Jeff Nelson

Six-foot-eight relievers aren't supposed to throw from a three-quarters sidearm slot, and right-handed hitters aren't supposed to have zero idea where the ball's coming from until it's already jamming their hands. Jeff Nelson broke both rules for the New York Yankees across six seasons and picked up four championship rings doing it (ask any right-handed hitter from that era how much fun his slider was -- they'll wince before they answer). He wasn't the guy fans lined up to see. He was the guy the other dugout dreaded seeing jog in from the pen.

The Trade That Brought Tino -- and a Slider Nobody Could Pick Up

Nelson came over from Seattle on December 7, 1995, in the trade that's remembered for the other guy -- Tino Martinez headlined the deal, with Sterling Hitchcock and Russ Davis going back to the Mariners. Nelson was the throw-in nobody outside Seattle noticed. That's how most of the great bullpen pieces of the dynasty arrived: quietly, as the other half of somebody else's headline.

Joe Torre took over the dugout that same winter, and by April, Nelson had already found his role -- protecting a lead against Cleveland in his very first appearance as a Yankee, a two-and-a-third-inning save in a 5-1 win.

The Bridge to Mo

Nelson threw a nasty, biting slider from a low arm angle that turned right-handed hitters into guessers (lefties had a much easier time of it, which is exactly why managers stacked lineups against him). In 1996 he set the tone with 73 games out of the pen. A year later he broke the Yankees' single-season relief appearance record with 77 (since topped by Paul Quantrill), going 3-7 with a 2.86 ERA across a freakin' 78.2 innings -- a workload that would get a modern reliever shut down by August.

He and lefty Mike Stanton became the standard-bearers of the setup role starting in 1997, Mariano Rivera's first year as closer, handing Rivera the ball with the game already half-decided. "It makes you think we may have started something," Nelson said years later. "The seventh, eighth and ninth innings are sometimes why teams win the World Series now." He wasn't wrong -- every contender in baseball chases that formula today.

The role came with scar tissue. A back injury shelved him for most of the middle of 1998, and he answered by throwing nine straight scoreless outings in September. Then in the 1998 World Series, with the Yankees four outs from a sweep of San Diego, he struck out Greg Vaughn with two runners on and handed the ball to Rivera. Series over. He was part of every pennant that followed too, from the 1999 sweep of Atlanta to the 2000 Subway Series over the Mets, and he posted the best ERA on the entire Yankees pitching staff in 2000: 2.45.

Not every night was that clean. On May 20, 2000, he walked four Indians in the ninth -- twelve balls in his final fourteen pitches -- and handed Cleveland the winning run on a walk to Roberto Alomar. Even the good ones have those nights.

Gone, Then Back

Nelson walked after 2000, signed with Seattle, and made an All-Star team as a setup man in 2001 (a genuinely rare honor for a guy who was never anyone's full-time closer). He brought it up himself years later: "As a setup man in the Major Leagues, it is tough to make the All Star team." The Yankees reunited with him at the 2003 deadline, sending Armando Benitez to Seattle to get him back for the stretch run. He picked up his lone Yankees save of that second stint in a scoreless 12th inning at Baltimore, still finding outs the same way he always had -- sidearm, sliders, right-handers waving at nothing.

Nelson was never the Yankees' closer and didn't need to be. His job was getting the ball to Rivera with the lead still standing, and for six seasons, in two separate stints, that's exactly what he did.