Yankees And The Mets: A Tale Of Two Diverging Organizations

The Yankees and Mets have been fighting for the back pages of New York newspapers since 1962. In 2017, the Mets were supposed to be the talk of the town, and they are. But not for all the right reasons. Why is that?

The Yankees send a team out to begin the 2017 season in a division packed with talent and three other teams which, on paper at least, and better than they are. And the Mets send their team out there in a division in which their only competition are the Nationals. And yet, at the end of April, the Yankees are playing .600 baseball while the Mets have collapsed to last place and are playing .400 baseball. What’s up with that?

As with Everything, You Start At The Top

The Yankees have Brian Cashman, and the Mets don’t. The Yankees have a vision of their future, and the Mets don’t. The Yankees have a plan to execute that vision, while the Mets do not.

The Yankees have a managing partner in Hal Steinbrenner who, while not as loose with the purse strings as his dad was, will never hold his team back from spending money to make money, provided that Cashman can convince him it makes baseball sense to do so.

Meanwhile, over in Queens, the Mets have the Wilpon Brothers who once thought it would be a good idea to invest a good chunk of their fortune with Bernie Madoff.  And since then have done everything but stand in the tunnel of the Seventh Avenue subway begging for a handout from MLB while they “get their finances in order.”

Sure, they forked over the money to sign Yoenis Cespedes, but that was only because they were rightfully blackmailed by the Mets fan base who, if the money hadn’t been forthcoming, would have nailed them to a cross on Lefferts Boulevard.

The Yankees have an idea while the Mets don’t have a clue. And it’s seen here in this video from a full six months ago:

And it’s not like the Yankees fan base is totally in love with Cashman & Co. which, much to the chagrin of many Bomber fans stuck to its guns in sending Gleyber Torres down, even though there was a job wide open for him in the absence of Didi Gregorius.

Is Girardi That Much Better Than Collins?

Hardly. The only difference between them is who signs their checks. Terry Collins is a big league major league manager. He is not your run of the mill gotta have someone in that spot type person. He’s what they call a baseball lifer, and he knows the game inside and out. Unlike Joe Girardi, though, he doesn’t have the support of anyone above him.

Sandy Alderson made his mark in the game as the General Manager of the Oakland A’s from 1983-1997, a full two decades removed from today. He inherited nearly all of the Mets dynamic starting staff from his predecessor with the Mets, Omar Minaya, and is rightly given credit for the trade that brought Noah Syndergaard to the team, but is still stuck in the mud of hoping that the “injuries will go away” and the world will be beautiful.

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And while Girardi has been able to take what the Lord has given him to mold a team that, at least in the first month of the season, is “in the game.” Meanwhile, Collins is stuck with players like Jose Reyes, a castoff by everyone following his domestic abuse suspension, and  Curtis Granderson, who is not meant to play in the National League and Alderson should have known it.

Add to that Jay Bruce who Alderson decided was the answer to the Mets prayers last year, coupled with players who seem to get injured merely by walking up the steps of the dugout to get to home plate, and Collins has himself one hell of a mess.

Terry Collins is about to blow a fuse, nd I might be missing it as I write this, but the Mets were just beaten again today by the Atlanta Braves. They’ve now lost ten of their last eleven and have reached the bottom of the NL East.

Matt Harvey, the so-called “Dark Knight”, was hardly that today as he surrendered five walks with three of them crossing the plate.

By rights, and the way thinks supposedly lined up before the season, the Yankees and Joe Girardi should have been the ones, taking the heat, but they’re not. Sooner or later, if this keeps up, Terry Collins is going to be hung out to dry by the Mets organization. And if it happens, that will be a sad day for baseball.

 Re-Occurring Injuries. Mets Yes, Yankees No

With the possible exception of James Kaprielian, with whom the Yankees might have bought into his bravado a bit too much, Yankees players are nursed until they are one-hundred percent ready to play again. Didi Gregorius, for example, is slated to return to the team tomorrow, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s the Yankees regular shortstop from here on in.

Yankees fans wouldn’t allow this kind of ineptitude and mismanagement at the top without screaming and kicking until something was done to change things

Didi Gregorius, for example, is slated to return to the team tomorrow, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s the Yankees regular shortstop from here on in. Girardi will play him at the same time that he is monitored closely by the organization.

Yeonis Cespedes, on the other hand, has this little twinge here that causes him to sit out a series, but then he comes back today only to be removed from the game with another little twinge that’s gotta just drive Collins crazy.

Similarly, Lucas Duda is in and out of the lineup with ongoing back issues or whatever, and the Mets have no one to replace him, so they turn to Jay Bruce who played all of one game in his career at first base, Meanwhile, Bruce has all he can handle to just attain the offensive goals the Mets have set for him.

In contrast to that, Gary Sanchez goes down for a significant number of games and Austin Romine steps into handling, not only the pitching staff with excellence but the bat as well as a force in the lineup.

On the part of the Yankees, this is all by design and planning. For the Mets, it’s only an example of an organization that is floundering from one day to the next with no idea as to where they are heading, or where the next lifeboat might be sitting.

What If The Roles Were Reversed?

It has always escaped me why Mets fans tolerate this. Yankees fans wouldn’t allow this kind of ineptitude and mismanagement at the top without screaming and kicking until something was done to change things (for good!).

Yankees Aaron Judge and the Sound of Real Power

Yankees Aaron Judge is different. His swings produce many of the same sounds. But they can signal very different outcomes.

And while the Mets still have a chance to right their season and the Yankees could easily find a few hurdles to jump over as the season moves along, which team, if your life depended on it, would you bet will weather the storm of the 2017 season, bringing their fans more joy than sadness by the end of September?