There was a time in the late 90s when I would only see David Cone start for the Yankees. No matter the season, there was a long stretch of consecutive games when my dad, my brother, my uncle and I would make our trips to Yankee Stadium and Cone would be that game’s starting pitcher. But in the late 90s, there was no one better you would want to see start a game for the Yankees.

The streak got so ridiculous when, as a 12-year-old, in May of 1999, I was invited by a friend to make the trek to Fenway Park with his family for a Yankees-Red Sox game. Pedro Martinez would be starting for the Red Sox that night in the middle of his ridiculous 23-4, 2.07 ERA Cy Young-winning season. Starting for the Yankees? Cone, of course. That game happened to be the night Joe Torre returned from his battle with cancer and the Boston crowd welcomed back Torre as if he we were one of their own. It was the exact opposite reaction I witnessed from the first-base line seven years later when Johnny Damon returned to Fenway Park.

I couldn’t have asked for a better childhood as a Yankees fan. Sure, when I attended my first game as a four-year-old August 11, 1991 (the first game of a doubleheader against Detroit), the Yankees were in the middle of a 91-loss season and a postseason drought. But by the time I was able to fully understand what was going on on the field, the Yankees had created a dynasty. Cone was part of that dynasty and for many of those years, I only saw him pitch in person. Like I said, I couldn’t have asked for a better childhood as a Yankees fan.

I was highly anticipating the publication of Cone’s book Full Count: The Education of a Pitcher and Grand Central Publishing was kind enough to send me a copy to review.

From a Yankees fan’s interest, the book details his trade to the Yankees in 1996 and decision to re-sign with the team prior to 1997; his relationships with George Steinbrenner, Joe Torre and Mel Stottlemyre; his impression of Derek Jeter as a rookie and a Yankee; the difference between pitching to Joe Girardi and Jorge Posada; his confrontation with David Wells which led to one punch being thrown and the friendship between the two that led to them staying in their own hotel on road trips for extracurricular reasons; how his mother’s dog biting him created the emergence of El Duque; an intricate look at his July 18, 1999 perfect game; his struggles in 2000 which forced him to the bullpen for the postseason, and how he handled pitching to players like Barry Bonds, Cal Ripken Jr., Manny Ramirez and Tony Gwynn.

To me, the most surprising news in the book (aside from the time a stomach ache led to an accident on the mound in the middle of a minor-league start) was that Bobby Valentine asked Cone if he would be the Red Sox pitching coach for the 2012 season. Selfishly, I’m happy Cone didn’t leave the broadcast booth to take Valentine up on his offer because his absence would have created an irreplaceable void during Yankees games (and also the whole helping the Red Sox thing). But I’m sure Cone doesn’t regret leaving broadcasting to be part of a 93-loss disaster.

That one story did make me think about Cone as a coach in the majors. Now having listened to him as an analyst all these seasons on YES and seeing how he has embraced the analytics and data revolution in baseball, while also maintaining the game is played by humans, I have often wondered how he would be as a pitching coach. On a larger scale, if the Yankees were going to hire a manager with zero experience coaching or managing at any level, I wish they had gone with Cone rather than giving Yankees fans Aaron Boone. The difference in the TV analysis from Boone on ESPN to Cone on YES is the equivalent to having Mike Tauchman or Shane Robinson in right field instead of having Aaron Judge there, and I think Boone’s time on TV is evident in his in-game management, and I feel it would be the same for Cone. Cone wouldn’t have sent Luis Severino back out to the mound for the fourth inning in Game 3 of the ALDS and wouldn’t have followed that up by bringing Lance Lynn in with the bases loaded and no outs. And he certainly wouldn’t have let CC Sabathia go through the Red Sox’ lineup for a second time with the season on the line and then defended his decision by saying he wanted Sabathia to face the 9-hitter which is why he let him face the rest of the team. Unfortunately, we’ll likely never know how Cone would be as Yankees manager because he’s probably too outspoken and too much of his own person to serve as a dugout puppet. That just means we get to keep listening to Cone in the broadcast booth, and that’s certainly not a bad thing.

I feel bad for baseball fans who watch their team on a nightly basis and don’t have Cone to comment on the games. After reading about his identity crisis to find life after pitching and finally realizing broadcasting could fill that void, a man who was once arguably the best in the world at pitching at times, is now inarguably the best in the world at being an analyst.

If you were a David Cone fan when he pitched or are a David Cone fan now that he’s a broadcaster or are a Yankees fan or a fan of the intricacies of pitching or simply a baseball fan then you need to read Full Count: The Education of a Pitcher.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

Tommy Kahnle made the Yankees’ Opening Day roster because he was out of options. That’s it. Not because he was worthy of a spot on the 25-man roster, but because he had one chance left with the Yankees to figure it out and they were going to give him that chance rather than designate him for assignment and possibly watch him figure it out with another organization.

