Juan Soto drama will make Mets-Yankees telecasts great theater, according to David Cone
Mets outfielder Juan Soto, center, talks with Yankees manager Aaron Boone, pitcher Marcus Stroman, Mets manager Carlos Mendoza before their spring training game on Monday. Credit: Newsday/Tim Healey
David Cone anticipates “great television” this season from the Yankees and Mets, especially when they play each other — and when one player in particular is at bat.
“Every time Juan Soto goes to the Bronx, it’s going to be interesting to see what that is like,” Cone, a former Mets and Yankees pitcher and current ESPN and YES Network analyst, said on Monday.
“That is must-, must-watch television to see this from now on, going forward into the future. It felt like it was [Babe] Ruth and [Lou] Gehrig with them together, with [Aaron] Judge and Soto. And it feels like that got broken up and that is a storyline like no other in New York baseball right now, and that’s the one you want to watch.”
Cone spoke on a video conference to promote ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball,” as did fellow analyst Eduardo Perez, who did not have to look up the first time the teams will meet on the network: May 18.
“We will be there front and center,” Perez said.
The Mets signed Soto away from the Yankees in December with a 15-year, $765 million contract.
The Yankees responded with offseason moves of their own, but after losing ace Gerrit Cole for the season because of Tommy John surgery, their prospects have become murky.
To Cone, all of it just makes for great theater.
“I’m really happy for the Mets fans, the Mets fan base, to have such a stable ownership that is so committed,” he said. “Juan Soto is a seminal moment for that franchise, for this new ownership group, and for the fan base.
“There’s no two ways about it. Both [New York] teams were battling for him. The Mets won predominantly because of the ownership of the Mets and how warm they made Juan Soto feel. So I give them a lot of credit.
“But the Yankees are still the Yankees. I almost get a sense of the Yankees are relishing, maybe a little bit, finally a little bit of an underdog role going into this year because of some of the injuries and people sort of writing them off.
“In the Yankees’ spring training, I see a real kind of gravitation toward that underdog mentality, if the Yankees can ever say that. They’re kind of buying around that ‘we’re going to prove them wrong’ a little bit.
“So stay tuned. It makes for great television this year.”
The first ESPN announcer to get a crack at the Yankees this season will be Joe Buck, who last called an MLB game in the 2021 World Series for Fox.
Buck now works on “Monday Night Football” but is to return for a one-day-only gig as the Yankees open against the Brewers on Thursday. Joe Girardi (Yankees) and Bill Schroeder (Brewers) will be his analysts.
This will be ESPN’s 36th and perhaps final season carrying baseball after the entities mutually agreed to opt out of their current contract after 2025.
Sunday night play-by-play man Karl Ravech said he is holding out hope that baseball can retain a place of some kind on ESPN’s platforms.
But everyone involved in the Sunday broadcast said they will not be thinking about the uncertainty as they focus on this season.
“I look at it like a pitcher,” Cone said. “We play today, we win today. I just take it day-by-day. We try to bring value. We take a lot of pride in our work.
“As far as the long-term future, we try to bring value. I don’t assess value. That’s above my pay grade.”
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
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