It's time for Yankees to settle the score with Mets
Juan Soto of the New York Yankees celebrates his eighth-inning home run against the Tampa Bay Rays with teammate Aaron Judge on Monday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
None of the Yankees could really explain why the pinstripes just hit different Monday from the previous five weeks.
The enigmatic Carlos Rodon with a season-high 10 strikeouts? Back-to-back homers by Austin Wells and Anthony Volpe, the unlikely core du jour of the Yankees’ lineup?
DJ LeMahieu going deep for the first time since September?
Stunning. Truly.
The fact that we’ve made it this far down in the column before even mentioning Juan Soto, who smacked a pair of home runs in the Yankees’ 9-1 victory over the Rays, a rare chance to exhale for this scrambling team, should tell you something about what kind of day it was in the Bronx.
But let’s not get too hung up on kicking around the .500 Rays for a few hours, as much as the matinee crowd of 40,824 fans enjoyed it. The real show takes place Tuesday night at the Stadium when the Mets roll in for the Subway Series rematch, and the Yankees need to prove the June thumping they took in Flushing was a fluke.
If Aaron Boone & Co. can’t conjure up some legit anger over that embarrassing sweep at Citi Field, there’s something missing with these Yankees. It got so bad over in Queens that Boone had to bench Gleyber Torres for the series finale because of his apathetic performance and Aaron Judge looked miffed at his manager for getting pulled for a pinch hitter late in a 12-2 blowout.
If those humiliating memories weren’t enough, there was Luis Severino mocking his former teammates in a text exchange by saying, “Right now you only have two good hitters.”
Remember, this is all coming from a Mets team that was 11 games under .500 on June 2 and currently is clinging to the NL’s third wild card by its fingernails.
The Mets already have the sport’s richest owner in multibillionaire Steve Cohen. But treating the Yankees like some small-market punching bag? That shouldn’t fly in the Bronx, right?
“It’s not overly personal for me,” Boone said.
Wrong answer. If there’s any point when Boone would be justified in poking back at his crosstown rival, it’s now, with the chance to do some score-settling.
And yes, this time should feel personal. What are the Yankees so afraid of? Boone was annoyed enough by Severino’s comment to text Carlos Mendoza — his former bench coach — after the fact, so it’s not as if the pitcher’s remarks were just shrugged off.
Simply put, the Yankees have some unfinished business with the Mets, and they have to hope Monday’s 15-hit effort serves as a springboard for this Subway Series. It’s certainly possible. Coming in, they were 9-20 in their previous 29 games, and frankly, the Yankees couldn’t stay that bad forever.
Before Monday, the rotation’s 6.24 ERA since June 15 was the worst in the majors during that span. Offensively, the Yankees were every bit the two-man lineup Severino said they are. Since that date, Soto and Judge had hit a combined .303 with 16 homers and a 1.042 OPS. Everyone else? They were .205 with 18 homers and a .613 OPS.
No wonder the Yankees didn’t bark back at Severino. The numbers gave him all the ammo he needed, and it took until Monday for the rest of the batting order to finally wake up.
For once, Judge let his teammates do the heavy lifting, but he still chipped in with a pair of singles. Wells had a three-hit day from the cleanup spot and Volpe snapped a career-high 56-game homerless streak by pulling one into the leftfield seats. The back-to-back blasts marked the third time the Yankees did it this season but the first time by players not named Soto and Judge.
That’s all Rodon needed. He didn’t allow a hit until Jose Siri’s one-out homer in the fifth — punctuated by a bat flip directly tossed at the Yankees’ dugout and a leisurely stroll around the bases (with a stop at third base and series of low-fives at the plate). If anything deserved a little chin music, it was Siri’s antics, but the Yankees chose to retaliate in a different fashion, with LeMahieu smacking a 78-mph frisbee slider into the front row of the leftfield seats and Soto homering in the seventh and eighth innings.
Soto knows that he and Judge can’t do it alone. “At the end of the day,” he said, “it’s going to take more than two guys to go to the World Series and win it.”
Kudos to Soto for his October mindset. But the obstacle in front of them now is the Mets, and for New Yorkers, this is the next biggest thing to the Fall Classic. Making Severino eat his words could be fun, too, even if the Yankees wouldn’t bite on it.
‘I think it’s just noise,” Wells said. “And you try to block that out.”
Nah. The Yankees need to embrace all that stuff these next two days. It’s been a frustrating five weeks. If they’re not hungry for payback, the Mets will be happy to use them as trampolines again.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
