’s pitch travel and still maximized the damage.
“That right field is very inviting,” Long agreed.
Teixeira will keep trying to fight the seduction, attempting to find that “right” balance between risk and reward.