I have friends who are Mets fans and I have friends who are Yankees fans. To them all, I can only say I’m sorry. Neither team will make the post-season no matter how well they have played the first eight weeks of the season.
I know, I know. This is probably not a good time to be making such a brash declaration, considering that each team just swept a three-game series, the Yankees from Kansas City, which began the series with the best record in the American League, the Mets from Philadelphia, maybe the National League’s weakest team.
Both teams look like they are in position to play in October beyond the last few days of the regular season, but looks can be deceiving. Four months remain in the season, giving them plenty of time to change their appearance.
The Mets ended their 7-0 game with Philadelphia Wednesday with a 27-21 record. Eleven of those wins came last month in a winning streak that catapulted the Mets into first place in the N.L. East with a 13-3 record.
Fueled by Matt Harvey’s sizzling 5-0 record, the Mets quickly built a 4 ½-game lead, beating up on some of the league’s weaker teams (I see the Mets as being somewhere in the middle). However, since their surprising early winning streak, the Mets have had a 14-18 record, offering what I believe is a clearer indication of who they really are.
The Mets have had the advantage of playing 29 of their first 48 games within their not particularly strong division, winning 20 of the games, including 8 over the Phillies.
The Nationals, the overwhelming favorites to win the division title, started slowly, winning only 7 of their first 20 games. Since that sluggish start, they have won 21 of 27, just in case the Mets needed to be reminded that they are not the class of the division.
I don’t see the Yankees as being any better or more successful than the Mets, even though they enjoyed first-place time for nearly a month and are back for another visit. But they are playing in a more forgiving division. While the Mets have Washington to contend with, the Yankees face no one who can dominate the A. L. East.
In both cases, the teams can’t count on wild-card invitations to the playoffs. The other divisions have enough good teams to fill those spots without one or two going to a New York address.
How have the Yankees and the Mets fallen into such a questionable position? The easy answer is the off-season planning of their general managers.
In the case of Brian Cashman, in his 18th year as the Yankees’ general manager, he has overstayed his welcome, or worse, the Yankees’ hierarchy has allowed him to overstay his welcome.
After the team failed to reach the post-season the past two years despite $455 million in payrolls, the Yankees had the perfect opportunity and reason to change general managers. George Steinbrenner would have done it. In fact, he would have done it before that juncture.
Instead of firing Cashman, Hal Steinbrenner gave him a three-year extension. He also told him he wanted to lower the payroll enough so the Yankees wouldn’t have to pay a payroll tax this year.
I am not aware that Steinbrenner or Cashman is a comedian, but the idea of slashing the Yankees’ luxury tax payroll below the $189 million threshold is baseball’s joke of the year.
Steinbrenner’s reluctance to fire Cashman, I suspect, stems from his resolve to be the anti-Steinbrenner. Hal grew up witnessing his father fire general managers, managers, coaches and assorted other employees, including , the woman employee who brought him the wrong sandwich for lunch.
The younger, more sensitive Steinbrenner was repulsed by his father’s behavior and actions and decided if he was going to be in charge of the Yankees, he would do it differently, 180 degrees differently.
Thus, Cashman survives and the Yankees sink into the quicksand of mediocrity.
A team with a $219 million payroll should run roughshod over the 2015 A.L. East but not the Cashman $219 million payroll team. One of Cashman’s problems is he has never had to operate on a level playing field. He has always simply outspent his competitors. That’s how Larry Lucchino, Boston’s chief executive, came to call the Yankees the Evil Empire.
When Cashman spent $423.5 million to sign free agents Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett in the same off-season and the Yankees won the World Series the following season, he was lauded for his efforts. However, no other general manager gets the opportunity to spend $423.5 million on three free agents within four weeks.
It’s another matter when Cashman’s ability to spend is curtailed or there are no standout free agents on the market.
Cashman had known for at least a year that Derek Jeter would retire after the 2014 season. The Yankees had already lost Robinson Cano as a free agent. They needed a shortstop and a second baseman. Without them, a lot of balls would get through the infield.
