Keidel: Told You So! Mets Emerging As Kings Of N.Y. Baseball
By Jason Keidel
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As we well know, four months ago I wrote a piece proclaiming the Mets were about to leapfrog the Yanks as New York's No. 1 baseball club.
I was called all manner of moron, laughed out of the ballpark, chided in chat rooms, my likeness used as a dartboard, while ordered to quit my five-year post with CBS, and surrender my press pass posthaste.
One troll ... um ... fan recently said of me, on this site: "Keidel's blather should be an embarrassment to WFAN. but the fact that they continue to post his drivel is evidence that they have no shame."
Indeed.
We can wonder why some folks have such visceral, violent reactions to a harmless sports topic. But that kind of emotion and testosterone-fueled vigor is what keeps WFAN and so many sports websites in business. It's somewhat silly, if not sometimes troubling, but New Yorkers, for all our warts, don't lack passion. It's just that this epic fervor occasionally obscures all sense of logic. And if you're at all objective you shouldn't be shocked that the Yanks are fighting for their divisional destiny.
Brian Kenny from MLB Network was recently on WFAN -- with Mark Malusis, I believe -- and said he liked the Blue Jays to win the AL East, particularly since they made the best deadline deals of the young century, gobbling up David Price and Troy Tulowitzki.
His logic was simple: Toronto is a better ball club. He said the Bombers have been overachieving most of the season and, if you look at their rosters objectively, the best squad in the AL East plays west of the Hudson. He also pointed to Toronto's stratospheric run differential, which has always been among the best in baseball, yet didn't quite reflect their record.
Add Tulowitzki to an already nuclear lineup that features Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista, and Price to a coalescing pitching staff, and you've got a franchise flowering at the exactly right time.
What was lost on the pinstriped minions and A-Rod Kool-Aid addicts is that baseball's interminable season is so long it allows for almost infinite acts in a single-season drama. Remember when the Twins were taking baseball by storm? Paul Molitor, prodigal son, had restored the mojo that Ron Gardenhire had for so long then lost his last few years. On June 1 they were 30-19, slightly ahead of the revived Royals. Since then, they've gone 34-42, while Kansas City is 48-29.
And the Yanks, of course, had a cozy 5 1/2 game lead on Toronto just a month ago. One radio host cited all kinds of stats, assuring us the Yanks had never blown such a lead after the All-Star break. (There also had never been a team to blow a 3-0 playoff series lead.)
Toronto was in fourth place back on June 1, at 23-29. Since then, they've gone 48-26, winning at a .648 clip. That's the second-best mark in the majors, just behind another team with a retro, 1992 appeal -- the Pittsburgh Pirates, who are 48-25, winning at a tornadic .658 rate. And since that date, the Blue Jays have outscored their opponents by 140 runs, easily the best in baseball.
The newly minted Mets? They were 29-23 on the first of June, tied with Washington for first place in the NL East. Since then, they have gone 41-33, while the sputtering Nationals are 35-40. So while one N.Y. team still leads its division by over five games it's not who you would have assumed just a few weeks ago. Indeed, the Mets now enjoy their biggest bulge of the season, stretching their NL East lead to 6 1/2 games.
And you can't say the Mets are merely a beneficiary of an anemic division. They've now caught and, for the moment, bested the Bronx Bombers' record, even if by one game. It all leads up to an essential series in Flushing on September 18, when the Mets host the Yanks.
The Mets aren't just lounging, waiting for something good or bad to befall them. They were bulls in the trade market, dealing for several players who have helped them immediately, especially Yoenis Cespedes - who got his nth clutch hit in the ninth inning last night, sealing the Mets' sixth straight win. They also have the best young pitching staff in the sport, which brings much mojo, clarity and identity.
Conversely, the Yankees look like an aging, sagging team with no young buck to blast them out of this funk. Who are they? And what are they? With each loss they look lost. They made no moves to fortify their roster. The Mets are getting stronger, more august in August, while the Yanks look more felines than canines in the dog days.
Unlike most seasons, when hopping the Harlem River meant a de facto home game for the Yanks, this series will be different, because the teams are different. The Metropolitans are suddenly cosmopolitan, and could emerge from Queens as the Kings of New York baseball.
Follow Jason on Twitter @JasonKeidel
