Experience Matters, Not Winning

By Patricia Lee

The back-to-back Florida State League champions sure didn’t look like a top team for most of the first half of the season.

“We were just a bad team overall… but now they’ve got it in their minds that they have to be a good teammate,” Tampa Yankees general manager Luis Sojo said.

The Yankees (27-29) currently hold the second-lowest win percentage in the Florida State League North and is eighth in the league overall. However, they are 8-2 in their last 10 games.

“Before, the team was separate, but now, everybody works together, so I see that it’s in this moment that things changed,” said starting pitcher Jairo Heredia, who is 4-1 this season.

“Everybody talks to me a lot, and before not everybody talked to me, so we’ve been more together.”

Heredia isn’t the only one who has noticed this trend, though other players haven’t quite been able to pinpoint the reason for team’s turnaround.

“Sometimes you pitch well, but you wouldn’t hit well, and you play defense horribly when you’re pitching well, but fortunately we’re just now putting things together,” said third baseman Robert Lyerly, who is fifth in the league in batting. “We lost 16-19 or something like that for a stretch, so the record doesn’t tell us as much because we like to think we’re better than that, obviously, but right now, we’re playing well… so fortunately now we’re doing that.”

The entire team’s increase in focus and working better as a team have been instrumental in the Yankees recent successes on the field, especially if the defending champions hope to come away with at least a .500 season. However, winning isn’t everything, said Sojo, who played for the New York Yankees for seven years from 1996-1999, 2000-2001 and 2003.

“When you play in the minor leagues, winning and losing doesn’t matter as much, and it’s about making them better players,” he said. “You just want to go out, play hard for two-and-a-half hours, and no matter the result, you want to be satisfied with your performance.”