As the 1987 season began, Ron Guidry was without a team. After going 9-12 in ’86, the left-hander became embroiled in a contract dispute with the Yankees, and when Opening Day came around, the 36-year-old free agent still hadn’t signed anywhere.
When New York’s starting pitching staff struggled out of the gate, Yankees general manager Woody Woodward went searching for help, and Gator, a 22-game winner in 1985, was far and away the best available option. On May 1, when Guidry became eligible to re-sign with the Yanks, Woodward quickly inked him to a two-year deal.
Getting back to the big league rotation wouldn’t be as instantaneous. Guidry, who had been working out at a high school near his home in Louisiana’s Lafayette Parish, first traveled to Florida, where he made a pair of starts for the Yankees’ Class A team in Fort Lauderdale. He pitched two innings on May 9 and four innings on May 13 with an 18-year-old Bernie Williams playing center field behind him. The 1978 AL Cy Young Award winner then made his way to Ohio, where he threw 60 pitches for Triple-A Columbus, picking up his first Minor League victory since 1976. By the time he made his first big league appearance of the ’87 season -- in relief of Dennis Rasmussen at Anaheim Stadium on May 24 -- Guidry had logged thousands of miles across the country.
Nearly four decades later, as Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón embarked on their own journeys back to the Yankees’ rotation, the logistics had changed substantially in the pitchers’ favor. March 2025 Tommy John surgery for Cole and October 2025 surgery to remove loose bodies from Rodón’s elbow meant a delayed start to their 2026 campaigns, but with the Yankees’ top three Minor League affiliates all within a 2 1/2-hour radius of Yankee Stadium, the veteran hurlers could drive themselves to Hudson Valley or Somerset or Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, get their work in, face real competition, and be sleeping in their own beds that same night.
The benefits to the big leaguers are obvious. Rest and recovery are much easier when minimal travel is required. But as Cole and Rodón made several rehab starts this spring with the Yankees’ affiliates, it was evident that those benefits were a two-way street: The Minor Leaguers who got to watch the big leaguers work and compete alongside them gained just as much, if not more, from the experience.
“What an opportunity for our catchers to see, Man, I can handle this arm? I can handle anything,” said Hudson Valley manager Aaron Bossi, whose High-A Renegades welcomed Cole and Rodón to Heritage Financial Park on back-to-back nights in late April. “It’s so much encouragement throughout the entire clubhouse, and it really boosts their want to get to the big leagues. It gives them the feeling of, Hey, I can do this, and it has only fueled more confidence.”
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Right-hander Jack Cebert is an affable 24-year-old from central Florida, now in his first full season of professional baseball. He pitched five games in relief for Hudson Valley in 2025 after the Yankees selected him in the 15th round out of Texas Tech, but he began this season in the Renegades’ starting rotation. His first two starts were excellent: at least seven innings in each while allowing a total of two earned runs. Cebert invited his girlfriend to come up and watch his third start, which was scheduled for April 23 against the Brooklyn Cyclones. But as the date approached, he had to inform her that a different right-hander would be taking the mound, at least for the first few innings: six-time Major League All-Star Gerrit Cole.
Much about the day felt different. While somewhat sparse crowds saw the Renegades hit walk-off homers each of the previous two nights, an April-record 4,712 fans packed Heritage Financial Park for Cole’s Renegades debut. “It was loud, almost like a college atmosphere; some people were chugging beer over here,” Cebert said. “It was just good vibes.”
Catcher Josue Gonzalez, a 22-year-old from Venezuela, held pregame starters meetings with both right-handers, who warmed up alongside each other in the Renegades' bullpen out in left field. “Earphones in, I’m doing my prep, he’s doing his prep,” Cebert said. “It was just such a cool moment, something I’ll talk about for the rest of my life honestly.”
Normally, when the game begins, there might be a couple pitchers or non-starters back in the clubhouse or the weight room still getting their work in. Not when there’s a Cy Young winner on the mound. The dugout railing was lined with Renegades closely watching Cole’s every move.
“When anybody who has that type of experience and the level that their mind plays at, you can learn from them based on how they talk and how they carry themselves and their body language and all of that,” said infielder Kaeden Kent, the Yankees’ third-round pick in 2025. “It was really cool to be in the dugout with Gerrit and learn from him, hear how he talks to the coaches, and see how he went about his routine and how he went about the game.”
With a packed house and a superstar on the mound, the ’Gades were amped to play ball. Maybe a bit too amped. Core Jackson made two errors at short -- Cole “probably wasn’t too impressed with that,” the Sarnia, Ontario, native said -- but also contributed a double to the offense’s 12-hit onslaught in a 10-2 win. Kent, batting leadoff and serving as the designated hitter, collected three hits and drove in five.
