By now I think we can all agree this has been one crazy baseball season in New York.
We first flash back to June 12 — a reasonable guidepost, 2 ½ months into the season, to get a pretty good idea of where the Yankees and Mets were headed, and at that time they were seemingly both headed for a lot of October baseball. I believe I might have even written a column to the effect that we could be in store for our first Subway World Series in 25 years.
And why not? The Yankees on June 12 were 42-25 in first place by 4 ½ games and there didn’t appear to be any teams in the American League East — or for that matter the entire American League — capable of making a run on them. Though Brian Cashman’s offseason signings of Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt had been more than making up for the defection of Juan Soto, the Yankees were doing it mostly on the strength of consistently quality starting pitching from Max Fried, Carlos Rodon and Clarke Schmidt.
Likewise, the Mets, who were also in first place, 45-24, up 5 ½ games, were riding the arms of Kodai Senga, David Peterson, converted closer Clay Holmes, and offseason free agent sign Griffin Canning with the lowest starting pitching ERA in the majors and looking forward to the happy dilemma of what to do when Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas came off the injured list later in the month.
Who could have ever envisioned from that date on both the Yankees and Mets would embark on two of the worst records in baseball — the Yankees 19-29 to fall from first place to the third wild card a scant 1 1/2 games ahead of the Guardians and Rangers as of Friday, and the Mets 18-28 to topple from first place to the third wild card in the NL?
It seems almost incomprehensible although maybe it wasn’t, certainly in the Yankees case. No amount of good pitching could mask the fact that, for years now, they’ve been a fundamentally flawed team with below average defenders at 2-3 positions daily — this season it was third base, left field and most unexpectedly shortstop. Compounding those frequent losses in which they beat themselves, there was no accountability — at least outwardly — from the manager.
Going forward, the Yankees remain a one-dimensional home run-or-bust offense and in that respect Aaron Judge has gone deep only three times since July 8. And while we understand Cashman is fiercely protective of his homegrown kids, the fact remains Jasson Dominguez is still a work-in-progress in left, Anthony Volpe has become an enigma at short and Austin Wells looks spent behind the plate and probably needs to change places with J.C. Escarra at Triple-A.
Much as the Yankee legions are increasingly calling for a firing to assuage their frustrations, however, it’s become clear that’s not going to happen. Hal Steinbrenner just gave Aaron Boone a two-year extension through 2027 and he’s just not going to blow that up four months into it. But if the nearly $300 million Yankees fail to make the playoffs — which is now looking like a distinct possibility — Hal is going to have no choice but to clean house, not just with Boone and his coaches, but quite possibly with Cashman is well.
The Mets collapse is a little more complicated, although in the process of putting this team together over the winter I felt David Stearns had a blind spot when it came to starting pitching and he’s still exhibiting that. In filling out the rotation last winter behind Senga and Peterson, and eventually Manaea, Stearns purposefully eschewed the kind of big money long-term contracts for the proven frontline starters such as Fried or Blake Snell and instead brought in Holmes, Canning and Montas on modest short term deals of three or fewer years. But as long as that was the way he wanted to go, it was a little puzzling why Stearns chose not to bring back Jose Quintana, one of the Mets’ most consistently reliable starters who won 10 games last year and who’s having another good year for the Brewers — except that the analytics geeks love the velo guys and hate finesse pitchers.
I also thought Stearns was deliberately staying away from long-term contracts for starting pitchers because he knew in Brandon Sproat, Nolan McLean and Jonah Tong he had three outstanding starting pitching prospects on the cusp of the big leagues. Except after Montas failed miserably, pitching himself out of the rotation, Stearns’ refusal to bring up any of the kids has been downright puzzling.
As for the Mets’ hitting malaise, I’m sure Stearns could not have envisioned Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor and Brandon Nimmo all underperforming like they are. They’ve needed offense in center field all season long, and maybe they’ll get some from Cedric Mullins, Stearns’ trade deadline rental from Baltimore, these last few weeks. But what is most troubling is the truly ordinary season they’re getting from Soto, who went into the weekend batting .249 with more strikeouts than walks for the first time since 2019.
Safe to say, when he handed Soto that $765 million contract last winter, this is not what Steve Cohen signed up for.
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
Last week in baseball’s insatiable lust for velo, there was quite the hullabaloo over the Diamondbacks’ Lourdes Gurriel Jr. hitting a homer off a 103.9 mph pitch from the Padres’ newly-acquired reliever Mason Miller. According to MLB, it was the fastest pitch since pitch tracking was first introduced in 2008 to be hit for a homer and left Gurriel’s bat with an exit velo of 107.1 mph. But here’s what this at-bat told me: Miller has been widely acclaimed as the hardest thrower in baseball with pitches consistently exceeding 100 mph and was largely thought to be an untouchable for the Athletics. Because of that, Padres’ GM A.J. Preller, who never knew a player he couldn’t trade for, had to have him and made him the centerpiece of his deadline frenzy of five trades involving 22 players by thrusting him from A’s for four prospects including 18-year-old five-tool shortstop Leo De Vries who was listed by Baseball America as the third highest rated prospect in all of baseball. Lethal as Mason and his heater might be, he is hardly Mariano Rivera-like infallible — as Gurriel Jr. proved Tuesday night in Arizona — and many baseball execs were surprised Preller would trade a prospect so highly regarded as De Vries for a back end reliever when, in Robert Suarez, he already had a closer who is leading the National League in saves. …Heaven help the hapless Rockies. There needs to be a way for them to raise a white flag to stop their season which reached historical proportions for ineptitude last week when they were swept at home by the Blue Jays and out-scored 45-6 in the three games, including 20-1 in the finale Wednesday. Toronto finished with 63 hits in the series, the most in a three game series since 1900, including 13 homers. After the series, the Rockies had a minus 316 run differential through 114 games — also the fewest games to reach that mark since 1900. The record for the fewest number of games for a team to have a minus-300 or more run differential is the 1899 Cleveland Spiders in 73 games. But they folded after the season and some have suggested the Rockies might consider doing the same.