Cashman used a three-team trade to fill the gap at shortstop, acquiring Didi Gregorius, and he signed free-agent Stephen Drew to play second. They have not made an impact offensively, Gregorius hitting .211, Drew .167. On Wednesday the 25-year-old Gregorius committed his sixth error of the season, placing him among the league’s five most error-prone shortstops.
Drew has yet to make an error, but third baseman Chase Headley has made 10 errors, the most for anyone at that position. Cashman gave Headley $52 million for four years before knowing if Alex Rodriguez could play third after his year-long suspension.
Maybe it would have been a stretch for Rodriguez to reclaim third, but Cashman and manager Joe Girardi basically wrote off A-Rod, too, as a hitter, saying he would have to prove he could play again.
Proof? They want proof? Without Rodriguez, the Yankees would more likely be in last place than first. Like him or not, the Yankees have to thank their good fortune to have Rodriguez back in their lineup with his 11 home runs, 26 runs batted in, .276 batting average, .374 on-base percentage and .566 slugging percentage.
Despite A-Rod’s significant contribution, the Yankees refuse to give their designated hitter the $6 million bonus his contract says they owe him for matching Willie Mays’ career total of 660 home runs and creating a marketing opportunity.
It’s fortunate for Rodriguez that Cashman won’t be deciding if he gets a post-season share if the Yankees reach the post-season. If they don’t, it’ll be more likely Cashman’s doing than A-Rod’s.
As for Alderson, this is his fifth season as the Mets’ general manger, but he seems to have made little impact on the team’s progress. It appears, in fact, that he has forgotten what he taught Billy Beane when he mentored Beane as a protégé when they worked for the Oakland Athletics.
Alderson made a good addition this year by signing free-agent Michael Cuddyer, but Cuddyer is not a hitter who can tell his teammates to climb on his back and he’ll carry them to the promised land. He can make a significant contribution but don’t expect more.
For the most part, Alderson is playing with house money, players he inherited from the previous regime – starting pitchers Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Jonathan Niese, closer Jeurys Familia, first baseman Lucas Duda, second baseman Daniel Murphy, shortstop Wilmer Flores and center fielder Juan Lagares.
It remains unclear if Alderson continues to be hamstrung by the financial shortage that owner Fred Wilpon incurred by becoming involved in the massive Ponzi scheme of Bernie Madoff. Wilpon has said there are no economic problems, but Alderson has operated in a way that makes it seem as if there are.
The telltale sign will appear if the Mets are in genuine contention for a playoff spot as the July 31 non-waiver trading deadline approaches. If Alderson doesn’t add a hitter or two under those circumstances, we’ll know either the Mets really have no money to spend or Alderson is a fraud altogether.
Alderson has certainly not operated with the Mets the way Beane has with the low-revenue Athletics. Beane has had periodic success with his methods; Alderson can boast of no success with his with the Mets.
Interestingly, an executive who has had vast experience in baseball reminded me the other day of a point worth thinking about. When Alderson was Oakland’s general manager, this person recalled, the A’s were not the low-payroll franchise they became under Beane in the over-hyped “Moneyball” years.
When the A’s won the American League pennant for three successive seasons, 1988-89-90, I found, they had the sixth, fifth and third highest payrolls, respectively, in Major League Baseball. The dollar figures were smaller naturally than they are now, but everything is relative.
Under Alderson, the Mets’ payroll has been 5th, 11th, 17th, 21st and 21st.
This season the Mets’ strength is obviously their magnificent but young pitching. The Mets are so deep in starters that since Noah Syndergaard was summoned from the minors to replace the injured Dillon Gee, the rookie has been better than Gee was.
As good as the starters are, though, they can’t be expected to win games 1-0 and 2-1 on a regular basis, though they have done a pretty good job of it. Mets pitchers have limited opponents to two runs or fewer in 21 of the team’s 48 games, and the Mets have won 16 of the games.
If the pitchers can withstand and overcome the pressure of winning without tons of runs, the Mets could fool the skeptics (this skeptic at least), but I think just as important, Alderson will have to fool the Alderson skeptics.