Uber Eats, Amazon Flex: Inside Oswaldo Cabrera's journey to Yankees super-utility man

NEW YORK – There is no “I” in this journey for Oswaldo Cabrera, only we.

“We” got to the New York Yankees.

“We” made it.

Back in the big leagues after a brief stint down at Triple-A Scranton that was so short he didn’t even play, the 24-year-old native of Guarenas, Venezuela is getting an opportunity to not only live out his own dream, but those of brothers Leobaldo and Eleardo, as well as the rest of his family.

“It’s a dream come true,” Cabrera recently said from the Yankees clubhouse.

“We’ve been working so hard. I’m not talking about just me, when I say we’ve been working, it’s we, because I’ve got a team backing me with my dad, my mom, my brothers, my strength coach, my hitting coach. For us, it’s a dream come true. We feel so grateful about it. At the same time, we’re here now, we’re playing here now, it’s time to focus on this and keep working on staying here.”

The turning point in that journey? Statistically, it would seem to have come during the 2021 season with the Double-A Somerset Patriots, where, having entered the season far off the prospect radar, he left it as a potential future big leaguer, having hit .256 with a career-high 24 home runs and 78 RBI before a September call-up to the RailRiders.

In reality, the foundation for such a breakout year came during the COVID shutdown, when Cabrera was back home training with his family, living with one of his brothers and another player in the St. Louis Cardinals organization as they prepared for their next chance.

“We weren’t playing, we were feeling bad, but we had a big opportunity,” Cabrera said. “They were going to see us in one year, so the things that we could do is be ready and stay ready all that year, just get better as much that we can. That was our mentality, but it was not easy because we didn’t have money, we had to work outside of baseball; Uber Eats, Amazon Flex, working in construction, working a couple things that we didn’t know about, but we weren’t afraid to do it. But we had that year to get better, and a lot of that was working with a personal trainer. When I got there in 2021, I was like, ‘OK, I’m ready,’ because I’d been working so hard for it.”

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Cabrera had been working with now-Yankees hitting coach Dillon Lawson and now-hitting coordinator Joe Migliaccio, who was his hitting coach at Somerset during that 2021 season, where they made only minor adjustments to a swing that seemed to finally find its stride in then-High-A Tampa in 2019.

It was a long road to get there for Cabrera, who signed out of Venezuela in 2015, something he calls “one of the best memories in my life,” and a move that reunited him with his brother, Leobaldo, who the Yankees had signed previously and ultimately spent four seasons in the organization before being released.

“So, it’s not that easy, because you left so young, you’re still a kid at 16 years old,” Cabrera recalled.  “We were still young guys. It wasn’t easy for us to have left your family. I’m coming from a family where we are really together, and that’s the first thing that was not easy for us; leaving my dad, leaving my mom, my sister. But at the same time for me, it was easier because I had my brother playing there, which was a good thing.”

Given a modest $100,000 signing bonus at the time, Cabrera began his professional career with a month-long stint in the Dominican Summer League before receiving a somewhat ambitious assignment to first the Gulf Coast League and then its then-Rookie League affiliate in Pulaski later in the 2016 season.

“That was not easy,” he said. “I didn’t understand English well, and I had to use the basic things, like if an American guy was taking Spanish in high school. If you don’t know enough, you can’t have a conversation, so that was not easy for me. But I came here and my goal was I have to improve my English on top of improving on the field, so I was paying attention about a lot of things.”

The infielder impressed enough to earn a spot in full-season ball the following year, starting at Low-A Charleston, with a stop at in short-season Staten Island mixed in midway through the year.  He ended up repeating Charleston the following year, spending all of 2018 there, but says he wasn’t getting frustrated with his progress having grinded to a halt at the time.

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“For me, when I repeated Charleston, I was still young,” he said. “Obviously, you don’t want to repeat any affiliates, but at the same time, it was like, ‘OK, last year was not that great, so I have to come in this year and do better things.’ I was improving my at-bats, improving my fielding, all those things. It was a really big deal for me. The numbers weren’t always improving, but inside of the numbers, there were quality at-bats and I was getting more mature.”

Eventually, he found his swing at Tampa the following year, hitting .310 as a 20-year-old with the Tarpons, who were then the team’s High-A affiliate, to help get him to Somerset two years later.

After the breakout season there and then largely keeping that momentum going in Scranton in 2022, Cabrera was finally called up for his big-league debut by the Yankees in mid-August of last year, albeit in something of a super-utility role that he wasn’t accustomed to. He’s played six different positions in the majors – every infield position, plus the corner outfield spots – using his natural athletic ability and willingness to learn on the fly to cement himself as an important piece in pinstripes, even going so far as to appear in eight postseason games last season.

“Was not easy, we have to work,” Cabrera said. “It’s like everything, it’s not easy, but if you work, and if you work hard and pay attention to the little things, you can be successful. I’m not telling you I got that successful, but at the same time, I’ve been working hard for it, and I want to be successful on it. In the minors, I didn’t play too many outfield games, but I had to be ready the moment they needed somebody there. I wanted to be ready to get that spot.”

This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: Oswaldo Cabrera embracing Yankees super-utility role