Yankees amazing and inconceivable season at the 40-game mark

The Yankees pitching staff is better and more promising than the Mets

Could you imagine if anyone had posited that over the off-season? My editors barely put up with me now; one more article about the pun-pocalypse and I’ll be writing for the Rising Apple. Had I the temerity to write an article in which I suggested the current reality, the readers would have plotzed.

And they would have been right to. I did not write such an article because I never, ever imagined it could be true. The Yankees pitching staff has a 3.98 ERA, which makes them sixth in the AL. The Mets pitching staff has a flat 5 ERA and is ranked last in the NL. And the AL has a lot more hitting in it, skewing the comparison even more.

Overall, the Yankees have the tenth best staff, and the Mets have the 30^th. Noah Syndergaard has the best stuff of anyone on either team but has just suffered a serious injury. Luis Severino has not had any similar problems yet. Jacob deGrom has a worse ERA (3.56) than Pineda and has a hard time getting out of the sixth inning. Matt Harvey has gone from the Dark Knight to a dark hole in the rotation.

I am not saying that the Yankees cannot fall apart and the Mets cannot rebound, perhaps meeting somewhere in the middle. But this is a review of the season to date, and right now all of the above is true. And that is inconceivable.