Yankees Mag: Modern Fit

Nobody does history like the Yankees. Which is convenient, because nobody has a history like the Yankees do. Yankee Stadium is filled with evidence of that legacy, from the displays throughout the Great Hall and the concourses to the plaques, numbers and stone tablets that fill Monument Park.

Or, if it’s easier, you can get a primer just by studying Marcus Stroman’s pregame drip.

The 10-year veteran, a Long Island native in his first season with the Yankees, can be seen around the clubhouse wearing any number of vintage Yankees T-shirts and winter toques celebrating the great teams that made up the organization’s most recent dynasty. Always fashion-focused, the pitcher used to lean toward the latest designer offerings; these days, it’s all about the vintage finds.

“My whole wardrobe consists of vintage tees, vintage jackets, vintage hats,” the 33-year-old says.

Slightly faded and occasionally showing signs of overwear, Stroman’s threads haven’t been plucked out of his childhood bedroom closet. He has friends who source the gear, and he says that he’ll occasionally set aside a day to try on the 3,000 to 4,000 items they might have found at any given time. “I’ll try on every shirt,” he says. “Because people don’t realize, the vintage game, everything fits different. I’m very big on fit. So even if you like a tee and it’s a large, you can’t just grab it and roll.”

Fit has always been a defining characteristic for the success or failure of new Yankees. Whether it’s the New York spotlight, the razor’s-edge nature of baseball performance or the mores of a tradition-laden organization, the right fit is everything in the Bronx.

So, Stroman puts in the work to find the perfect fit, one that looks good, feels comfortable and serves as a proper and authentic expression of himself. There was a time when that might have been cause for concern, scary even, around the Yankees.

“I feel like it just changed this year,” Stroman says. He’s not being totally serious, evidenced by a mischievous smile. Because if Stroman says that self-awareness, self-understanding and self-confidence are the ultimate keys to his success, then it stands to reason that the pitcher also knows the reputation he brought with him to the Bronx. Too outspoken. Too flashy. Too cocky.

“I’m not worried,” he says. “The real ones know.”

Or, in the words of a real one, defending AL Cy Young Award winner Gerrit Cole, “He’s a professional. Just a pro. That’s a compliment.”

To some, the 5-foot-7, fully inked Stroman might not look the part of a Yankees pitcher. But if he plays the part? He’ll fit in just fine, against all odds.

***

In a lot of ways, Cole seems like he was assembled in a laboratory. Standing 6-foot-4, the pitcher cuts a perfectly intimidating figure on the mound, with a staggering intelligence both in the way he pitches and the way he talks about the craft. Yet when the Yankees ace looks a few stalls over, toward the locker of the two-time All-Star who is one of just 11 pitchers to make 25 or more starts in six of the past seven seasons (not counting the 60-game 2020 campaign), he sees someone quite different in physical stature who nonetheless makes it work.

Modern baseball, so focused on measurables, is supposed to be the realm of the super-athletes, the Adonises. It’s not supposed to allow for a pitcher who stands below the average height for American males. Cole, though, recognizes some advantages that a smaller pitcher might have.

“Shorter leverage is a blessing in some regards because it’s easier to stay tighter to the center of your body and control your movement,” he says. “Sometimes it’s harder to create power, but in order for them to be here [in the Majors], they have to exploit the things that their body allows them to do really well.”

Across the room, Clay Holmes is another giant on the mound, a 6-foot-5 righty with a two-seamer that disappears. The closer gets extremely technical discussing the challenges and benefits that can come from different size profiles on the mound. More size equals more levers, more movement. The bigger you are, the more that can go wrong, whether based on timing or muscle wear or any of a host of variables.

“There’s no one best way or right way,” Holmes says. “It’s just there are some advantages and disadvantages that come from both.”

Holmes’ comments, informed though they may be, ignore one crucial point: Whatever advantages or disadvantages that may exist, the distribution clearly shows that the game’s intelligentsia have a preference. Though May 13, 582 pitchers had appeared in big league games in 2024. Of them, 186 were 6-foot-4 or taller; 38 were shorter than 6-foot. Not one was smaller than Stroman.

