August 30, 1993: Brien Taylor’s last hurrah: eight shutout innings in Double A

Few prospects have fallen to earth quite as dramatically as pitcher Brien Taylor, the number-one pick by the New York Yankees in the June 1991 amateur draft.

Signing a record $1.55 million contract negotiated by agent Scott Boras and Taylor’s mother, Bettie,1 the hard-throwing North Carolina high schooler became one of baseball’s top-rated, most-anticipated prospects.2 Taylor showed promise in two minor-league seasons, but a severe injury to his pitching shoulder in December 1993 ruined his career. He never reached the major leagues.

On August 30, 1993, Taylor pitched eight shutout innings to win his 13th game of the season for the Albany-Colonie Yankees of the Double-A Eastern League. It was the 21-year-old lefty’s last win before his injury. Seen in retrospect, the game appears as the high-water mark of the Brien Taylor bubble, bringing back memories of that brief period when the young hurler was all but being measured for a plaque in Cooperstown.

In the summer of 1993, the New York Yankees were nurturing the homegrown talent that formed the core of their next dynasty. Derek Jeter, the Yankees’ first-round pick in June 1992, was at Class A Greensboro. Andy Pettitte, a 22nd-rounder in June 1990, split the season between High-A Prince William and Albany-Colonie; his catcher at Prince William, Jorge Posada, had been drafted two rounds after him. Mariano Rivera, signed as an amateur free agent in February 1990, divided his time between Rookie-level ball and Greensboro.

And then there was Taylor, the first overall pick3 with a fastball that topped out at 98 mph and a hard curveball.4 In high school Taylor went 29-6, struck out 476 hitters in 239⅓ innings, pitched back-to-back no-hitters, and won USA Today’s High School Player of the Year honor.5

In his professional debut at age 20, Taylor went 6-8 at High-A Fort Lauderdale with a 2.57 ERA in 1992, leading the loop with 187 strikeouts in 161⅓ innings.6 Promoted to Albany-Colonie in 1993, Taylor placed third in the league in strikeouts with 150 in 163 innings.7 Taylor entered the August 30 matchup against the Reading Phillies with 12 wins, placing him among the EL’s leaders.8 He was a top gate attraction and a target for autograph hounds, needing security guards to get to his black Ford Mustang after games. Pitching coach Dave Schuler called it “Brien-mania.”9

The Taylor of August 1993 was not a finished, major-league-ready player, though his shortcomings appeared fixable with effort. He led the EL that season with 102 walks, an average of 5.6 per nine innings. The Yankees attributed Taylor’s wildness to lapses in concentration, as well as an inconsistent release point.10 Despite being a lefty, Taylor also struggled to hold runners on base. Thirty-seven baserunners stole successfully against him in 1993, while only 12 were caught. Taylor quipped that he’d never learned to hold runners on in high school because he’d never had any.11

The game of August 30 found Albany-Colonie fighting to hold the EL’s fourth and last playoff spot. Manager Bill Evers’ Yankees entered the day with a 67-65 record, 22½ games behind first-place Harrisburg but 2½ games ahead of fifth-place Binghamton. Their opponent, Reading, had been eliminated from playoff contention and sat in seventh place with a 58-76 record, 32½ games out.12

Albany-Colonie’s starting lineup included several future major leaguers in shortstop Carlos Rodríguez, right fielder Jalal Leach, second baseman Kevin Jordan, and third baseman Andy Fox. The box score in the Reading newspaper identified the catcher as “Psota.” He went unnamed in game stories but was almost certainly Posada, who played in seven games for Albany-Colonie in 1993 after making 118 appearances at Prince William.13

None of the players in Reading’s starting lineup made the major leagues. Perhaps the most notable were first baseman Ron Lockett, second on the team with 11 home runs and 53 RBIs, and right fielder Jeff Jackson, team leader in stolen bases with 20. The start on the mound went to righty Blake Doolan, a 33rd-round choice of the Philadelphia Phillies in the June 1992 draft. Doolan split 1993 between Class A Spartanburg, where he was 2-2 with a 1.70 ERA in eight starts, and Reading, where he went 7-8 with a 5.09 ERA in 27 games, including 15 starts.14

Taylor had pitched seven shutout innings against Reading the previous week, and he took up right where he left off.15 In front of 2,559 fans, he allowed only three hits in eight innings. Perhaps more importantly, given his struggles with control, he walked only two and did not hit a batsman.16

While newspaper accounts of the game don’t give play-by-play action, they indicate that Reading clustered most of its baserunners into two rallies. The Phillies loaded the bases with one out in the fourth inning, but left fielder Mickey Hyde grounded into a rally-killing double play.17 (The Yankees committed two errors during the game – one by shortstop Rodriguez and one by Posada – and some of the Phillies’ baserunners might have reached base that way.)