In Kahnle’s first appearance of the season, he walked three in an inning of work, while also striking out two, showing the two extremes of his abilities and a continued lack of consistency. After a pair of scoreless appearances, on April 10 in Houston, he got knocked around by the same Astros team which sent his career into a downward spiral. Two earned runs on four hits, including a home run, in an eventual 8-6 loss and Kahnle’s early-season line looked like the 2017 version of Kahnle was gone and never coming back: 4 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 4 BB, 5 K, 1 HR, 4.50 ERA, 2.000 WHIP.

Where was the guy who struck out 96 in 62 2/3 innings in 2017? Where was the guy who became Joe Girardi’s go-to high-leverage guy during the 2017 postseason with Dellin Betances struggling, jumping both Chad Green and David Robertson in the pecking order? Where was the guy who pitched 11 scoreless innings and allowed only four baserunners in the 2017 playoffs before his ALCS Game 7 meltdown?

The last time we had seen the dominant Kahnle was in Game 5 of the 2017 ALCS, three nights before he would allow three insurance runs to the Astros in 1 1/3 innings as the Yankees’ season ended. It was that Game 7 appearance against the Astros which seemingly ruined Kahnle.

After allowing an opposite field home run to Jose Altuve, he allowed back-to-back singles to Carlos Correa and Yuli Gurriel. He was tired and ineffective, but Girardi kept him in the game and still didn’t have anyone warming up in the bullpen. One would think in Game 7, someone should always be warming as the next man up, never wanting the game to get too far out of reach. But not Girardi. Evan Gattis struck out and Girardi decided to double down on his decision to stick with Kahnle in what was yet another critical second-guess situation.

The Yankees were paying Brian McCann to play against them in the ALCS, so when he lined a two-run double down the right-field line to score Correa and Gurriel and give the Astros a 4-0 lead, the Yankees were paying for their own demise. Kahnle, who has the ability to throw 97, had inexplicably thrown 25 changeups in 27 pitches and gave up three runs, and Girardi either didn’t notice or failed to think it was a telling sign that the overworked Kahnle couldn’t trust his fastball. After the double, Girardi finally took Kahnle out.

Following that game, Kahnle pitched himself off the 2018 Yankees in mid-April with a 6.14 ERA. He came back at the end of May and put four men on in 2/3 of an inning, allowing two earned runs and two days later he was gone again. He rejoined the Yankees for one appearance in the disastrous four-game sweep in Boston, but became a mainstay in the bullpen from August 16 through the end of the regular season, despite pitching to a 6.75 ERA and 1.650 WHIP in 15 appearances over the last two months of the season. He was unsurprisingly left off the postseason roster.

Kahnle finished the 2018 season with 24 appearances for the Yankees, a 6.56 ERA, 1.629 WHIP, and .811 OPS against him with eight of his 12 inherited runners scored. His velocity had diminished and his fastball-changeup combination was no longer unhittable without the necessary velocity separation. Shoulder tendinitis and an abundance of Red Bull was the diagnosis, though I couldn’t help but think he had been ruined in the 2017 postseason, pitching in seven of the team’s 13 games, with five of those seven appearances for multiple innings. Kahnle had faced 39 batters and thrown 147 pitches in the highest of leverage situations over 18 days, and his decision to not throw his fastball in Game 7 of the ALCS was a clear sign something was wrong and that sign lingered through all of 2018.

I wasn’t happy, to put it kindly, when Aaron Boone started this season by using Kahnle as if it were still 2017, completely disregarding the way he had pitched since Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS. I understood the idea of seeing what he has to know if he will last as a Yankee, but with nearly the entire team injured and the threat of two other teams in the division this season, letting Kahnle sink or swim in non mop-up situations and in winnable games didn’t seem like the best idea. But this is Boone we’re talking about, and the best ideas are rarely utilized.

Kahnle was shaky to begin the season and even in April, he was testing my health. For nearly a month now, he has rewarded Boone’s faith in him, looking more like his 2017 self, with 11 straight scoreless appearances and nine straight no-hit innings. With Green experiencing a similar fall from success and being sent to Triple-A, Zack Britton walking the park and Betances hurt, Kahnle has worked his way back up the bullpen picking order, sitting aside Adam Ottavino as the only two non-closer trustworthy options this season.

It’s good to have Tommy Kahnle — the 2017 version — back. I missed him and the Yankees’ bullpen missed him.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!