John Wetteland

John Wetteland closed out the New York Yankees' 1996 World Series championship -- the one that started the dynasty -- and then left as a free agent before anyone in pinstripes ever saw him pitch again. Two seasons, one ring, one World Series MVP trophy, and a bullpen he handed off to a guy named Mariano Rivera. That's not a bad way to spend two years in the Bronx.

Path to the Bronx

Wetteland broke in with the Dodgers in 1989, got traded to Cincinnati on November 27, 1991, and got flipped to Montreal two weeks later without ever throwing a pitch for the Reds (a trade footnote that's more interesting than most entire careers). He spent 1992-1994 closing games for the Expos and turned himself into one of the better relievers in the league doing it.

The Expos were cutting payroll during the strike-scarred 1995 season, and on April 5 they sent Wetteland to New York for a minor league outfielder named Fernando Seguignol, a player to be named later, and cash. It read like a salary dump. It played out like a heist.

Yankees Career

The 1996 season is the one people remember, and for good reason. Wetteland led the American League with 43 saves, made the All-Star team, and put together a save streak in 24 straight appearances between May 31 and July 14 -- an MLB record at the time. Mariano Rivera set up in front of him that year, tossing 107.2 innings of 2.09-ERA relief, and the two of them turned the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings into a formality most nights.

Then came October. Wetteland converted all seven of his save chances that postseason -- a full-postseason record at the time, since matched but never topped -- and saved every single one of the Yankees' four wins over the Atlanta Braves in the 1996 World Series. He struck out Mark Lemke to end Game 6 and close out the franchise's first title in 18 years, then walked away with the MVP trophy. "I said to myself that I need to Xerox that same pitch," he said years later about that final strikeout -- which is as good a description of a closer's job as you'll find.

The Handoff

None of that 1996 perfection came easy, and it's worth saying so plainly (the honest version of this story is better than the tidy one). A year earlier, Ken Griffey Jr. walked Wetteland off with a two-run homer on August 24, 1995. Then came the ALDS against Seattle -- Wetteland blew a 4-4 tie in the 12th inning of Game 2 when Griffey took him deep again, and a 25-year-old rookie named Rivera came in behind him to help finish the job. Two games later, Wetteland got tagged for five runs on an Edgar Martinez grand slam. By Game 5, Showalter didn't trust him with the ball at all, and the Yankees lost the series. "I detested failure, and all of 1996, I pitched with the memory of my failure in '95," Wetteland said years later. That's not a small thing for a guy to admit about the season right before he became a World Series MVP.

The Yankees didn't try all that hard to keep him. Rivera had already shown he could get big outs, the front office wasn't going to top a $23 million offer for a 30-year-old closer, and letting Wetteland walk turned out to be one of the more quietly brilliant non-moves in franchise history. Wetteland spent four seasons closing for the Rangers, made two trips to the postseason (1998 and 1999, both ALDS sweeps -- fittingly, at the hands of the Yankees), and never got out of the Division Series. He retired in 2000 with 330 career saves, 295 of them racked up during the 1990s alone -- the most of any pitcher in that decade -- and appeared on one Hall of Fame ballot, drawing four votes.

Wetteland's Yankees career lasted two seasons. That's it. But those two seasons included an AL saves title, a postseason record, and a championship that changed the trajectory of the entire franchise. He handed Rivera the ball on his way out the door, and Rivera never gave it back for seventeen years. Not many two-year rentals leave that kind of footprint.