Holmes isn’t alone. From manager Aaron Boone to players sampled throughout the clubhouse, the message is the same: Part of the beauty of baseball is that it demands the same thing of players of all shapes and sizes. Sure, a football team has lithe burners mixed in with humans shaped like midsize cars. But they play different, hardly interchangeable roles. And while you’ll occasionally see a sub-5-foot-10 NBA player, you’re not going to see him defending in the post.

Stroman and Cole, though, have the exact same job. Holmes and Stroman even share a largely similar pitch arsenal.

In 2010, Glenn P. Greenberg published a study for the Society for American Baseball Research that investigated the correlation between height and pitching success. The conclusion he drew from the data was that among pitchers skilled enough to compete at the big league level, height is essentially irrelevant to success or durability. What was clear, though, was that big league rotations were populated by taller pitchers. They were drafted higher, and they were more likely to become established Major League starters.

The issue was simply opportunity.

For Stroman, the reality is the reality. He can’t make himself taller. He’s a sinkerballer with a velocity that maxes out in the low 90s. He won’t attack high in the strike zone like Cole or Carlos Rodón, daring hitters to keep up with his heat. He’ll work the corners and beyond; note the number of times that Yankees catchers set up way outside and induce strikes on stunningly executed pitches that never touch the zone.

And Stroman isn’t looking to be anything that he’s not. In 2019, the pitcher established the Height Doesn’t Measure Heart Foundation, through which he works to inspire and assist young people from underserved areas to rise above whatever limitations the world places in front of them. A smaller stature, as he sees it, doesn’t have to be a stumbling block. Instead, it can be the very thing that pushes you forward.

“I truly believe that if I was 6-1, it wouldn’t have all panned out like it did,” Stroman says. “I think how my life played out, me being short and having to get the best of my body, my mind, I think it just created this persona and mentality where I always wanted to get better. Who knows if I would have had that if I was taller?”

Aaron Judge, who stands on the Mt. Kilimanjaro end of baseball’s height spectrum, marvels at what he sees from Stroman, a guy he faced plenty of times as the pitcher established himself with the Blue Jays. And he notes that, as a teammate, he has seen a never-ending commitment to the necessary work. Indeed, Judge says, he can’t think of too many times he’s walked into the weight room without finding Stroman in there first.

“It’s impressive, but I think that’s what’s so beautiful about America’s pastime; it doesn’t matter who you are, what you look like, your shape, your height, your weight -- you can play this sport and be good at it,” the 6-foot-7 slugger says. “He might not jump off the pages for certain things, but he’s going to show up and he’s going to compete, and he’s going to get the job done.”

***

Stroman, though, is aware of the other side, the one that Greenberg analyzed. And not just when it comes to getting chances on the mound, where height might not measure heart, but it certainly measures opportunity. Rather, the pitcher knows that even if perception isn’t always reality, he still sometimes has to fight an uphill battle.

He knows that he’s judged, and feel free to choose your target; everyone else does. “If you look at me,” Stroman says, “a lot of people would not say, ‘Oh, he has a Duke degree, he has his own children’s book, he has his own wine label, he has his own clothing line.’ I think a lot of people go into it with a skewed perspective, just based off how they’re viewing me as a person.”

The pitcher recalls a conversation with his father from years back, when he was much younger. “He’s like, ‘You’re never going to be the biggest. But no matter what room you’re going to walk into, you’ve got to have a chip on your shoulder, and you’ve got to know you’re the best.’ So, I walk through life with that mentality.”

Nobody is more confident than Stroman, a point the pitcher drives home with the force of his diving sinker. It’s not a false bravado, never performative. He keenly believes that if he does the work, he’ll be fine. And since he always does the work, he’ll always be fine. “I know I checked every single box, and I exhausted every opportunity before going out there to better my mind, my body, myself in every situation,” Stroman says. “So, I go out to the field clear because I’m like, ‘What more could I possibly have done to be in a better position to compete than right now?’”

Baseball is results-obsessed, but Stroman isn’t. He believes fully in the process, in the work. For fans, it can sometimes be jarring to hear a pitcher explain away a rough outing or a bad outcome. For a pitcher like Stroman, there’s the simple reality that results are unreliable indicators. There are too many variables in baseball, too much luck. The only thing you can do is put in the work and await the results that you have earned.

