Let’s Freak Out About the New York Mets (In a Good Way)

 

 Jason Gay

This is the second column in a row I have written about a New York City baseball franchise, which will invariably lead to the charge of East Coast bias, snobbery and ignorance of anything interesting that happens west of Hoboken, N.J.

I hear you. I will let you know you have an ally in the editor of this here Journal sports page, a die-hard fan of the Seattle Mariners. There are days he—the boss—wonders what the Mariners have to do to get covered in this section. Would Seattle have to finally make the playoffs? Win a World Series? Three in a row? If the Mariners won three World Series in a row, he fears his reporters might cover it thusly: YANKEES DON’T WIN. 

I’ll give it to you straight: This paper is published on the East Coast, the term “Wall Street” is in the name of the brand, and so it’s only logical that those “You’re All a Bunch of Amtrak-ridin’ East Coast Snots” accusations are tinged in a little bit of reality.

But what do you want me to do? The Mets look really, really good.  

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And they’re riding high at the moment, clear ahead in first place in the National League East, having just won four of five from their rival Atlanta Braves in a crucial August series—precisely the sort of crucial series the Mets historically have fumbled and blown and signaled their inevitable demise. 

Has Charlie Brown actually kicked the football? Or is there still Metsy Metsiness to come? 

Today, we chose to be optimists. The Mets indeed appear to be a quality baseball outfit, and there is nothing flukish about it. This is a team that has lavishly spent and dealt (the Mets have baseball’s second-highest payroll, behind only the Dodgers, and a notch in front of the Yankees) with the hope of being in this exact scenario. In fact a hardened baseball analyst would argue these 2022 Mets are supposed to be in this position. 

To which we can only respond: But they’re the Mets.

They’re not playing like the Mets right now. Entering Monday’s contest with Cincinnati, they’re 70-39, the same record as the crosstown Pinstripes, who were sadly swept over the weekend by St. Louis—Ha-ha that’s toooooo bad says every Mets fan who ever lived, Did you see the two games we took off the Yanks in July?  

The Mets took four out of five games against the Atlanta Braves.PHOTO: JULIA NIKHINSON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Mets have a pair of devastating aces (Max Scherzer and freshly returned Jacob deGrom), a Grown Adult Manager in Buck Showalter, a tank of a slugger in Pete Alonso, a bona fide closer in Edwin Diaz, beloved fan favorites like shortstop Francisco Lindor and recently-elected unofficial mayor of New York City, Daniel Vogelbach, plus seven or eight other players Mets fans will yell at me in the comments section for forgetting. 

And now, with this romp over defending World Series champion Atlanta, the Mets have a glow of swagger. This is notable unto itself. The Mets—especially Mets fans—aren’t supposed to have swagger. They are supposed to live with the fear that, at any minute, the universe is going to cave in and all their dreams will be reduced to rubble and dust. They’re supposed to be paranoid, jumpy, convinced the sport and planet is out to get them and that they’ll never really be respected as Team No. 1 in this two-team baseball town. 

But these are the New Mets. There’s a new owner, in the zillionaire investor Steve Cohen, who has dialed down his Twitter commentary and made commitments like $130 million bucks over three years (!) for Scherzer. There’s Showalter, 66, a veteran of the Yankees, Diamondbacks, Rangers and Orioles—an ornery lifer who seems to know more about the details of the sport than the umpires on the field and has charmed the region with Seinfeld-like rants about topics like why he changed the voice on his automobile’s GPS. (“The guy with the English accent was really pissing me off,” Showalter said. He switched over to the Cookie Monster. “You can’t get mad at Cookie Monster.”)

There’s a lightness to these Mets, a real reboot after seasons of gloom. You can see it in the joy for known quantities like Alonso and Diaz, as well as role players like reliever Adam Ottavino and Vogelbach, the latter an itinerant DH/first baseman who looks like he wandered in from a Nebraska Cornhuskers offensive line practice. 

There’s even cautious (I said cautious!) giddiness about the status of deGrom, who quietly makes a case as the most scintillating Mets pitcher ever—when he’s pitching, which is the issue, because deGrom is forever trudging off to the disabled list with a twinge or a tweak and sending Mets fans to the bourbon shelf. DeGrom, back after a shoulder blade injury, was close to perfect in Sunday’s finale versus the Braves—he was actually perfect for the first 5⅔ innings, until surrendering a two-run homer and calling it a day. 

The notion of the Mets carrying both a healthy deGrom and Scherzer (8-2, 1.98 ERA, 120 strikeouts) into October should be terrifying to the opposition, including those gaudy, NL-leading Dodgers. It’s one reason Mets fans feel…well, I really shouldn’t say upbeat, it’s more like, less likely to curse at the heavens and sob plaintively into a towel than they normally do, which is really saying something, especially as we reach mid-August.

