J.A. Happ

J.A. Happ was the left-handed pitcher the New York Yankees got from the Toronto Blue Jays at the 2018 trade deadline, and for about ten weeks that summer, the move looked like a steal. He went 7-0 with a 2.69 ERA down the stretch, stuck around on a two-year, $34 million deal, and started games in three straight Yankees postseasons. He's also the answer to a trivia question nobody in the Bronx enjoys remembering: who was on the mound when Carlos Correa ended Game 2 of the 2019 ALCS.

Path to the Bronx

Happ was already 35 and a National League journeyman-turned-innings-eater by the time the Yankees came calling. A third-round pick out of Northwestern University in 2004 -- the first three-time All-Big Ten player in school history -- he debuted with the Philadelphia Phillies in June 2007 and worked his way through Houston, Seattle, and Pittsburgh before finding his best form in Toronto. His signature season came there in 2016: 20-4, a 3.18 ERA, and a sixth-place finish in AL Cy Young voting (Rick Porcello won it; Happ got a nice line in the trivia books anyway).

By July 2018, the Blue Jays were fading and the Yankees needed rotation depth for a stretch run. On July 26, general manager Brian Cashman sent infielder Brandon Drury and outfield prospect Billy McKinney to Toronto for Happ, straight up.

Eleven Starts, Zero Losses

Happ made it look ridiculously easy. He debuted for the Yankees on July 29 against Kansas City, going six innings and allowing a single run, and the good starts kept coming. Eleven starts, seven wins, zero losses, a 2.69 ERA -- the best a contender could ask from a fifth starter, and honestly better than most teams get from their aces. He became just the third pitcher in franchise history to go at least 7-0 in a season, joining Tom Zachary's 12-0 run in 1929 and Aaron Small's 10-0 in 2005 (good company, if a genuinely random group of Yankees to be lumped in with).

October didn't go the same way. Happ started Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS at Fenway Park and gave up a three-run homer to J.D. Martinez in the first inning. Manager Aaron Boone pulled him after two innings, and the Yankees rallied late but still lost 5-4 in a series they'd drop in four. Not exactly the sequel the stretch run promised.

Staying Put, and the Correa Swing

Two years and $34 million was the going rate to keep Happ around that December -- $17 million a season, plus a vesting option for 2021 that would define the ugly end of his time in pinstripes. His follow-up 2019 season didn't come close to matching the audition: 12-8, a 4.91 ERA over 161.1 innings, the kind of year that gets fans Googling opt-out clauses.

Then October found him again. In Game 2 of the 2019 ALCS, Happ came on in relief with the game still tied in extra innings. His first pitch to Carlos Correa in the bottom of the 11th was a 94 mph fastball. Correa put it into the opposite-field seats. Walk-off. Series tied at a game apiece. (Astros fans remember that swing fondly. Yankees fans remember it the way you remember stepping on a Lego in the dark.)

2020 wasn't much kinder. Happ went 2-2 with a 3.47 ERA over nine starts in the pandemic-shortened season, then landed in the middle of an awkward subplot: he needed to hit certain innings and starts thresholds for his $17 million option to vest, fell just short of them, and suggested publicly that the Yankees were managing his workload to make sure of it. The club denied any such thing. Either way, the option never vested, New York declined it that October, and Happ signed a one-year deal with the Twins the following January.

The 2018 version of J.A. Happ -- eleven starts, seven wins, not a single loss -- is the one worth remembering. Everything that came after, Yankees fans have mostly let go.