Confidence and cockiness go hand in hand, and more than a few critics have diagnosed a Napoleon complex in Stroman, a reductive and largely inaccurate assessment. The real Stroman is calm, happy and composed. He’s cerebral in his preparation, committed to his teammates and absolutely insistent on giving 100 percent of his focus to the pursuit of winning. Far from posing as someone bigger or tougher, he’s comfortable being who he is, which is a competitor willing to use any skill or attribute at his disposal to better his output. And if he has learned that confidence can be threatening to opposing fans, he knows that it can also pay dividends in the battle waged between combatants 60 feet, 6 inches apart.

“At the end of the day,” says Yankees slugger Juan Soto, “this is a mind game.”

***

When Stroman jokes about the Yankees’ culture changing this year, part of what he’s referring to is his role in combination with two other key players Brian Cashman brought aboard this past offseason: Soto and Alex Verdugo. Like Stroman, both are excellent, flashy players who have been known to get under their opponents’ skin.

Soto shuffles menacingly in the batter’s box after he spits on a pitch barely out of the zone and is perfectly happy to stand and admire his homers as they fly into the night. Verdugo -- with his penchant for large, gaudy chains around his neck -- made a meal out of his back-and-forths with Yankees fans in the bleachers when he played for the Red Sox. And back when Stroman had much more of a social media presence, he wasn’t at all shy about engaging with fans, to say nothing of the presumed feud with the Yankees that dated back to comments Cashman made in 2019, when the general manager said that he didn’t complete a midseason trade for the right-hander because he didn’t think that Stroman would be a difference-maker.

The Yankees -- like much of the baseball world, but more than most -- have a reputation that goes back generations for encouraging uniformity. There are the obvious, visible illustrations -- the grooming requirements and the nameless jerseys, to name just two -- and others that exist behind the scenes, in the ways that players are taught to dress, answer questions and carry themselves.

Nestor Cortes recalls a coach early in his Minor League days insisting that the players all wear high black socks, black cleats, black laces. He would check for stubble and send offenders back to the clubhouse to shave if he wasn’t satisfied. The message was one of homogeneity. Now, though? “The straight-edge stuff that the Yankees used to groom guys with, I don’t think it’s necessarily been lost, but it has been blended in,” Cortes says. The pitcher -- another All-Star who, like Stroman, doesn’t exactly profile with the athletic build of a superstar -- looks across the room at Verdugo, who shaved his beard and trimmed his hair tight before reporting to Yankees camp this spring. “I think he came in with two chains at the beginning, and we said, ‘Hey, you could wear the biggest chain you want, but it has to be one.’”

“People are honestly pleasantly surprised when they come over here,” says pitcher Clarke Schmidt. “I was talking to Verdugo about it. They think they come over here and we’re very strict and we have these rules and you have to be on your P’s and Q’s at all times. And it’s really not the case at all. We’re very, very laid back. Obviously, you have to shave, but if that’s the worst thing you have to do, then I think you’re all right.”

Highly skilled athletes perform their best when they’re comfortable; it’s why professional athletes are so obsessed with routine. Stroman, who was scheduled to pitch the home opener this year, headed to the Bronx on the off-day that preceded the milestone start. He had grown up going to Yankees games and had pitched in Yankee Stadium plenty of times, but he had never been into the ballpark’s home clubhouse, never stood on the mound there in pinstripes, bathed in cheers rather than derision from the team’s rabid supporters. (And, it’s worth noting, he had never had much success in the Bronx; as an opponent, he pitched to a 6.06 ERA and a 2-6 record in 11 starts.)

Stroman wanted to make sure that he got all the uncertainty out of the way before his start. He wanted to know where to park, where his locker was, how to get from the clubhouse to the field. If this all seems trivial, that’s the point. He had never been comfortable in the Bronx, and he wanted to do everything necessary to change that before he took the mound in the first home game of the new season.