This was a very long way of saying the Mets are worth watching. And it isn’t New York biased to say it. 

OK, fine, maybe a little. Guilty as charged.

The Yankees’ Dream Is a World Series. Their Nightmare Is Aaron Judge on the Mets.

 

A star outfielder bets on himself and delivers the season of a lifetime. Someone’s going to pay.

Jason Gay

I regret to inform the Yankee Haters of the Universe that the New York Yankees are again very good at baseball. 

Serious Yankee fans are edgy at the moment—the Pinstripes lost two of three to the Mighty Mariners this week, are under .500 since the All-Star break, and the starting pitching has been messy for a bit. But come on. It sounds like someone complaining about the cup holders in a Bentley convertible. 

After all, these Yankees are still a shiny 70-36, behind the Dodgers with the second-best record in the sport, and as of Friday morning, they lead the AL East by 10 1/2 games. Unless the entire roster suddenly forgets how to hit, field, and pitch (as the Red Sox did in July), they are a lock for the postseason, and then who knows what will happen. 

(The playoff part also makes Yankee fans edgy.)

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But I’m not here to talk about the Yankees. I’m here to talk about Aaron Judge.

It’s been a long time since someone’s had a spring and summer in New York City like Aaron Judge. Entering Friday’s play, the towering outfielder sits atop the major leagues with 43 home runs, 93 runs batted in, 89 runs scored, and a .676 slugging percentage, all while carrying a very solid batting average of .298. 

He is amid the best statistical season of his career, is a clear candidate for American League MVP, and is far and away the face of this generally-thriving Yankee club. He is the main character in a noisy city, swatting biscuits to the bleachers and having what appears to be the time of his life. 

He could also be a Met next season.

OK, OK, OK, that was a bit much. I apologize. That was uncool. Sorry.

Please walk your Yankee fan friends back in from the ledge.

But the fact is that Aaron Judge is set to hit free agency after this season. Judge passed on a $213.5 million, seven-year offer from New York and did the old-school courageous thing of spurning long-term security and betting on himself. He is playing on a one-season salary of $19 million in 2022, and there’s growing belief he could now wind up with a long-term deal approaching $300 million, or possibly more. 

Whether or not he signs with the Yankees is unclear. It sounds sacrilegious, but it’s possible he could wind up on the Mets, who have a splashy new owner in Steve Cohen and sit in first place themselves. The Mets—not the Yankees—have become the big spender in town, more Yankees than even the Yankees, and what better way to prove it than by luring the city’s most beloved current athlete?

Or maybe it’s the San Francisco Giants, the favorite team of Judge’s Northern California childhood. Or the freaking Red Sox. Or the freaking Dodgers. Or a freaking mystery team to be unveiled later. 

(Please walk your Yankee friends back in from the ledge again.) 

Important: Judge is saying he wants to stay in the Bronx. “I want to play for the Yankees. I want to be here for a long time,” he said not long ago, and there’s no reason to not believe him. There’s been no indication of secret footsie with other franchises, a la the Miami Dolphins and a certain aging QB. 

In another era, this would be a layup. The Yankees would outspend everyone because they were the Yankees, darn it. George Steinbrenner would have moaned and groaned, and probably undermined Judge in the press a hundred times, but there would be no way he’d have risked the chance of his best offensive player waltzing crosstown to Queens or up 95 to Boston.

But these are different days. The money is absurd, but there’s growing suspicion on long-term deals for anyone but the brightest young stars. Here, a complicating factor is Judge’s age. He’s 30, a baseball late bloomer. 

Aaron Judge is eligible for free agency after this season.PHOTO: JIM MCISAAC/GETTY IMAGES

Do the Yankees want to lock themselves into Aaron Judge until he’s 39 or 40? Judge is peaking late, but his durability—he’s missed chunks of several seasons—has to be factored. He is not a baby phenom like Juan Soto, 23, who recently turned down a 15-year, $440 million offer from Washington, and was abruptly traded to San Diego. 

Someone surely will pay Judge. Unlike basketball or football, there’s no salary cap in baseball. There’s a luxury tax, but a determined franchise will splurge.

Judge is the starriest player on the biggest franchise in baseball. He is the very definition of the guy who gets the big check. If Judge closes in on Babe Ruth’s single season home run mark of 60 and Roger Maris’s 61—he’s on pace for 66—it’s going to get deliciously tense in the Bronx. 

It’s August. The Yankees are in first place and Aaron Judge is hitting deliriously in pinstripes. 

But sure, it’s edgy. 

 

Play Ball! Lockout Ends as M.L.B. and Union Strike a Deal

After a long series of deadlines, threats and delays, a tentative agreement was reached and a full season should begin on April 7.




