The Yankees apparently found their latest designated hitter Thursday, closing in on a one-year deal with the former Cleveland Indians slugger Travis Hafner. He has agreed to an incentive-laden deal with the Yankees with a base salary close to $2 million.

Hafner will replace Raul Ibanez as the left-handed D.H. Ibanez left to join the Seattle Mariners as a free agent. Hafner will have a hard time matching Ibanez’s late-season heroics for the Yankees, but he does have a memorable postseason hit that figures prominently in Yankees lore.

On Oct. 5, 2007, Hafner lined a two-out, 11th-inning single off Luis Vizcaino to win Game 2 of the American League division series between the Yankees and the Indians. That game was interrupted by a swarm of midges that changed the course of that series and indirectly contributed to the Boston Red Sox’ winning their second World Series this century.

Thanks in part to the midges, the Indians tied the score off the previously impenetrable Joba Chamberlain in the eighth inning. Hafner’s single three innings later propelled the Indians to a 2-1 victory and a 2-0 lead in a series they would win. But they lost to the Red Sox in the American League Championship Series, and Boston swept the Rockies in the World Series.