COLUMN: New York Baseball In 2023 Proves Nothing Is Promised
This year will go down as an all-time failure for the Yankees and the Mets...
To quote the legendary philosopher that is Kanye West (Yes, that was intended to be tongue in-cheek), nothing in life is promised except death.
Try telling that to New York’s two baseball teams right now.
Ah, yes. Where do we even begin with the 2023 incarnations of the Yankees and the Mets?
Rewind back to the heady days of March and feverishness anticipation was surging through the streets of the Concrete Jungle when it came to America’s National Past Time.
Coming off a 99-win season in 2022, coupled with Aaron Judge’s decision to sign a nine-year, $360 million deal to remain in the Bronx, the Yankees were turbocharging into 2023 with the same kind of lofty expectations that come with donning the world-famous and iconic Pinstripes.
As for the Mets, a historic 101-win regular season in 2022 gave loaded (multiply that by billions) Owner Steve Cohen all the encouragement he needed to indulge in a monster splurge to end all monster splurges. Just a year removed from paying future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer $43.3 million to pitch in Queens, the Mets paid exactly the same amount to another sure-fire Cooperstown inductee in Justin Verlander to help lead an elite, but aging, starting rotation. And, despite a failed, magical-mystery tour-like attempt to bring superstar shortstop Carlos Correa to New York, the Mets still ended the offseason with the biggest payroll in all of baseball.
Who had the second-largest payroll you ask? That would be the Yankees, of course. Although the Mets owned first place by quite some distance with a whopping total payroll of $344,009,702. To put that lavish amount of spending into some context, the Yanks’ total payroll came in at $279,372,803.
However, as is often the case in life, money doesn’t buy you everything and it certainly hasn’t bought the Yankees or the Mets any amount of happiness in 2023.
It certainly hasn’t bought success for the two baseball teams in New York, that’s for sure.
Instead, this season has emphatically proved - at least so far - that, quite literally, nothing is ever promised and all of the truckload of endless amounts of dollars, the slew of heady (perhaps unrealistic expectations, in hindsight), and, in the Yankees’ case, the cache of being one of the most iconic brands on the planet, count for very, very little when all is said and done.
It is all about what happens out on the hallowed ground that is the baseball diamond.
And, as it pertains to both the Yankees and the Mets, all that has taken place out on the field this year has been a whole lot of losing, a bucketload of stinking, and a superabundance of disappointment.
So, how did we get to this sorry, depressing, bleak wreckage of an absolute disaster of epic proportions for both teams, exactly?