Fans will be able to crowd into ballparks to watch M.L.B. action next month when the season begins on April 7.Credit...Kyodo News via Getty Images




By James WagnerIt took 99 days of a contentious lockout, but baseball is back.


An agreement reached Thursday by Major League Baseball’s club owners and its players’ union after months of heated negotiations will allow for a full season, with opening day scheduled for April 7.

The five-year collective bargaining agreement will increase pay for young players and better incentivize teams to compete, among other provisions. Over the last two days, the deal was nearly derailed by a disagreement over creating a draft system for players overseas, but a compromise was struck that will be finalized later.

If the Lockout Makes Baseball Better, It Will Have Been Worth It

After tense negotiations, Major League Baseball and the players’ union both made gains in their desired areas. But more important, they avoided losses — of games and, potentially, their standing.




With the lockout over, Major League Baseball will begin its season on April 7.Credit...Gregory Bull/Associated Press



By Tyler Kepner
March 10, 2022


Now it is over, the second-longest work stoppage in major league history. Spring training will start this weekend in Florida and Arizona. Opening day will be April 7. The 30 teams will play the full 162 games, giving fans their six-month sporting companion, a daily habit no other sport can match.


The longest work stoppage was the 232-day strike from August 1994 to April 1995, which thankfully remains the sport’s most devastating self-inflicted wound. That labor dispute canceled a World Series, reversed a trend of booming attendance, led to the demise of baseball in Montreal and ultimately discouraged policing the rampant use of steroids, a scandal with its own grim consequences.



And it was all for nothing. The strike ended with a ruling by the future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, then a federal district court judge in Manhattan, who struck down the owners’ attempt to install a salary cap. The players then returned to work under the terms of the previous collective bargaining agreement. In the end, it was a fight to preserve the status quo.

The players’ stated goals, as articulated by Mets pitcher Max Scherzer, a top union leader, were to prevent the luxury-tax threshold from functioning as a salary cap; to help young players realize their market value; to discourage teams from manipulating players’ service time; and to eliminate the incentives for teams to tank as a winning strategy. They made gains in all those areas.

The owners’ goals were mainly to make more money, ostensibly to finance the gains the players wanted. They created new revenue streams by expanding the playoffs to 12 teams and — there’s no other way to say this — debasing players’ uniforms and helmets with advertising patches and decals.



Commissioner Rob Manfred said.Credit...Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press


Most of the union members are not as rich as you may think; the median salary for M.L.B. players last season was $1.15 million, down from $1.65 million in Manfred’s first year in office.t is encouraging, then, that the minimum salary ($570,500 in 2021) will rise in this agreement, from $700,000 this year to $780,000 in 2026. The luxury-tax threshold, which was $210 million last season, will also rise, from $230 million this season to $244 million in 2026. The owners’ franchises are exploding in value, and media-rights deals continue to rise. It is only fair that players at both ends of the salary scale get to share in it

The decline in earning power for players in the middle — solid veterans whose production could perhaps be replaced by a rookie — might be accelerated in this deal. There are always unintended consequences. But there seem to be some aspects that are bound to make the game better.


Teams often hold top prospects in the minors in an effort to squeeze an extra year of service time from them before they reach free agency. Now, if a player places in the top two in voting for Rookie of the Year, he gets a full year of service time, no matter when he was promoted. That’s fair. So are the limits on the number of times a player can be optioned within a season, and the $50 million merit-based bonus pool to be distributed to players not yet eligible for arbitration.

Most encouraging, perhaps: the creation in 2023 of a joint committee, including four active players, an umpire, and six people selected by M.L.B., to consider rule changes like bigger bases [First and foremost, MLB believes making the bases bigger will lead to less injuries on the basepaths. It's a logical argument: the bigger the base, the more space runners will have to slide around defenders. Therefore, the league is hoping there will be less collisions between runners and defenders. MLB also hopes the bigger bases will lead to an increase in stolen bases]., a pitch clock, infield shifts and the automatic strike zone.

Major League Baseball is considering new technology to take those calls out of human hands. What some are calling "robot umpires" are now being tested in the minor leagues and could offer a glimpse into baseball's future.

When Major League Baseball wants to audition a new idea, they bring it to the Atlantic League. Look closely and you'll see the pitching mound has been moved back a foot farther from home plate to make it easier to hit. The bases are three inches wider than normal to avoid collisions.

But it's an iPhone and a cord stretching to the ear of the home plate umpire that might truly change the change-resistant sport. A sensor above home plate detects the pitch location and relays the data to a device, which then sends an audio file into the ear of the home plate umpire, telling him to call a "ball" or "strike."