The second Reading rally took place in the eighth inning. The Phillies put runners on the corners with one out. (One was Lockett, whose single in the inning brought his hitting streak to 11 games.) With his 103rd and last pitch, Taylor got third baseman Keith Kimberlin to line to Yankees third sacker Fox, who snagged the line drive and stepped on third base for an unassisted double play.18

The Yankees, like the Phillies, produced a concentrated burst of offense – but they managed to turn it into runs. After four shutout innings by Doolin, the Yankees assembled a string of singles in the fifth. First baseman Joe DeBerry and center fielder Jason Robertson collected hits, and one batter later, Fox drove them both in with a two-run single.19 Left fielder Rich Barnwell’s single then scored Fox for a 3-0 Albany-Colonie lead.20 Those four hits represented half of the Yankees’ total against three Reading pitchers.

Righty Brian Faw, a 17th-round draft choice of the Yankees in June 1990, worked the ninth in relief of Taylor. He surrendered two hits but struck out Hyde to end the game and preserve the shutout.21 Taylor earned his 13th win, Doolan took the loss to drop to 7-7, and Faw got his fourth save. The game took 2 hours and 21 minutes.

Taylor ended the regular season having allowed only one earned run in his final 34⅓ innings.22 Despite his challenges holding runners on, the box score indicates that no Reading baserunners tried to steal.

An Albany sportswriter said that Taylor was “now starting to look like the million-dollar pitcher the Yankees predicted.” Pitching coach Schuler said Taylor’s fastball was “really dipping,” showing more movement than it had earlier in the season, and that the pitcher “got ahead in the count better than I’ve seen him all year.” As for Taylor himself, he sounded ready to move on from Double-A. “I worked hard. I feel like I got what I wanted to get, getting the bugs out of my pitches. I’m to the point where I’m consistent and know what I have to do in the games to get to the big leagues.”23

But the arrival of a new month brought trouble to the young prospect. In Game One of the EL semifinal playoffs on September 6, Taylor gave up eight hits and five runs in five innings, taking the loss against the Harrisburg Senators.24 He did not start again in the series, which Harrisburg won, three games to one.25

Taylor came in for sharp criticism later in September after he turned down the Yankees’ request to participate in the fall Florida Instructional League, citing mental and physical exhaustion. The New York Daily News, rarely subtle in its opinions, suggested that the pitcher might be an “ingrate,” and columnist Bill Madden added: “How badly does this kid really want it?”26

Those were small disappointments compared to the events of December 18, 1993, near Taylor’s home in North Carolina. Taylor’s brother, Brenden, got into a dispute with another man, and Brien stepped in to defend him. A friend of the other man joined the fight, and Taylor fell or was thrown onto his left shoulder while wrestling with the second man.27

Reconstructive surgery on his damaged shoulder cost Taylor the entire 1994 season, and when he returned to the mound, his skills were gone. Taylor pitched parts of five more seasons at the lowest rungs of the minors.28 In 1996, the season Yankee officials had hoped he’d reach the parent club,29 Taylor went 0-5 with an 18.73 ERA in Greensboro, walking batters at a rate of 23.7 per nine innings.

The young man drafted ahead of Manny Ramírez, Cliff Floyd, and Shawn Green in the first round – and Todd Hollandsworth, Nomar Garciaparra, and Derek Lowe in later rounds – was not destined to join them on the field at All-Star or World Series games. Instead, Taylor’s name is mostly remembered by those who were reading newspapers or collecting baseball cards during the distant days of “Brien-mania.”30

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Mike Huber and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author thanks Barbara Breidenstein of the Reading (Pennsylvania) Public Library for research assistance.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team, and season data.

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of minor-league games, but the August 31, 1993, edition of the Reading (Pennsylvania) Eagle published a box score.

Photo of 1992 Topps card #6 from author’s collection.

Notes

1 Michael Kay, “Look Ma, I’m a Yankee!,” New York Daily News, August 29, 1991: 78. At the time of Taylor’s contract signing, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner had been banned from involvement in day-to-day management of the club after paying a felon and gambler to provide unfavorable information about former Yankees outfielder Dave Winfield. Steinbrenner publicly blasted Yankees general manager Gene Michael and general partner Robert Nederlander, saying they had grossly overpaid Taylor. “I never said, ‘Go spend a million-and-a-half.’ No goddamn way!,” Steinbrenner was quoted as saying. “On a high school kid? No way!” John Valenti, “Boss Blasts Brien’s Deal,” Newsday (Long Island, New York), August 29, 1991: 190.

