Keidel: The Mets — Not The Yankees — Are The Core Of The Big Apple
By Jason Keidel
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Someone wrote on these here pages that the New York Yankees would suddenly and succinctly slide down the NYC totem pole, and become the second-best baseball club in Gotham. He said the Yankees were less interesting, less talented and more tormented than the Mets.
He was called all manner of moron for making these assertions, yet another glorified blogger under the banner of real-world media. It was yet another sign of media decay, the line forever blurred between fandom and real reportage.
But then the season started, and the Kool-Aid Cadre was all bollixed up, for the writer was Wright, er, right.
The Mets -- yes, your 11-3 Mets -- are indeed the core of the Big Apple. They are younger, hungrier and better. They have Matt Harvey, the Dark Night of Gotham, ready to rule the National League for a decade.
The Yanks have CC Sabathia, he of the heft that bends the scale to a perilous place, 10,000 pitches into his career; his once-divine arm in tatters, barely breaking a wet paper bag with his fastball.
The Mets have Jacob deGrom, who is ready to follow Harvey into the dawn of a dominant epoch.
The Yanks have Masahiro Tanaka, who is one awkward splitter from shredding his already torn elbow, a twinge from Tommy John.
The Mets have hope and youth and energy.
The Yanks have baseball geriatrics on the back-end of bloated deals.
The Mets have David Wright as the face of the franchise.
The Yanks have A-Rod, who appropriately plays -- well, played -- the hot corner, a metaphor for his entire career. Sure, Rodriguez is sizzling to start the season, but that only adds to the irony and melodrama that make up the 2015 Yankees, a pinstriped horse with no name, identity or future.
Sure, life is cyclical. There was no way the Yankees could always rule the AL East, have their mail forever forwarded to October.
But while the Yankees toil to reach mediocrity, the Mets are tearing up the sport, one victory from 10 straight, a mark they haven't equaled since 2008.
Joba Chamberlain was on with Joe & Evan on Wednesday, and it was impossible not to take the stroll with him down Memory Blvd. Just the year before '08, Chamberlain had morphed from a burly, bullpen farmhand into a star, a phenom, a stroke of pinstriped legend.
He was the original Linsanity. Every appearance was an event. Chamberlain ambled onto the mound like the Hulk, chucked lighting at home plate and twirled while pumping his fist, his pirouette his signature celebration.
Then that biblical swarm of midges ended his night, his playoffs, and, essentially, his career as a Yankee.
You know the rest. The Yankees got cute with the best reliever in baseball, slapping Chamberlain with those ridiculous "Joba Rules," equal parts pitch count and pop psychology. He personally spun out of control after that, and thus the Chamberlain era ended as starkly and darkly as it began.
Yessir. While the Bronx Bombers keep one nostril above .500, the Mets are making the world take notice.
And who's laughing all the way to bed? Omar Minaya. The media mashed the former Mets GM on his way to the unemployment line, while Brian Cashman kept his job and kept getting contract extensions.
But if you read Joel Sherman's fine piece over the weekend, you'd see that the Mets have Minaya to thank for their glowing start and their glittering future.
"The Mets were building their dreams this spring on what Harvey and Jacob deGrom could give them out of the rotation," he wrote. "They extended the contract of Juan Lagares because they saw him as a cornerstone on the rise and, for the same reason, tried to extend Lucas Duda. You know what those four players have in common? Minaya brought them to the Mets.
"The 2015 Mets remain, at the least, as much a reflection on their last GM as their current one. Duda, Daniel Murphy, Wilmer Flores, Lagares, Kirk Nieuwenhuis, Ruben Tejada, Jeurys Familia, Bobby Parnell, the now-suspended Jenrry Mejia and four-fifths of the rotation — Harvey, deGrom, Dillon Gee and Jon Niese — were brought in by Minaya, and David Wright was drafted when Minaya was the assistant GM."
Oh, and in case you wonder about Zack Wheeler, he was obtained in a trade. The piece the Mets used to swing that deal -- Carlos Beltran -- was also a Minaya acquisition.
The Mets may also have the next great manager in the employ -- Wally Backman.
The Yanks have Joe Girardi, who seems to have aged two decades in his eight years as Yankees skipper. There's nothing wrong with G.I. Joe, at all. But don't you get the sense his time has come? Fresh blood just feels warranted.
The Yankees bought, er, won the 2009 World Series. And they've done nothing to give you the sense they're on the upswing. They're going to miss the playoffs for the third straight season, their longest such streak in about 25 years.
That's probably more on Cashman, who inherited an empire from Bob Watson and Stick Michael. Indeed, the Yankees were so fertile with fresh talent that they rode the Core Four for another 15 years when Cashman assumed the helm, adding no young talent to the team while swinging for the fences with his annual free-agent binges.
Sandy Alderson is hardly Branch Rickey, as Sherman points out. And Terry Collins is hardly Billy Martin. After decades in baseball, the Mets' manager is basically a .500 manager.
And, as we know, Fred Wilpon isn't exactly Robert Kraft. But the holy trinity of owner/manager/general manager is finally stable, and competent enough to get out of the way of all this talent.
The Mets have electric arms, from Harvey down to the deep folds of the farm system. Even the Mets' best pitching prospect, Steven Matz, was drafted by Minaya.
When was the last time the Yankees produced a pitching prodigy? Not since Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera has the Yankees' farm system spawned a stud. And not since Robinson Cano has an All-Star started his career in the Bronx. Shake a few trees from the Mets system and all kinds of colorful fruit drops down on the diamond.
If you remember the writer who said all this would happen, tip your cap to him. Or, if you're a Twitter Troll -- and chances are that you are -- at least leave him be for a few hours.
We can debate for hours about who's more responsible for the Mets' resurgence. But we can't debate that it exists. Or that the Mets are the best in the five boroughs.
Follow Jason on Twitter @JasonKeidel.
