At the end of the month when the big news was Phil Jackson returning to New York City, with what you have to say is a much better job than he had nearly 50 years ago when he first hit town, the news becomes baseball on Monday, a little after 1 o’clock in the afternoon. Baseball returns to New York on Monday, Citi Field, Mets against the Nationals.
Opening Day is always supposed to be about renewal, it’s in all the papers every year. But it is different with the Mets this time. It is about revival. They will be trying to answer a simple question for their fans, who have not seen their team make a run at the postseason in five years:
Can they be any good?
Can they build on being a .500 team over the last 100 games of last season, be in play for a wild card on Sept. 1; can they do all of that without Matt Harvey and spending more than $ 100 million less on baseball players this season than the Yankees have?
With the Yankees, who begin their season in Houston on Tuesday and don’t return to the city until next week, there is a much more interesting question, after a winter when they committed a rather epic amount of money — round it off to a half-billion, just so you don’t make yourself dizzy — on new baseball players:
Just how good are they, exactly?
We will begin to find out this week if spending that kind of money can put you back on top of the AL East, or at least back into the playoffs. Because if it doesn’t, after they’ve paid more than $ 150 million to Jacoby Ellsbury and laid out around $ 175 million to bring Masahiro Tanaka to the new Stadium, then what does that say about the Yankees’ business model?
The Mets have a farm system, do they ever. But their fans are more impatient than ever for it to pay off for them.
The last time they spent this kind of money in an offseason, after not making the playoffs in 2008, they won the World Series. They paid big for CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira and A.J. Burnett and won it all. This time the names are Ellsbury, Tanaka, Beltran, McCann. They are here because to say that the Yankee farm system hasn’t been flush lately is like saying that the Knicks aren’t exactly the Marines when it comes to playing defense.
So five years later, they spend even more in this offseason than they did the last time they didn’t make the playoffs. And we will see, with Kelly Johnson at third and Brian Roberts at second and a shortstop about to turn 40 and Teixeira at 34 coming back from his own lost season because of a bum wrist, if another rather insane amount of money makes them better than the Red Sox, the Rays, the Orioles, even the Blue Jays.
You would think it could. And should. Only there is no guarantee that it actually will. At which point Hal Steinbrenner might finally want to ask himself just how much of a bang he is getting for his buck, wonder if there might be a better way to keep the money train running up to the Bronx the way the 4 train does.
The Mets have a farm system, do they ever. But their fans are more impatient than ever for it to pay off for them, to make them want to come running back to Citi Field, even without Matt Harvey on the mound. And by the way? If you think subtracting a phenom like Harvey isn’t a huge deal, subtract the Yankees’ new phenom, Tanaka, from their roster and see what you think of their prospects this season.
The Yankees are more intriguing than ever, because of the questions about the infield, about the bullpen, about the closer and, as always, about age. This is Jeter’s last season. Teixeira has to show that he isn’t breaking down on his side of the infield the way A-Rod was on his. And if you have any idea what they’re going to get out of the injury-prone Roberts and a third baseman who has played all of 16 games at third in his big league career the way Johnson has, send up a flare on Twitter.
The Yankees have improved. But when you spend like that, you better at least be buying a wild card, right?
There is absolutely no guarantee that money buys you the World Series in baseball, the Yankees have proven that over the past 14 years, during which they have outspent the world to win that one Series in ’09. But if they don’t make it to October after spending the way they did on this new batch of new guys, just where are they, as an Evil Empire and an attraction and as a television series on YES?
They sure do look a lot better this season than they did last season, when everybody started getting hurt, and people around here acted as if this that were some kind of national tragedy. Maybe that’s why when Brian Cashman talked about a “market correction” with last year’s Orioles after they’d won all those one-run games in 2012, Buck Showalter tweaked Cashman’s own team this way:
“The Yankees had some challenges with that last year, as they talk about a lot.”
You know how it goes. Everything is bigger here, even adversity. So to make sure that this season isn’t a repeat of last season, the Yankees did what they do best, especially after A-Rod’s deal came off the books. They went on a half-billion shopping spree!
