It seems all great, young teams need that one guy who\u2019s been through it before. We just saw the Toronto Blue Jays on a World Series chase with Max Scherzer holding court in the dugout every night, and for the 2017 Baby Bomber Yankee team, that man was Matt Holliday\u2026 or at least he was before one fateful series in Oakland.<\/p>\n
Matt Holliday\u2019s 2017 was a critical one for this writer, as a nascent Joshua Diemert was wrapping up college and covering the Yankees for the very first time, particularly highlighting how strong<\/a> Holliday\u2019s early turn as DH was. Joining a team full of youngsters without much expectation, Holliday helped set the tone for one of the most fun Yankee teams I\u2019ve ever seen, in the penultimate season of his Hall of Very, Very Good career.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Matthew Thomas Holliday<\/strong> Holliday was well-established as one of the most talented hitters in baseball, winning four Silver Sluggers and a batting title across 13 seasons with the Colorado Rockies, Oakland Athletics and St. Louis Cardinals. He finished second in NL MVP voting en route to the controversial slide-aided<\/a> Rocktober National League pennant in 2007, and after a couple trades put him on the Cardinals midway through the 2009 season, the Redbirds inked him to the richest contract in team history at the time, a seven-year, $210 million deal that was worth more than the extension the club originally gave Albert freakin\u2019 Pujols. It certainly worked out well, as Holliday was a four-time All-Star and posted a 154 wRC+ for the Cards in their championship 2011 campaign.<\/p>\n By the time that contract was up, the Yankees were a very young squad with a high ceiling and a whole lot of downside risk. Rookie Aaron Judge would hit eighth (!) on Opening Day, a crazy thing to think about when he was setting out on an MVP-caliber campaign. Gary S\u00e1nchez wasn\u2019t going to repeat his Babe Ruth performance from 2016<\/a>, but it was an open question at the time if he\u2019d regress to a 130 wRC+ bat or a 105. Jacoby Ellsbury \u2014 yes, him \u2014 was coming off a healthy season for the club but one that he hit well below league average.<\/p>\n Holliday was a pretty classic solution to this kind of downside risk, a high-floor hitter that could secure against some of the growing pains that young hitters will go through. And the gamble worked! Across the first 70 games of Holliday\u2019s time in pinstripes, he was the fourth-best hitter on the club, a more than respectable 133 wRC+ that helped give the Yankees one of the deepest lineups in the sport. He clubbed 15 home runs across that span, but none bigger than the walkoff home run in the game that set the pace for how the whole damn year would go:<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n
Born:\u00a0January 15, 1980 (Stillwater, OK)
Yankees Tenure: 2017<\/p>\n