Mike Stanton

Every dynasty needs a guy who never gets the ball with the game on the line and still ends up owning a piece of a record book. That's Mike Stanton, a left-handed relief pitcher for the New York Yankees who spent six seasons (plus a rough sequel) turning the sixth and seventh innings into a formality on the way to Mariano Rivera (his job, most nights, was to make sure the ninth inning was the only drama left). Not Giancarlo -- this Stanton threw left-handed, stood 6-foot-1, and arrived in December 1996 as a modest free-agent signing out of Texas by way of Boston. He left six years later with three championship rings and a share of an MLB record nobody saw coming from a specialist reliever.

The Other Half of the Bridge

Stanton signed a three-year, $5.45 million deal with the Yankees that offseason, a contract nobody outside the organization got excited about. He'd bounced from the Braves to the Red Sox to the Rangers, traded at back-to-back July 31st deadlines exactly a year apart (which is its own kind of resume), and 1997 was supposed to be a stabilizing landing spot, not a launching pad. Instead he posted a 2.56 ERA over 66.2 innings in his first year in pinstripes, and by the time Rivera took over as full-time closer that same season, Stanton and Jeff Nelson had already staked out the seventh and eighth innings as their own. Nelson worked from the right side with a slider right-handers couldn't find. Stanton worked lefties from the other side of the mound. Between them, a lead in the sixth inning against the Yankees started to feel like a lost cause.

The Best Year Nobody Remembers

Stanton's best season didn't come during his rookie year in the Bronx, and it didn't come in a championship season either. It came in 2001, when he went 9-4 with a 2.58 ERA across 76 appearances and finally made an All-Star team at 34 years old (which is a strange age for a "finally," but that's what happens when your whole job is getting outs nobody notices). "Whatever Joe decides, I'll do," Stanton said of playing for Joe Torre, "but it's my job to make Joe's job as tough as possible." That's about as tidy a summary of a setup man's whole career as you'll find -- be so good that the manager has an easy decision, even if the decision is never about you.

The ring collection came earlier. Stanton was part of the 1998 sweep of San Diego and the 1999 sweep of Atlanta, but his signature October belongs to the 2000 Subway Series against the Mets. He pitched in four of the five games, threw 4.1 innings without allowing a single earned run, struck out seven, and got credit for two wins -- including two scoreless innings in the twelve-inning Game 1 marathon. That tied the all-time record for most wins by a relief pitcher in a single World Series, a mark that had stood since Duane Ward's 1992 Blue Jays, and it made Stanton the first reliever ever to pull off two wins in a Series that didn't even go six games. Nobody remembers that stat line the way they remember Rivera closing it out, and Stanton probably wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

Gone, Then Back, Then Gone Again

Stanton left after the 2002 season, signing with the crosstown Mets as a free agent (leaving the Bronx for Queens is a strange career move for a guy who'd just won three rings, but the money was the money). The Mets traded him back to the Yankees for Felix Heredia in December 2004, and the reunion tour didn't go well. He posted a 7.07 ERA over 28 games in 2005 before the Yankees released him that June -- a rough coda for a pitcher who'd spent years being automatic in exactly that role. He caught on with the Nationals afterward, posted a respectable 3.58 ERA there, and bounced through a few more stops before finishing his career with the Reds in 2007.

Nelson worked the right side, Stanton worked the left, and together they made sure the ball almost always got to Rivera with the lead still standing. That's not a Hall of Fame case. It's just what winning teams need more of than anyone remembers to credit.