Mets stealing from Yankees’ dynasty to help Buck Showalter is on point

The New York Yankees of the 1990s still remain the model dynasty for modern baseball well over 20 years later.

A fertile farm system providing a core of pieces (a Core of Four, if you will, which should actually be five, legally), around which the rich ownership group can spend on supplementary stars? Yup, that’s the name of the game.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?), it’s not that easy. You can’t just “pull a Yankees”; there hasn’t been a repeat champion since the 2000 Bombers, despite the Dodgers’ best efforts for well over a decade.

That’s why it’s no surprise that baseball’s latest big spender, from across the bridge, is pulling out all the stops to give their latest spree a Yankees tint.

Steve Cohen and the New York Mets added Buck Showalter with a purpose: to lend some well-regarded gravitas to their locker room, while readily admitting they haven’t reached contender status yet (after all, did you watch 2021?).

And, yes, the goal was also clearly to embrace the Yankees influence, which was made even more obvious when Glenn Sherlock was brought in to be the Mets’ bench coach and Buck’s right-hand man (once again).

Steve Cohen’s Mets look like Gene Michael’s Yankees, which is cool.

Now, before Mets fans get all pre-salty and claim Yankees fans are going to start to say their team couldn’t truly become successful until they started copying the Yanks’ blueprint … yes, we are absolutely going to start saying that.

It’s just the kind of thing you have to accept hearing after you’ve 100% decided to copy the Yankees’ blueprint. Do you want to win, or do you want to win without accusations of buying championships and being second to the party? Do you care anymore how you win? Because, pretty soon, you’ll realize it’s the only way, and Showalter and Sherlock are the perfect pair to usher in an air of legitimacy from a past dynastic regime.

Yes, even though Showalter was gone by the time everything clicked.

Once you add in the Eric Chavez poaching — he was a Yankee for about three days before Cohen decided he had to have him — and it’s obvious the Mets aren’t ignoring what’s going on in the Bronx whatsoever. They want to make the Yankees the little brother — in their own image, of course.

Will it work? Well, no one’s been able to replicate the dynasty yet in 25 years, and Showalter was jettisoned before the vision even came to fruition.

We don’t blame Cohen for taking inspiration from the best, though, even if it makes crosstown trades all the more unlikely in the years to come.

5 worst contracts in modern New York Yankees history

The New York Yankees have imported some free agent superstars in their day! They've also brought in some absolute disasters.