“It was satisfying to put up a few runs for him,” said Kent, whose father, Jeff, will be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame next month. “Because whether it’s Gerrit Cole or Jack Cebert or any of our other guys, when they’re going out there and giving their all, it’s always our job at the plate to give them support. And luckily -- not luckily; we put in a lot of work -- we were able to do that.”
Cole, meanwhile, threw 42 of his 52 pitches for strikes in his second rehab outing, allowing two runs on five hits and no walks. “As far as competitiveness goes, shoot, he pitched around some errors we made, he held runners, so he was in his big league mode,” Bossi said. “There was no, Oh, I’m just in High-A. It was Gerrit Cole. If he’s going out there to pitch, he’s going to compete his [rear] off, which was unbelievable to see.
“It’s so cool how it’s going to make us better just from the experience of watching what elite-level pitching and competing looks like.”
Cole was lifted from the game with one out in the fifth and watched from the dugout as Ben Grable struck out the next two batters. As Cebert trotted in from the bullpen to make his “start” in the top of the sixth, the crowd rose to its feet. Wow, I must have a fan section here, he thought for a moment. Then he noticed Cole making his way down the left-field line toward the clubhouse for treatment after his outing. OK, that makes way more sense. Energized by the electricity in the ballpark, Cebert spun four hitless innings in relief of Cole, lowering his ERA to 0.98 and improving to 2-1.
It might end up being Cebert’s final win at High-A. Four days later, he and Grable were promoted to Somerset.
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The layoff for Rodón wasn’t nearly as long as that of Cole, who missed the entire 2025 season. The veteran left-hander earned an All-Star selection while making all 33 starts last year, plus two more in the playoffs. But after missing Spring Training while recovering from the October elbow procedure and then seeing how well the Yankees’ starters were pitching to begin this year, the 33-year-old was “champing at the bit” to get back on a mound and do what he does best: get outs.
His first opportunity to do so this season came on April 24 at Hudson Valley, where he also made a rehab start in 2023. So much had changed since then, not just for Rodón but for the organization as a whole. The 2021 restructuring of the Minor Leagues affected changes across the sport that would take years to fully take root, as teams began to pour considerable resources into both new and existing affiliates. Rodón recalled warming up in a somewhat spartan bullpen down the right-field line as the Renegades’ ballpark was still undergoing major renovations during his previous trip to Wappingers Falls, N.Y. In 2026, he was impressed by what he saw inside Heritage Financial Park as well as around it.
“These facilities are great, and it’s a pretty place,” the avid outdoorsman said. “It’s a nice place to pitch. It’s hard to leave, I guess, for some of these kids, with everything they’ve got, but the goal is not to be here. The goal is to be at Yankee Stadium.”
Like Cole, Rodón lives in Greenwich, Conn., about an hour from Hudson Valley, so as he worked through the Cyclones’ lineup, focusing on commanding his fastball and refining his changeup, chants of “Let’s go, Daddy!” could be heard from outside one of the suites as his three children cheered him on. Rodón might have looked a little different wearing a Renegades No. 28 jersey rather than his usual pinstriped No. 55, but from hearing Alice in Chains’ “Rooster” as he threw his warmup pitches to seeing him rack up four punchouts in 4 1/3 innings -- and shaking each one of his infielders’ hands before leaving the game in the fifth after 65 pitches -- his family could finally revel in some familiarity.
“I always have their support, which is awesome,” said the three-time All-Star, now in his 12th big league season. “The boys really like baseball. Obviously, we’re a baseball family, and it had been a little while since they’ve been to a game. So, I’m glad they got to watch dad pitch today and remember dad is a baseball player.”
The proximity to home meant the Rodón kids’ bedtime wasn’t terribly impacted, but it’s not only the players whose lives are made easier now that the Yankees’ top affiliates aren’t spread out around the country. For the front office, the new structure makes for an efficiency that would not have been possible back in, say, 1957, when the Yankees had a Triple-A team in Richmond, Va., another one in Denver, a Double-A team in New Orleans, and seven lower-level teams spread throughout the country in places such as Modesto, Calif., and Kearney, Neb.
“It is nice to have some of our guys rehab, sleep in their own bed and come out here and play,” Yankees vice president of baseball operations Tim Naehring said while spending a few days observing players at Somerset. “That’s outstanding.”
The longtime executive pointed out that the 2021 restructuring did come at a cost. Most of the contraction occurred at the Short Season level, where young players just drafted out of high school or July 2 signees out of Latin America could begin to get reps. With the Draft pushed from June to July and fewer clubs to latch on with, there just isn’t as much runway for new players to take flight.
The flipside is that Major League owners’ resources aren’t spread as thin, so they can invest more heavily in the technology and amenities that help all players reach their potential. Whether it’s a Minor Leaguer chasing his dream or a veteran working his way back toward the bigs, Yankees players can utilize cutting-edge equipment such as high-speed cameras and Trajekt machines at every stop along the way.
