Major League Baseball

2022 MLB Playoffs: Harrison Bader proving the Yankees made the right trade

Updated Oct. 23, 2022 3:17 p.m. ET

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By Jordan Shusterman
FOX Sports MLB Writer

I’ll be honest: I was pretty skeptical, too.

Literal minutes before the MLB trade deadline on Aug. 2, the Yankees pulled off one of the more stunning deals of the day by acquiring center fielder Harrison Bader from the Cardinals for longtime left-handed starter Jordan Montgomery. Hordes of Yankees fans in the team’s replies expressed confusion about why the team would deal one of its most reliable starting pitchers for an outfielder in a walking boot.

I was similarly baffled, wondering why New York would eschew the familiar refrain that you can never have enough pitching in favor of a player with an inconsistent offensive track record at a position that didn’t appear to be an obvious hole. That Aaron Judge fellow was doing just fine out there.

Fast-forward a couple of months to Bader’s breakout postseason performance, and doubters like us are being humbly reminded why you don’t judge a trade the day it’s made. You should probably give it some time.

Surely, Yankees GM Brian Cashman was aware of Bader’s local roots – Bader grew up a Yankees fan and played high school ball at the Horace Mann School in nearby Riverdale – but his job isn’t to acquire players with cool background stories. His job is to build a team to win a championship, and he wouldn’t have traded a quality, homegrown starter in Montgomery if he didn’t believe Bader could make a significant impact once he came off the injured list.

While Cashman at the time lauded Bader’s elite center-field defense as his primary calling card, the appeal of a player of his profile runs much deeper than his Gold Glove pedigree.

One of the most consistent criticisms of Yankees rosters in recent years — despite their consistently gaudy regular-season win totals — has been the severe lack of speed and overall athleticism around the diamond. The roster stands out for its sheer size and strength, headlined by Judge and Giancarlo Stanton but also in the infield with guys such as DJ LeMahieu, Anthony Rizzo and Josh Donaldson. Gleyber Torres isn’t especially big, but speed has never been his game, either. That’s not to say these guys aren’t good defenders, but their style of play doesn’t exactly jump off the screen. It’s all very one note.

Bader represented a fresh, new ingredient, bringing a crucial change of pace and aesthetic grace into the fold — at least, in theory. He couldn’t make any kind of difference so long as he was in a walking boot.

As Montgomery thrived in his first month in St. Louis and Bader remained on the IL with the Yankees struggling mightily, the optics were rough in August. Beyond the obvious pressure on Cashman to have made the right deal, it was a lot to put on Bader to prove himself right after returning from an injury and just as games started to matter most.

"It’s definitely been a challenge," Bader told reporters in mid-August. "I’m sure everybody in here was like, ‘We just traded for this guy in a boot? Are we serious?’ But there’s always a bigger perspective involved. I’m just focused on getting healthy so I can be effective for this team."

It’s easy to forget now, but Bader didn’t exactly hit the ground running once he finally made his Yankees debut in September. He recorded two hits in his first game (a 9-8 walk-off thriller against the Pirates) but posted a .484 OPS over the final 13 regular-season games. Still, he looked healthy and was playing the quality defense for which he was brought in.

Entering the postseason, there was awfully little to suggest that Bader was about to go on one of the great October heaters in recent memory. Even with injuries to key position players including LeMahieu and Andrew Benintendi, it didn’t seem like Bader would be relied on as a key offensive contributor. 

And yet, with Judge scuffling early in the ALDS and much of the bottom half of the lineup failing to produce much of anything, Bader emerged in almost miraculous fashion to inject new life into the Yankees offense.

In 72 games with the Cardinals before going on the IL and 14 games with the Yankees in the regular season, Bader hit five home runs. One of those was an inside-the-park homer, and another was off a position player.

But in eight postseason games, Bader has already launched four full-blown, over-the-fence dingers off some of the best pitching in the world. Those homers include three of the six hardest-hit long balls of his career.

After the rest of the lineup scuffled in Game 1 of the ALCS, manager Aaron Boone moved Bader to the leadoff spot for Game 2, a place he’d occupied 11 times in his career and only once in 2022, back in May with St. Louis.

"We talk about it all the time in the playoffs," Boone said before Game 2. "The next play, the next pitch is the most important. And he's done a good job of compartmentalizing and not letting something that just happened — good, bad or indifferent — affect the next thing. He's had a really good focus on that point."

Although the Yankees bats remained largely stymied by the excellent Astros pitching in Game 2 and Game 3, Bader continued to do his part. On Thursday in Game 2, he reached base twice via a hard single to right in the fifth and a walk in the eighth; it was only the sixth game of his career in which he put multiple balls in play with an exit velocity of 105 mph or greater. 

In the Game 3 shutout Saturday, Bader drew a walk and recorded one of the Yankees' three hits.

What's more, with his legs and his glove, Bader has demonstrated the kind of heady, aggressive, athletic play that Cashman surely envisioned upon acquiring him. All the homers? Those are an unexpected bonus — and a delightful reminder of the magic of postseason baseball.

Now down 3-0 to the Astros, Bader and the Yankees are running out of time to claw their way back into the ALCS. But in just a couple of weeks, Bader has triumphantly flipped the narrative surrounding his acquisition. It was a big gamble by Cashman that Bader could live up to expectations, but finally, Cashman's — and fans' — patience has been rewarded.

And no matter how this ALCS turns out, Harrison Bader’s story as a Yankee might just be getting started.

Jordan Shusterman is half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball writer for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter @j_shusterman_.

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Jordan Shusterman