They’ve improved. But when you spend like that, you better at least be buying a wild card, right? The Yankees won 85 games last season and finished in a tie for third with Buck’s Orioles. How much higher do they finish this season?
Do they even finish higher in their division than the Mets will finish in theirs?
Again, two pretty basic questions now that baseball comes back to New York: Are the Mets any good?
And how good is this year’s $ 200-million edition of the Yankees?
Johnny Football, Robbie’s plight & Christie’s parade
-Anybody who passes on Johnny Football, I’m sorry, is going to be sorry.
If you’re keeping score at home, the Angels keep 22-year-old Mike Trout on essentially the same deal that the Yankees had to give 30-year-old Jacoby Ellsbury.
Michigan State against Virginia late Friday night and into Saturday morning at the Garden looked like a rock fight.
I’m just relieved that one of the teams managed to get a final score into the 60s, in this time when the sport too often provides offense out of the 1940s.
In baseball, when there’s a low-scoring game, it’s a pitchers’ duel.
In college hoops, it’s a coaches’ duel, another one of those games where, in the words of Jay Bilas, it looks as if the guy at the bench is coaching every single dribble.
-It sounds as if Robbie Cano is missing the big, bad city already, doesn’t it?
Hey, with the money the Mariners paid him, those 10 years in the Great Northwest will probably fly by.
Am I supposed to be more interested in where Matt Harvey does his rehab?
Louisville’s Luke Hancock twice saved his team at the Final Four last year, on the way to the Cardinals winning the national championship, and the kid nearly did it again on Friday night against Kentucky.
There is a terrific piece about David Wright, written by Rafi Kohan, in the new New York Observer.
The amazing thing about Ike Davis, who is fighting for a job and for his Mets career, is that he just turned 27 a week or so ago.
-It may turn out that Chris Christie was telling the truth all along, and had no prior knowledge of those lane closings on the George Washington Bridge last September.
But there is a ways to go before we decide that, and a couple of real investigations, one being handled from the state legislature in Jersey and one being handled by the state’s Attorney General, neither one of them resembling that pillow fight fronted by former Giuliani guy Randy Mastro that came out the other day.
Mastro’s people didn’t get to interview David Samson, who resigned from the Port Authority Friday in one of those crazy timing coincidences you get in life sometimes.
Didn’t interview Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s former chief of staff and the one who sent the email about how it was time for some traffic in Fort Lee.
Didn’t get answers from David Wildstein, another Christie appointee to the Port Authority.
Didn’t get answers from other former Christie sidemen like Bill Stepien and Bill Baroni.
Christie still acted as if it was the most perfect document since the Constitution and immediately did a victory lap through cable and network TV, to the point where you expected him to show up with Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith after Friday night’s doubleheader in the NCAAs.
-Good for baseball for tightening up its drug policy even more, which means 80 games for a first offense and a full season for a second and no postseason for anybody who gets clipped during the regular season.
Goran Dragic of the Suns, the greatest player in the NBA this season discussed the least, scored 32 points in 32 minutes against the Knicks Friday night, and then had this to say afterward:
“They didn’t play good defense, so tonight we could get everything that we want. We swing the ball two and three times, I’m sure we get an open guy.”
So you get the deal, right?
In the old days, the Knicks found the open man.
Now they just keep making one for the other team.
Incidentally?
After the Knicks beat the Pacers at the Garden with Phil Jackson in the stands, you got the idea from the coverage that it was Phil’s presence alone that carried the Knicks across the finish line, like he was practically coaching the team.
So what I’ve been trying to figure out this week is whose fault it was when the Knicks gave up 51 third-quarter points to the Lakers, since the big guy was in Staples Center, too.
I mean, if he gets the win against the Pacers, who’s supposed to get the loss against the Lakers — his squeeze Jeanie Buss?
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“The Mike Lupica Show” is heard Monday through Friday at noon and Sunday at 9 a.m. on ESPN-98.7.
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