Perhaps we should wait a respectful few minutes before we …
Nah. Forget that. The door is open wide. The windows are open wider. The minute that Walker Buehler got Alex Verdugo to wave at that slider in the dirt about 20 minutes before midnight Wednesday, one kind of baseball season ended and another began. The calendar has flipped. Most years it says “November” at the top of the page.
We know better. And we’re certainly about to know even more.
About Sotovember.
The Mets beat the Yankees four times out of four for the season; that was a nice win for the Mets. The Yankees lasted one round further than the Mets this October, and for the first time since 2014 can say they’ve been to the World Series more recently. That’s a nice win for the Yankees.
Suddenly, all of that seems like prologue, like prelim, like preface.
Suddenly we are in Sotovember.
And soon, the Mets and the Yankees – along with a few special guest stars like the Dodgers and Phillies, maybe the Giants, maybe one or two of Scott Boras’ patented “mystery teams” – will see just how all-in all-in really is.
Soto had one of the most brilliant walk years anyone’s ever had. He turned 26 one week ago. And while he may not have shown up for his post-mortem with the press early Thursday morning with a Boras Company baseball hat like Gerrit Cole did in Houston in 2019 – remember that? – he didn’t exactly pledge his immediate and eternal fealty for the Yankees, either.
“I feel every team has the same opportunity,” Soto said. “I don’t want to say anybody has an advantage.”
Which isn’t exactly Joe DiMaggio solemnly declaring, “I want to thank the Good Lord for making me a Yankee.”
Besides, a player doesn’t hire Boras lest he intends to squeeze every last nickel out of the free agency process (see also: Alonso, Peter).
So we can declare this bizarre bazaar open for business. And while those other teams may well have a say in this before it’s all done, for our purposes let’s just talk about what is about to be the most fascinating – and, possibly, meaningful – moment in the entire 62-year relationship between the Mets and the Yankees.
Steve Cohen declined to fully engage in the Aaron Judge sweepstakes two years ago, a gentlemanly gesture that almost certainly made Judge’s choice – Yankees or Giants? – a little easier. He isn’t expected to concede this time and, in fact, looks like a safe bet to start the bidding in a place that’s going to make the Yankees wince a little.
That’s been the Promise of Cohen from day one. He has done over-the-top short-term deals for aging pitchers (Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander). He bestowed 10 years and $341 million on Francisco Lindor, which after this season looks downright economical as he approaches the midway point of the deal. He briefly offered a what-the-hell 12-year, $315 million deal to Carlos Correa before Correa’s medicals turned up murky.
But this?
Well, this is almost too perfect but here is where we quote Bobby Axelrod – the “Billions” character loosely based on Cohen himself.
“What’s the point of having eff-you money,” Axe says, “if you never say ‘Eff you?’”
This has been the eff-you moment Cohen has been waiting for. So in the Mets’ corner, there is that, there is enough money (as another likely Cohen inspiration, Gordon Gekko, once said) to be “talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a $100 million, buddy. A player. Or nothing.”
(Of course, you can multiply that by at least six, maybe more. For openers.)
In the Yankees’ corner? Well, they aren’t exactly a team traditionally known for austerity. If the Steinbrenner nest egg isn’t quite Cohen’s, they’re still plenty prosperous enough to sit with Cohen at the high-stakes baccarat table. Also, they are the Yankees, and even if Boras isn’t inclined to offer a hometown discount, that might be enough for a tie to go to the runner.
Also, there is this:
There is very little precedent for any of this. Before last year’s jointly ill-fated pursuit of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the only other time the Mets and Yankees ever went full-bore over the same player it was Dave Winfield in 1980, and while the Mets (under new ownership) were aggressive, they were still four years away from being even remotely competitive. This might’ve been a worthwhile comp on June 3, a day when the Mets fell 11 games under .500 on the same night the Yankees went to 23 games over .500. That feels like less of an argument now.
But there’s also this: when the Yankees and the Mets cross swords in any way, it’s almost always the Yankees who come out ahead. In 1976, at the dawn of free agency, George Steinbrenner jumped in with both feet while the Mets – still owned by the Whitneys, one of the richest families to ever live in New York – cried poverty. That meant in the same year the Yankees returned to preeminence, the Mets lost Tom Seaver – who eventually landed in the Yankees’ TV booth, of all places.
The Yankees made a habit of either rescuing or reviving a string of Mets stars – David Cone, Darryl Strawberry, Doc Gooden. Forgetting what became of him, when Alex Rodriguez became a free agent in 2000 he all but sent roses to his childhood team, the Mets, who never even made him an offer. Four years later he was a Yankee and hit the last 351 of his 696 home runs with them – a number 99 more than Strawberry’s 252, the Mets’ all-time leader.
Oh? And when the Mets signed the man who, right now, is arguably the best every-day player in their history (Carlos Beltran), Boras made sure to sour the joy by revealing that he tried to go back at the last minute and get the Yankees interested. That was an especially galling moment for the Mets.
Really, you could argue the first time the Mets got the better of the Yankees was when they hired Carlos Mendoza off of Aaron Boone’s staff right around this time last year. That was one thing. This would be something else. Tradition, history and a ballpark custom-built for him hint that the Yankees should still be the front-runner here for Soto. They should be favoried to win Sotovemeber.
Still, eff-you money is eff-you money.