“When I would come in here as a visiting player, my mind was never clear. It was very hard to get to that flow state,” Stroman says. It reminded him of being a student-athlete at Duke, seeing how elite opponents would react to facing the Blue Devils’ basketball team -- and its resident “Crazies” -- at Cameron Indoor Stadium. It was as if Duke was up 10 before the ball was tipped. The same is true of the Yankees’ pinstripes, of the ghosts that inhabit the big ballpark in the Bronx. “There’s an aura; there’s a persona,” he says. “You feel it when you come into Yankee Stadium as an opposing player. I can’t put into words how different I feel walking in here as a home player versus a visiting player. It’s like a completely different energy. Coming here as a Yankee, I couldn’t feel better, more confident, knowing the whole Stadium’s behind me, knowing New York’s got my back.”

That comfort will be crucial to everything Stroman and the Yankees hope to accomplish this year. Stroman is a proud man, but whatever baggage existed between him and Cashman evaporated easily when the GM reached out this offseason. Looking at his free-agent options, Stroman admits that he entered the winter barely considering the Yankees. New Yorker or not, he didn’t feel like the things he knew about the franchise matched his personality.

When Cashman called, though, Stroman was able to piece together the most important part of the outreach: The Yankees are far too smart to bring in a free agent and strip away what makes him successful. For all the focus on analytics and the performance science, today’s big league ballclubs also invest a ton in understanding players’ mental needs, and anyone will tell you that you want a player to be himself.

“The only way to be your best self is to be your authentic self,” Stroman says. “Getting that call, right off the bat it affirmed that they wanted me. They’re not going to reach out to me and say they want me to come play for the New York Yankees and then tell me, ‘Hey, we want the watered-down version of you.’ I don’t think that makes sense.

“Bringing in Soto, bringing in Verdugo, bringing in me, it just kind of shows you [that] they were trying to add a little bit of edge, bringing guys who they thought could perform in New York, guys who they thought were very confident and confident in themselves. But they also know that we mesh and merge with everyone. Just because we might get a persona like, ‘Oh, this guy is cocky out on the field,’ or ‘He has tattoos,’ or ‘He’s got a do-rag on,’ or ‘He’s got chains,’ as far as Verdugo, like, that doesn’t matter, you know? That’s no different than someone putting on a sweater vest and some Dockers. We’re just authentically being ourselves. And it just so happens to be fashion and chains, and we’re confident and we talk loud. We’re flashy at times, but that doesn’t change who we are as human beings and individuals.”

***

The Yankees lost the home opener, but Stroman pitched well: three hits over six innings, no runs, six strikeouts. One of the most memorable parts of the afternoon, though -- perhaps less than the pregame earthquake, but not by much -- was the pitcher heading out to the bullpen before the game, pumping up the crowd while walking along the outfield grass with his shirt untucked. It was Stroman being his authentic self.

“I think it’s really cool to see the guys that come in and feel that confidence to be themselves, that people have their backs,” Holmes says of his new teammate, a guy who might be different in stature, style or appearance, but who will pull on the same rope with the Yankees’ closer as the team chases its goals. “You see people competing like that and showing up to the field like that, I think you get the best version of them, on and off the field.”

The goal will never be to fully change who or what the Yankees are. This is a team that adores its traditions and has the trophies and baubles to back it all up. Like the pitcher, himself, the Yankees don’t approach life with a false confidence. But if there has been a concern over the years that some of that reputation might scare players away, Stroman seems to be proof that it’s not a concern. “He’s so flashy, and he’s so good at what he does because of who he is,” Cortes says. “He’s wearing different cleats every outing. I think if there was somebody that wasn’t going to come to the Yankees because of their style, it would be him, and he came. So, I think we’re doing what we need to do to show that everybody’s accepted.”

Cortes sees the benefits of individuality, but he’s not above reverting to institutional norms. His goals are right there on Stroman’s vintage T-shirts, those championship teams and pennant winners from the 1990s and early 2000s. If signing Stroman represents, in part, the willingness of a team to move beyond some of the restrictions of history, the pitcher will also never shy away from fitting in to all that legacy is built upon.

“Stro has brought up old-school skullies, old-school shirts, and they’re awesome,” Cortes says. “And maybe he could speak those shirts and skullies into existence because they all have World Series winners everywhere. Maybe we can follow that.”

Jon Schwartz is the deputy editor of Yankees Magazine. This story appears in the June 2024 edition. Get more articles like this delivered to your doorstep by purchasing a subscription to Yankees Magazine at www.yankees.com/publications.