Entering this same place on the baseball calendar one year ago, the Mets had a record of 61-54 and were eight games behind the Phillies in the National League East. Going into their current series against the Brewers in Milwaukee, the Mets’ won-loss record was two games better than it was last year, at 63-52, and the Mets were 2.5 games behind the Phillies. So they were better off in the standings. It just doesn’t feel that way the way they’ve looked — and made their fans feel — lately.
One year ago, same point in the season, the Yankees were 20 games over .500 and tied with the Orioles at the top of the AL East. Heading into this weekend, they were at 61-54, in third place, closer to being out of the top 3 in the wild card standings than they were to the Blue Jays. They don’t just look worse off than they were in August of 2024. They look a lot worse off.
We always hear that the baseball season is a marathon and not a sprint. You’ve heard that, right? Not now. The Yankees and Mets both have a sprint now to the finish line of the regular season, seven weeks after Sunday, 44 games for both our teams. We are about to find out if that is enough time for them to find their way back to looking like the teams they were earlier in this season, and change what has become such a dreary, dog-day narrative in the month of August.
“This is not good,” Francisco Lindor said. “This is not good at all. But it’s adversity that we all have to go through at some point in the year.”
And so you know? Lindor, the Mets leader, didn’t say that after the Mets had lost five of six since the trade deadline and nearly got no-hit by the Guardians on Wednesday afternoon. He said that after they’d lost seven in a row in June.
It is easy to put this all on an easy target like Juan Soto, whose first season as a Met has been a disappointment that sometimes feels as big as his salary. Put me down as somebody who thought he would roll through the second half of the season. Still hasn’t happened. I pointed out the other day that through Wednesday’s games Soto had three more RBI than Anthony Volpe for the season. Soto has not hit the way he did on the other side of town. He has not hit in the clutch. The Yankees were better when they still had him hitting in front of Aaron Judge. The Mets are pretty much the same team they were a year ago even with Soto now hitting between Lindor and Pete Alonso.
Is it just Soto? Come on. The Mets don’t pitch well enough, the way the Yankees don’t pitch well enough. The Mets starters don’t pitch long enough into games. Neither do Yankee starters. Much has been made of how short Clay Holmes’ starts are in this season when he has been transformed from a reliever to a starting pitcher. Coming into the weekend, Holmes had made 23 starts, and pitched a total of 122.1 innings. It doesn’t seem like a lot. But Carlos Rodon, one of the Yankees’ big-ticket starters, has made one more start than Holmes and pitched a grand total of 17 more innings. There wasn’t a Yankee fan on the planet surprised to see Aaron Boone come get him in the sixth inning of the Yankee-Rangers game.
You know why both Brian Cashman and David Stearns were scrambling the way they did to get bullpen help at the deadline? Because of their starters. It is the same way over the rest of baseball, for sure. But local baseball fans have seen this movie before, especially with the Yankees, who never ever have enough pitching and never seem to develop very much, either. In so many ways, the last pitcher built to last developed by the Yankee farm system was Andy Pettitte.
Stearns hasn’t been in town very long. Cashman has been around forever. He got a very bad break when Gerrit Cole, his biggest-ticket starter, was lost for the season to Tommy John surgery. That happened in March. But in so many ways, the Yankees still haven’t recovered from that blow. But everybody has pitching injuries, are you kidding? Out in Los Angeles, Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki have a combined total of 21 starts to far this season. Rodon alone has made three more than that.
The bottom line here is that these rotations, and these bullpens, didn’t assemble themselves. The way the rosters for both the Yankees and Mets, worth more than $600 million, didn’t assemble themselves. The rest of this regular season, both sides of town, isn’t just a referendum on the players. It is a referendum on the two men who not only put them on the field, but thought they could win it all with them.
Should both the Yankees and Mets make the playoffs? They should. The Yankees especially just need to somehow get hot over the next month, before they arrive at a place in their schedule at the end of September that looks softer than soft ice cream: Twins, Orioles, White Sox, Orioles. Can both the Yankees and Mets still end up in first place on Sept. 28? Sure.