“We’ve got everything we need and more,” said Patriots corner infielder Tyler Hardman, who was leading the Eastern League with 29 RBIs after a blistering 10-game stretch in which he batted .513 with six homers, becoming Somerset’s all-time hits leader in the process. “You always feel prepared, if not over-prepared, for every game. And the Yankees provide so much information and analytics that you feel very confident stepping on the field that you know what’s going to happen.”
Cole, like Naehring, is not blind to the downsides of the restructuring, particularly as it pertains to the disappointed fans in towns and cities that lost their affiliation or even their club altogether. But he has also seen firsthand how the Yankees’ investment at the Minor League level is paying dividends all the way up the ladder.
“The technology across the board, even in Tampa, is on par if not slightly better than some of our access on the road in the Major Leagues,” Cole said. “We can get every angle; our metrics are accurate after we scrub them. We have all these different cameras. The facilities, in order to warm up and do your rehabilitation work before and after, allow for us to flow seamlessly from A-ball all the way to Triple-A.
“I think we’ve seen a bit of a surge in our player development. And whether we’re trading away these prospects or these prospects are making it to the big leagues, like J.C. [Escarra] and Ben [Rice], they’re obviously reaping the benefits of being able to take advantage of the investment that the club has made in all these different places, which is world class.”
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Eric Reyzelman and Chase Hampton were the Yankees’ fifth- and sixth-round picks in the 2022 MLB Draft out of LSU and Texas Tech, respectively. The young right-handers were rehabbing in Tampa early in the 2024 season when, to their surprise, Cole appeared at the facility, sat down beside them in the training room and struck up a conversation. Just a few months removed from winning his first career Cy Young Award, the Yanks’ ace was working his way back from the elbow inflammation that landed him on the 60-day injured list to start that year. He didn’t really know the prospects at that point, but he spent about an hour with them, learning about their situations and offering invaluable insight. Among other things, Cole stressed the importance of pitch sequencing and throwing offspeed pitches for strikes.
Reyzelman took Cole’s lessons to heart, focusing on developing his sweeper and changeup while pitching to a 1.16 ERA that season in 31 appearances across three levels. After spending all of 2025 at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, the Bay Area native started this year at Double-A Somerset, and he got a unique chance to show Cole just how far the sweeper had come.
For Cole’s third rehab assignment this season -- a midweek, midday start against the Portland Sea Dogs on April 29 -- he was on a strict 60-pitch limit. With two outs in the sixth inning and an 0-2 count on No. 3 hitter Ronald Rosario, Cole, seeing on the scoreboard that he was at 59 pitches, knew he had one bullet left. Rosario looked at a dead red fastball over the plate, but as Cole strode toward the Patriots' dugout thinking he had completed six full frames, the home-plate umpire didn’t flinch.
Having met his pitch quota and with no ABS system to challenge the call, Cole could only laugh as he handed the ball off to manager James Cooper, who summoned Reyzelman from the bullpen. Catcher Manny Palencia called for the sweeper low and away, and Rosario flailed at it for strike three. When Reyzelman got back to the dugout, he wasn’t sure whether the strikeout would be credited on his ledger or on his mentor’s. So, he asked him.
“That’s yours, bro,” Cole said, laughing. “You earned it.”
A hit or a walk would have been Cole’s responsibility, but Reyzelman was thrilled to learn he had recorded a rare one-pitch strikeout in relief of one of the Yankees’ all-time greats. It made the three runs he allowed the next inning a little easier to swallow.
“If I told my 10-year-old self what happened, he wouldn’t even care about the three doubles I gave up that next inning,” Reyzelman said. “He’d be like, ‘You really finished the strikeout from Gerrit!?’ And he’d go to sleep pretty happy that night.”
The best lessons that Cole and Rodón imparted as they worked their way back to the Bronx this spring were unspoken. It was in their demeanor and their interactions with teammates and coaches. It was the seriousness and the professionalism with which they went about their work. And it was in the way they treated everyone around them, from the umpires to the ballpark staffers to the young dreamers who got a close-up look at what it means to be a Yankee.
“Everything he does, he does with such professionalism and so much courtesy to the younger guys,” Reyzelman said of Cole. “He’s just a really hard guy not to look up to and respect. You can say that about all the guys. And so, there’s a common theme in that Yankees clubhouse, and it just gives us another reason to want to get up there and follow in their footsteps. When one of those big leaguers buys us a spread or does something nice for the guys, the first thing out of my mouth to the guys I’m sitting with eating is always, ‘I just can’t wait to do that for a team one day.’”
Nathan Maciborski is the executive editor of Yankees Magazine. This story appears in the June 2026 edition. Get more articles like this delivered to your doorstep by purchasing a subscription to Yankees Magazine at www.yankees.com/publications.