James Paxton

James Paxton pitched for the New York Yankees for exactly two seasons, and the whole thing is really about one start. Down 3-1 in the 2019 ALCS, needing a win just to survive the night, the Yankees handed the ball to a guy who'd spent a month of that season on the injured list -- and he went out and beat Justin Verlander. That's the moment. Everything else -- the trade, the knee, the back, the flexor strain that ended it -- is the context around it.

Acquired for a Prospect Who Turned Out Fine, Too

The Yankees got Paxton from Seattle on November 19, 2018, in a trade that gave up three players to get one: Justus Sheffield, the Mariners' new top pitching prospect, plus Erik Swanson and Dom Thompson-Williams. Paxton had just turned 30 (fine for a two-year rental, less fine if you're hoping for a long-term ace), coming off a full, healthy season for once (11-6, 3.76 ERA, 208 strikeouts in a career-high 28 starts for Seattle in 2018), plus a no-hitter that May against Toronto -- the first Canadian ever to throw one on Canadian soil, which is how "Big Maple" went from tattoo to nickname. He had two years of team control left. This wasn't a pure half-season rental -- it was a two-year swing for a guy whose talent had never been the question. His body was.

Sheffield never quite became the ace Seattle hoped for, which is the kind of thing that happens in these deals more often than either fanbase wants to admit. (Nobody trades away a guy they're sure about.)

The Season That Mattered

Paxton went 15-6 with a 3.82 ERA in 2019, his best Yankees season by a wide margin -- and also his only full one. He missed about four weeks in the middle of the year with left knee inflammation -- out from May 3 to May 29 -- came back, and closed the regular season on a 10-game winning streak. The 2019 Yankees won 103 games that year despite losing Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Aaron Hicks to injury for huge chunks of the season, and Paxton -- when healthy -- was part of why the rotation held together at all.

Then came October. Paxton started ALDS Game 1 against Minnesota (4.2 innings, three runs, eight strikeouts, no decision in a series the Yankees swept) and ALCS Game 2 against Houston, where he lasted just 2.1 innings before the bullpen took over -- the Yankees eventually lost that one in 11 innings on a Carlos Correa walk-off, with the loss charged to reliever J.A. Happ, not Paxton. Two shaky starts. Not the stuff of legend yet.

Game 5

That changed on October 18, in a freakin' must-win. The Yankees were down 3-1 in the ALCS, one loss from the offseason, and Aaron Boone handed the ball to Paxton against Verlander -- who'd go on to win his second career Cy Young that November, off a 21-6, 2.58 ERA season that made him about as tough a draw as any pitcher alive. DJ LeMahieu led off with a homer off Verlander, and Hicks added a three-run shot of his own later in the first inning, and Paxton made it stand up. Six innings, one run, nine strikeouts, 112 pitches. In the sixth, with Boone walking out to the mound to maybe make a change, Paxton just told him: "I'm good. Let's go." Boone left him in.

"I wasn't ready to go home yet," Paxton said after the 4-1 win, "so I wanted to go out and give my team everything I had and just battle away."

It sent the series back to Houston at 3-2. The Yankees lost Game 6 the next night on Jose Altuve's walk-off two-run homer -- a moment that got a lot more complicated a few weeks later once the sign-stealing scandal broke -- but Paxton had done his job. He gave the season one more day. Nobody who watched Game 5 forgets it, even if the series itself didn't end the way anyone in pinstripes wanted.

The Body Caught Up

Paxton was still under team control and arbitration-eligible after 2019, and the Yankees kept him for 2020 by agreeing to a one-year, $12.5 million deal rather than go through the arbitration process. It didn't go the way anyone hoped. He had back surgery -- a microscopic lumbar discectomy -- in February 2020 (the kind of procedure that sounds worse than "back tightness" because it is). The pandemic-delayed season actually gave him time to heal, and he made it back for five starts. They were rough: 1-1, 6.64 ERA, 20.1 innings, before a left flexor strain ended his season in late August. He didn't pitch in that October's ALDS loss to Tampa Bay. He hit free agency that winter and signed back with Seattle for 2021 -- one start, elbow trouble, Tommy John surgery. Boston, the Dodgers, Boston again. He announced his retirement after the 2024 season.

Talent was never the argument with James Paxton. From the University of Kentucky to a Blue Jays draft pick he wouldn't sign to a Mariners no-hitter to two hard years in the Bronx, his stuff was never really in doubt -- his shoulder, elbow, back, and knee just kept voting against him. For one October night, though, none of that mattered. He beat Verlander, kept the season alive, and told his manager he was good when it counted.