There are other logical wrinkles, like the universal designated hitter (nobody wants their favorite pitcher to hurt himself swinging a bat or running the bases) and a lottery for the top six spots in the draft, so the same team cannot guarantee itself the top pick by staying lousy for several years.

News the MLB used 2 types of baseballs in 2021 throws curveball into labor talks

 NPR

Updated December 2, 20217:13 AM ET 

BECKY SULLIVAN

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Freddie Freeman of the Atlanta Braves hits a home run .

Carmen Mandato/Getty Images

As Major League Baseball's players and owners begin in the league's first work stoppage since the mid-1990s, a new published report has accused the league of secretly using two different baseballs during the 2021 season, potentially affecting players' performance and game outcomes.

The current collective bargaining agreement between players and owners expired Wednesday at 11:59 p.m. ET. The two sides are not close to an agreement, according to reports.

Without an extension of the current contract, team owners triggered a lockout, the owners' version of a strike.

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Lockout looms as Major League Baseball contract is set to expire

It's the league's first work stoppage since the dramatic strike of the mid-1990s that led to the cancellation of the 1994 World Series.

Because baseball is in its offseason, a lockout's effects would be limited to offseason roster transactions, like free agency signings, and minor player actions like physicals. The two sides have more than two months to reach a deal before a lockout would affect spring training, which is slated to begin in February.

Among the heated issues are player pay and competitive balance. Average salaries have fallen in recent years due to teams leaning on cheaper, younger players whose salaries are under greater team control. The median salary has dropped about 30% since 2015, according to The Associated Press.

A new report says the league used two different balls last season

Now a wrench has been thrown into the conversation: A new report by Business Insider accuses the league of using two different baseballs throughout the 2021 season — without the knowledge of players or teams.

The report draws on research by Meredith Wills, an astrophysicist and data scientist who in recent years has conducted her own independent studies of baseballs used in major league games.

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NBA stars are missing 3-pointers this season. Is a new ball really to blame?

In a statement, the league acknowledged that it had used two different balls and blamed differences on production difficulties caused by the pandemic.

"Generally, balls are produced 6-12 months prior to being used in a game. Because Rawlings was forced to reduce capacity at its manufacturing facility due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the supply of re-centered baseballs was not sufficient to cover the entirety of the 2021 season. To address this issue, Rawlings incorporated excess inventory into its shipments to Clubs to provide a full complement of baseballs for the 2021 season," the statement said, adding that the players' union had been informed of the decision.

The MLB Players' Association declined to comment.

The MLB has co-owned Rawlings, the company that manufactures its baseballs, since 2018.

A change in baseballs can undermine statistics

Ahead of the 2021 season, the league announced it would introduce a new baseball: one with a lighter, less bouncy construction designed to cut down on the number of home runs.

But in sampling hundreds of baseballs collected from 15 stadiums, Wills found that roughly half of the balls used this season conformed with the old standards, meaning they were heavier and could be hit farther.

And the balls' batch numbers indicated that some of the older, heavier model had been manufactured after the league's announcement that it would move to a lighter ball — including every ball that had been produced after January 2021. That finding seemingly contradicts the league's suggestion that any discrepancies were due to excess supply from 2020. An MLB spokesperson declined to comment further.

In a league where statistics inform practically every decision made by teams — who plays, who gets signed, how much players are able to earn — the revelation that the league had used two different balls, one of which flies farther, prompted frustration among the players contacted by Business Insider.

"Everything in this game is based on your statistics," said Adam Ottavino, a free agent who last pitched with the Boston Red Sox. "There's a million of them. If the variables are being changed out from underneath you and in an unfair way, that sheds doubt on every statistic that you have."

Accusations that the league has "juiced" baseballs have hung around for years

Baseball construction has been hotly debated in the sport in recent years as home runs totals began to spike. After players hit a record 6,105 home runs in 2017, the MLB commissioned a group of academics to help investigate why.

Accusations that the league was "juicing" baseballs picked up steam in 2019 when players hit an eye-popping 6,776 home runs — an 11% increase over the record set just two years before.

THE TWO-WAY

What's up with all the home runs? MLB hired scientists. Here's what they found out

Practically every star pitcher, including Justin Verlander, who then pitched for the Houston Astros, and Jacob deGrom of the New York Mets, voiced suspicions or questions that season.

"With the ball changing as much as it has over the past handful of years, the players have had no say in that whatsoever," said then-Washington Nationals ace Max Scherzer, speaking to The New York Times in 2019. "We're left, as players, wondering why the ball can change that much, that fast, and have that big of a result."

Since then, home runs have dipped, but only slightly. In 2021, players hit 5,944 home runs — fewer than 2019 and 2017, but still the third highest total of all time. In the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, players hit just 2,304 home runs but did so at a clip of 1.28 per game, a rate lower than 2019 but comparable to 2017.