It is a sorry commentary but true: The one undeniable takeaway from the Subway Series was that New York baseball is a potential train wreck. Both the Yankees and Mets showed themselves to be prime examples of mediocrity, with major holes. Their one saving grace is that mediocrity abounds in baseball this season, and that might still allow one or both of them to eventually creep into the postseason.
In the Yankees’ case, never was it more obvious they’re a one-man team. With Aaron Judge sidelined indefinitely with his toe injury, there’s no one in the Yankee lineup that scares anyone, and no one has stepped up to provide even a semblance of his missing offensive thunder. As of Saturday, the Yankees were 9-12 in games Judge didn’t play and they’ve pretty much been playing an outfield of retreads in his absence.
Giancarlo Stanton, streaky as usual, has yet to get it going this year, slashing .221/.280/.477 going into the weekend. DJ LeMahieu has become a shell of the player that hit .327 with 26 homers and 102 RBI in 2019 and got him a six-year, $90 million extension two years ago. Gleyber Torres continues with his maddening inconsistency and brain locks. Anthony Rizzo has been virtually invisible for the whole month of June. Oswaldo Cabrera has chronic contact issues and should probably be back in Triple-A. After hovering under .200 since May 26, Anthony Volpe just recently made adjustments in his swing which hopefully will begin to ease concerns that he was promoted prematurely.
And Josh Donaldson is finished.
That the Yankees, who rank 14th in the majors in runs, have been able to stay above .500 has largely been a tribute to their pitching, but now Nestor Cortes is out indefinitely with a shoulder issue and Luis Severino, their supposed ace, has been bombed for 22 hits and 16 earned runs in his last three starts. Never, it would seem, was a return to action by Carlos Rodon more imperative. Even so, the Yankees are the third-best team in their own division, with the Rays and Orioles showing no signs of coming back to them any time soon. And by the way, has anyone noticed that Aaron Hicks, liberated from Yankees’ batting coach Dillon Lawson, was hitting .333 with two homers and six RBI in his first 13 games for the Orioles?
As for Steve Cohen’s $345 million Mets, arguably the most disappointing team in baseball, underachieving abounds. The Mets are hitting .240 as a team, with the 19th fewest runs in MLB and 22nd lowest OPS. Equally mediocre has been their 24th-ranked, 4.93 starting pitchers’ ERA including the combined 4.45 from their $43 million aces Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander. While the starting pitching has been too often unacceptably subpar, Buck Showalter is understandably mystified by the inconsistency of his hitters and, as such, has come under intense media fire for his (sometimes curious) lineup decisions.
After signing a four-year, $50 million extension in January, Jeff McNeil is hitting some 50 points below his league-leading .326 of a year ago. Brett Baty, who was generating Rookie of the Year talk after his promising start, has hit the wall of late and hasn’t homered since May 16. The primary DH, the much-maligned Daniel Vogelbach, had to be sent to a rest home after hitting .203 with two homers in 47 games. Like the Yankees without Judge, the Mets don’t have anyone in the lineup who scares you when Pete Alonso is out (as he was for the Subway Series). And does Cohen realize he’s paying Francisco Lindor $34 million to hit .211?
The bottom line on the Mets: Besides the starting pitching issues and the inconsistent hitting, they have also played too much un-Showalter-like bad fundamental baseball this year, and while losing Edwin Diaz pretty much eliminated any chance of them getting to the World Series, there is no excuse for this team playing under-.500 baseball.
As much of an eyesore as this prospective A’s move from Oakland to Las Vegas, has been for baseball, Commissioner Rob Manfred deserves credit for making sure this isn’t going to be a rubber stamp giveaway to reviled A’s owner John Fisher. At the owners’ meeting in New York this week, Manfred decreed that for the sale to be approved by the owners, Fisher is going to have to himself come up with $1 billion to contribute to the estimated $1.5 billion for the new 30,000-seat ballpark in Las Vegas. In addition, Manfred formed a committee of owners to whom Fisher will have to submit a comprehensive report detailing just how he plans to make a profit, going from the 10th largest market in Oakland/San Francisco to the 40th largest market in Las Vegas, playing in what is essentially going to be a minor league 30,000-seat stadium. …
For New York baseball fans growing increasingly anguished over the performances of the Yankees and Mets, there is this escape: A smorgasbord of summer baseball reading. We start with YES’ Yankee analyst Jack Curry’s “The 1998 Yankees,” the definitive book on the greatest team in baseball history. I say definitive because Curry was there, on the scene, for almost every game so there was no better authority and he provides further perspective on that record-breaking season with interviews of all the principals 25 years later. Equally definitive is MLB.com Yankees’ beat reporter Bryan Hoch’s “62″ account of Aaron Judge’s historic 2022 pursuit of Roger Maris’ home record. For, like Curry, Hoch was there every day, in the clubhouse home and on the road, a first-hand observer of Judge all along the way. I’d buy this book just for the cover! Then there’s Roy White, one of my (and everyone else’s) all-time favorite Yankees, who’s penned his wide-ranging autobiography “Roy White — From Compton to the Bronx” with Paul R. Semendinger which takes us on a sentimental journey from the Yankees’ CBS ‘60s lean years to the first George Steinbrenner 1976-81 dynasty and finally a late-career three-year stopover in Japan playing alongside Japanese home run legend Sadaharu Oh with the Yomiuri Giants. Marty Appel was the Yankee PR man back in the ‘70s before moving on to the Commissioner’s office and eventually his own firm. I think of him as a sort of a Yankees’ “Zelig” since he seemingly has known and interacted with just about everyone around them for the last 50 years, and now he’s written a book “Pinstripes by the Tale” about those experiences. Lastly, for the Mets fans there’s Ed Kranepool’s long overdue autobiography “The Last Miracle” with Gary Kaschak about his 18-year career all with them (1962-79). Reader warning on this one: “Krane” is brutally honest throughout and spares no wrath for Yogi Berra (for mismanaging the 1973 World Series in his opinion) and former Mets GM Joe McDonald (who engineered the Tom Seaver trade to Cincinnati).
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