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.
Wells didn't even shake his hand until after he caught him out of the bullpen pic.twitter.com/hiE801EhFT
— Josh Wilson (@J_WilsonSports) July 31, 2024
"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.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Yankees Catcher Caught for New Trade Deadline Teammate Before Even Meeting Him.
