SI

Yankees Catcher Caught for New Trade Deadline Teammate Before Even Meeting Him

The MLB trade deadline creates some sometimes awkward situations.

Josh Wilson

Austin Wells, Yankees
Austin Wells, Yankees / Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports

Tuesday's MLB trade deadline brought with it the normal weirdness that comes along with player movement in baseball. One player was traded to his opponent, and literally walked to his new dugout, moving his stuff from one locker room to the other in the same building.

While most professional sports leagues have a finite number of days that players can be swapped, the fact that baseball games are often played during the day—or at the very least, warmed up for during the day—makes player movement much more visible, especially the new faces, new places aspect.

Such was the case for Mark Leiter Jr., who was traded to the Yankees on Tuesday, and his new teammates.

Leiter pitched the 10th of an extra-innings thriller victory for New York on Tuesday, allowing one hit, one walk, and no earned runs. It's impressive enough that he did that after waking up a Chicago Cub and ending the day a Yankee. It's even more impressive that his catcher didn't even know what pitches he throws when he came into the game, and also had yet to be introduced to him.

"It wasn't until after the inning essentially was over that [Wells] got to say, 'Hey, my name's Austin, nice to meet you,'" Meredith Marakovits reported on YES during Wednesday afternoon's game.

"He had gotten to the ballpark, after stretching and everything, he came into the dugout in the third inning. Shaking hands. When they brought him in, Austin Wells goes, 'Well what does this guy throw?' And Leiter didn't even know the vernacular that they have in the PitchCom, so there was a pickoff call that he didn't know what it was, he didn't know what he was hearing," Michael Kay said.

Just a day before, Jazz Chisholm Jr. also showed up just a few hours before his first game with the team. He made an impact immediately, too, with a hit in his first game, and four home runs in his first three.

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Josh Wilson
JOSH WILSON

Josh Wilson is the news director of the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in 2024, he worked for FanSided in a variety of roles, most recently as senior managing editor of the brand’s flagship site. He has also served as a general manager of Sportscasting, the sports arm of a start-up sports media company, where he oversaw the site’s editorial and business strategy. Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from SUNY Cortland and a master’s in accountancy from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He loves a good nonfiction book and enjoys learning and practicing Polish. Wilson lives in Chicago but was raised in upstate New York. He spent most of his life in the Northeast and briefly lived in Poland, where he ate an unhealthy amount of pastries for six months.

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