http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/03/sports/baseball/ny-yankees-baltimore-orioles-mark-teixeira.html 2016-10-03 03:32:22 Yankees Give Mark Teixeira a Handshake and Embrace the Future The team bid farewell to Teixeira, who battled injuries in the final season of his career. Now its rebuilding effort goes into full effect. === The Yankees said their goodbyes to the retiring first baseman Mark Teixeira, along with their season, before a sparse crowd that watched a 5-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium on a gloomy, gray Sunday afternoon. Both farewells seemed to underscore a turning of the page, as the Yankees bid adieu to Teixeira, an anchor of the teams that were perennial World Series contenders, and as they hoped to distance themselves from more recent seasons like this one, where they will once again spend the playoffs at home. If the Yankees, who have now missed the playoffs three times in the last four seasons, began this season intent on taking one more swing with their aging veterans, it became clear by the middle of summer — with the release of Alex Rodriguez and the trading of several other veterans for a haul of prospects — that they had begun to change course. The Yankees will enter this winter in a position to continue their overhaul thanks to the emergence of the rookie catcher Gary Sanchez, a farm system teeming with talent and $60 million coming off the books. Whether other veterans, particularly catcher Brian McCann — who has a no-trade clause but has been supplanted by Sanchez — will return next year is among the many decisions facing the Yankees. The loss on Sunday, which allowed Baltimore to clinch a wild-card berth, dropped the Yankees to 84-78, only three games worse than last season, when they lost in the wild-card playoff to the Houston Astros. But this season had a far different feeling. “As far as this season, I’ve said in the last few days, at different times it was different phases,” Manager Joe Girardi said before Sunday’s game. “I could go anywhere. At times we didn’t field well, at times we didn’t hit, at times we didn’t pitch well. It was a group effort — we didn’t get it done.” Girardi, who is entering the final year of his contract, did note some bright spots: the rise of Sanchez, the blossoming of shortstop Didi Gregorius and the durability of the ace Masahiro Tanaka, who had missed at least a month in each of his first two seasons with elbow injuries, but made every start this season until tightness in his wrist forced him to skip his final two starts. But Teixeira, 36, was representative of too many Yankees: an older, highly paid veteran who was plagued by injuries and underperformance. Teixeira, in the final season of an eight-year, $180 million contract, said in spring training that he planned to play until he was 40. But after being plagued by neck and knee injuries and mired in the worst season of his career, he announced in early August that he would retire after this season. When Teixeira hit a grand slam to beat Boston in the bottom of the ninth inning on Wednesday, he said it would be the perfect ending if that home run, the 409th of his career, were his last. And so it was. He finished the season hitting .204 with 15 home runs and 44 R.B.I. On Sunday, Teixeira was hitless in three at-bats, but he did make two slick plays in the field, a reminder of the five Gold Gloves he has won at first base. In a brief ceremony before the game, Teixeira, with his wife and three children at his side, was presented a framed jersey by the owner Hal Steinbrenner and a base autographed by his teammates, which was given to him by C. C. Sabathia and Brett Gardner, his two remaining teammates from the 2009 World Series champions. The Yankees have made a habit of dramatic exits in recent years, from Derek Jeter to Mariano Rivera to Rodriguez, whose pregame ceremony for his final game was accompanied by a booming thunderclap and concluded with an appearance at third base. “Let’s see if we can find a perfect situation for it to end,” Girardi said of his plans. “These guys have been pretty good at doing that, so I wouldn’t expect anything different from him.” With one out in the seventh inning, Tyler Austin was sent out to replace Teixeira at first base. The two embraced and soon the rest of the infielders came over to hug Teixeira, who doffed his cap and patted his chest with his glove as he acknowledged the applause from the crowd. Teixeira then hugged each of his teammates as they emerged from the dugout. It was another symbolic passage. The Yankees almost certainly will be counting on more players like Austin next year — talented and youthful, perhaps, but also untested. Girardi said that it would likely be a different team next season, and he will manage them accordingly. “With older players they’ve been through a lot more. They’ve been through a lot more experiences,” Girardi said. “You have a history of how they’ve handled those experiences and maybe handled slumps or a couple bad starts in a row. With young players, you don’t have that history. You’re not sure how they’re going to react and what they’re capable of doing in big situations, how they’re going to handle it. It is different.”