Which last-place NY baseball team can get back to top of standings first?
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman talks with the media before a game against the Washington Nationals at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023. Credit: Jim McIsaac
As New Yorkers awoke Saturday, the Major League Baseball standings showed something that had never been seen in these parts this late in the summer:
Last-place Mets.
And last-place Yankees.
New York’s local nines — both World Series contenders when the season began — are alone in the basements of their divisions.
The Mets were born in 1962. The only other time before this season that the Mets and Yankees were both in sole possession of the cellar after Aug. 1, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, was Aug. 5, 1967.
The Mets finished last that season, the Yankees next-to-last. The Mets, with an NL Rookie of the Year named Tom Seaver, were a team on the rise, although only a few signs were apparent in 1967. Two years later, the Mets won the World Series.
The Yankees were a team on the decline. One look at a hobbled Mickey Mantle made that obvious. Mantle’s next season was his last one, and the Yankees didn’t see the postseason again until 1976.
Why the history lesson? Because that’s what this “disaster” of a season for the Yankees (to use Brian Cashman’s word) and this “terrible” season for the Mets (to use Steve Cohen’s word) is:
Historic.
Just not in the way anyone expected when it began with reasonable dreams of a Subway World Series.
As September approaches, these two clubs are simply trying to get their trains (the Nos. 7 and 4, of course) into the station, turn off the engines and slink into the offseason.
It’s interesting that the Mets and Yankees are at different points in their reactions to their disappointing seasons.
The Mets have a plan. They’re going young. Cohen used his financial might not to add big-ticket stars, as he did in the offseason, but to unload those same stars and acquire prospects for the future.
When will that future arrive? Your guess is as good as the Mets’. But at least the Mets have a plan, and unless Cohen changes direction again, the flowers of that plan should be sprouting at Citi Field in the next few years.
The Yankees are in the pre-plan stage. Cashman fell on his sword in a 22-minute news conference at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday and said every aspect of the organization’s performance will be heavily scrutinized.
But Cashman also boasted about his track record over his years as general manager, which began in 1998 and has included four World Series trophies, the last in 2009.
To many fans, Cashman is the one who broke the Yankees. So why should he be allowed to fix them? Unfortunately for those fans, the only opinion that counts on that is Hal Steinbrenner’s, and when he signed Cashman to a four-year contract extension before this season, it wasn’t with the idea of firing him one year into it.
Once the Yankees finish their top-to-bottom review, what can possibly change? It’s entirely possible that Cashman and Co. will look at the injuries suffered in 2023 by Aaron Judge, Carlos Rodon, Nestor Cortes and Anthony Rizzo (to name a few key ones) and consider running back basically the same group again in 2024 with some youngsters sprinkled in.
Unlike the Mets, who seem to be writing off 2024, the Yankees are always in go-for-it mode, sometimes to their detriment.
How do the Yankees avoid a late Mantle era-like decline? It’s hard to see.
They have holes at every position except rightfield, second base and shortstop (if you believe in Gleyber Torres and Anthony Volpe). Harrison Bader is going to be a free agent, and with his injury history, he might be too expensive to re-sign. Giancarlo Stanton has four years and $118 million left on his contract ($20 million of which will be paid by the Marlins). Gerrit Cole can opt out of his contract after next season.
So back to where we started: The Mets and Yankees might both finish last for the first time ever. No one would have bet on that when the season started.
But which one would you bet is going to get back to the top of the standings first? Or, put another way: Which last-place New York baseball team would you rather be a fan of right now?
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.