But does Soto have to pick it up, starting right now? You bet. So, too, does Lindor. Both of them arrived in Milwaukee with the exact same batting average, .249. And as much of a force as Alonso has been knocking in runs — he came into the weekend only three behind Kyle Schwarber for the major league lead, Alonso’s average over the 30 games before Mets-Brewers was .185. His average over the last 15 was .193. Only over the last week or so, even with the Mets in a free fall, has the Polar Bear looked as if he might be coming out of a slumber that saw his own batting average drop to .264.
A lot has to happen for both New York teams to get things turned around. The guys at the top of Carlos Mendoza’s batting order can’t fix everything all by themselves. But it would be nice, starting right now, if the Big 3 could start Big 3-ing again, before the Mets are closer to the Reds in the wild card race than they are to the Phillies in the race that matters in the East.
The Mets came into Milwaukee 10 games under .500 since the middle of June. The Yankees came home for Old Timers’ Weekend 10 games under .500 since the middle of June. Two teams that thought they were headed for the World Series this season have played slob ball like that. Hard to watch and even harder to fathom sometimes.
There is still this obsession around here with George Steinbrenner: What would George do? A better question come October might be this: What will Steve Cohen and Hal Steinbrenner do if their baseball teams don’t make it to October?
A LOT OF SPUPID GOING AROUND, LOOK OUT FOR THE KID FROM SLEEPY HOLLOW & NFL’S GETTING SALTY …
OK, it’s starting to look as if this is more than a slow start with Devin Williams.
Maybe Cashman can get more closers at the next trade deadline.
Oh, wait.
Men who throw sex toys on the court during WNBA games aren’t being clever or funny.
They’re acting like bottom-feeders.
And punks.
And people who think they’re being clever or funny, even encouraging them to keep doing it, aren’t any better.
They all just seem like they’ve crossed over the bridge from Stupidville.
But then there’s a lot of that going on these days, isn’t there?
It was terrific last Sunday watching the Sleepy Hollow kid, Cameron Young, not only win his first tournament on the PGA Tour, but win it going away.
He has a world of talent, only just turned 28, already has contended twice in majors (PGA, British Open).
Look out for him the rest of the way.
I hope he ends up on the Ryder Cup team at Bethpage Black next month, the same course where he won the Met PGA’s New York State Open when he was 17.
Again: Mets record starting the weekend was 63-52.
Payroll of $339 million.
Brewers record was 70-44.
Payroll? $113 million.
I mean, only if you’re keeping score at home.
Don Mattingly, great Yankee, played 14 seasons in the big leagues and never made it to the World Series.
Aaron Judge, even greater Yankee, is in his 10th season in the big leagues.
Judge has made it to the Series once.
Ben Shelton is going to be the first American man since Andy Roddick to win a major, wait and see.
I happened on Game 5 of the Knicks-Heat series from 1999, the day at old Miami Arena when the No. 8 Knicks knocked off Coach Riley’s No. 1 Heat.
It was the day when Allan Houston went past Dan Majerle and made the runner that made it 78-77 Knicks with .8 left.
And, man, that shot was something to see, all this time later.
So was Terry Porter doing everything but bake a cake in .8 before getting off a shot for the Heat that would have won the game and the series.
I texted Jeff Van Gundy about that after watching the ending, and got this response:
“I had a near aneurysm! [Referee] Ed Rush trying to tell me Porter got it off in time.”
You know what else was really cool about watching it again?
Listening to my late friend Bill Walton on the call for NBC.
I can apparently call off the prayer vigil now that NFL players are allowed to keep using smelling salts.
But only if they provide the stuff themselves.
Party at Goodell’s house!
Bring your own ammonium carbonate!
James Patterson and Mike Lupica’s new Jane Smith thriller, “The Hamptons Lawyer,” remains a New York Times Best Seller in its second week and No. 5 at Publishers Weekly.