2 Entering the 1992 season, Taylor was Baseball America’s number-one-rated prospect; entering 1993, he was number 2, trailing only future Hall of Famer Chipper Jones.

3 The Yankees chose first in the 1991 draft after posting an American League-worst 67-95 record in 1990. As of 2023, the Yankees had chosen first in the June draft only one other time – in 1967, when they selected Atlanta-area high schooler Ron Blomberg. Blomberg, a first baseman and outfielder, played parts of eight major-league seasons, including seven with the Yankees. He is best remembered for taking the first at-bat as a designated hitter in major-league history on April 6, 1973, in the first inning of the Yankees’ season opener against the Boston Red Sox.

4 Tom Pedulla, “The Phenom,” Ossining (New York) Citizen Register, August 21, 1993: D1.

5 Taylor’s high-school record was printed on the back of his 1992 Topps card, #6.

6 He was also third in the league with walks (66), tied for first in hit batsmen (11) and first in balks (10).

7 The league leaders were a pair of New Britain Red Sox who later played in the majors: Tim VanEgmond (163) and Frankie Rodriguez (151).

8 For the full season, Taylor’s 13 wins tied him with two other pitchers for second place. Harrisburg’s Joey Eischen led the loop with 14 wins.

9 Pedulla, “The Phenom.”

10 Pedulla.

11 Bill Madden, “Poor Choice?” New York Daily News, September 30, 1993: 174.

12 Eastern League standings as printed in the Binghamton (New York) Press & Sun-Bulletin, August 30, 1993: 5C.

13 The other catchers listed in Baseball-Reference as appearing for the 1993 Albany-Colonie team were Gordon Sanchez, Jose Pineda, Jeff Livesey, Mike Figga and Donnie Leshnock. The only one whose name even vaguely resembles “Psota” is Pineda, and Pineda wasn’t on the Albany-Colonie team on August 30. He was demoted to Class A on August 28 at the same time Posada was promoted to Double-A. “Cannons Drop Two of Three,” Potomac News (Woodbridge, Virginia), August 29, 1993: B1.

14 Doolan’s career topped out with 18 games at Triple A in 1996, his final professional season.

15 “Yanks’ Brien Taylor Beats Reading Again,” Reading (Pennsylvania) Eagle, August 31, 1993: D2.

16 The Reading Eagle’s game story, cited above, says Taylor allowed just two hits. But all other sources – including an Associated Press item, a game story in the Albany Times-Union, and the box score in the Reading paper – agree that Taylor surrendered three hits.

17 “Yanks’ Brien Taylor Beats Reading Again.”

18 “Yanks’ Brien Taylor Beats Reading Again”; Pete Dougherty, “In the End, A-C Yanks’ Taylor Is Looking Like a Million,” Albany (New York) Times-Union, August 31, 1993: D2.

19 “Yanks’ Brien Taylor Beats Reading Again”; Associated Press, “Taylor Blanks Reading,” Bennington (Vermont) Banner, August 31, 1993: 7. Designated hitter Paul Oster hit between Robertson and Fox; he may have done something to advance the runners, but game accounts don’t specify. Oster is not credited with a sacrifice in the box score.

20 “Taylor Blanks Reading.” The box score credits Fox with a stolen base. It seems likely that he stole second after singling to move himself into scoring position, but again, available game accounts don’t say.

21 “Yanks’ Brien Taylor Beats Reading Again.”

22 Dougherty, “In the End, A-C Yanks’ Taylor Is Looking Like a Million.”

23 Dougherty.

24 “Senators Cruise,” York (Pennsylvania) Dispatch, September 7, 1993: B2.

25 Associated Press, “Senators Finish Off Yankees,” Carlisle (Pennsylvania) Sentinel, September 11, 1993: C1.

26 Madden, “Poor Choice?”

27 Jack Curry, “Taylor Is Starting Back on Road to the Stadium,” New York Times, March 15, 1995: B17.

28 Taylor compiled a 3-15 record and a 11.24 ERA in 46 post-comeback games at Rookie and Class A levels.

29 Jack Curry, “Surgery Finishes Yankees’ Taylor for 1994 Season,” New York Times, December 29, 1993: B7.

30 Taylor’s life after baseball has reportedly been difficult. He has held a series of jobs, suffered health problems, and served a stint in federal prison after a 2012 conviction for selling drugs to undercover agents. At the time of his sentencing, US District Judge Louise Flanagan said: “He seemed completely unprepared for a life after baseball, which he was confronted with almost immediately.” Wayne Coffey, “Sad Life of Brien,” New York Daily News, July 2, 2006: 90; Anthony Rieber, “From Boom to Bust,” Valley News (West Lebanon, New Hampshire), November 23, 2012: B4.