Ken Davidoff

Yankees, White Sox will take ‘Field of Dreams’ from big screen to big leagues

Mets need to show fight and have fun before season fully implodes

How Mets drafting Kumar Rocker went so very wrong

Brett Gardner's big night may be window into his best Yankees role

This MLB simulation predicts big things for Yankees

DYERSVILLE, Iowa — The Yankees will wake up in Kansas City on Thursday morning, while the White Sox will awaken in Minneapolis.

Then they’ll meet up in a different time zone: the early 20th century.

One of the most hyped regular-season contests in Major League Baseball history will occur Thursday night (the weather forecast encouraging), when the Yankees and White Sox face off in the Field of Dreams Game, certainly the first real-life competition to take place at a de facto movie set. MLB constructed a 7,911-seat pop-up ballpark adjacent to the small field created for the 1989 Oscar-nominated film (and maintained ever since).

“It made sense that we moved home plate 1,000 feet to the west,” Murray Cook, MLB’s coordinator for these one-off games (and not the former Yankees general manager, apologies), said Wednesday as he stood in the Yankees’ dugout on the first-base side.

In the spirit of this unique occasion, MLB hosted the media Wednesday for a walk-through to show off its $5 million-plus investment. The goal will be to provide the fans with a once-in-a-lifetime experience while minimizing inconveniences for the players.

For the fans, well, “They’ve somehow managed to erect an amusement park in six months,” said Dwier Brown, who played John Kinsella in the movie and has visited here roughly two dozen times. There is a corn maze. There are cardboard cutouts of the most popular Yankees and White Sox players. There is audio from the film playing as you walk the quarter-mile from the original field, where patrons will enter, to the temporary one, and a wooden sign with arrows pointing toward Yankee Stadium (997 miles), the White Sox’s home Guaranteed Rate Field (206 miles) and the Dyersville Town Center (very close).

There’s also a culinary concoction called an “Apple Pie Hot Dog,” created by Guy Fieri and sponsored, naturally, by Chevrolet (remember the 1970s commercial?). It’s a hot dog wrapped in an apple-pie crust, with filling. I’m glad I tried it and I won’t be eating another one.

TV viewers, meanwhile, can get their nostalgia-cinema fix by seeing the players enter from the corn stalks in right field, just as in the film; the hand-operated scoreboard; and the barnwood on the outfield walls and behind home plate. The place certainly captures the old-school ethos.

The players, of course, don’t want an entirely old-school experience, so the clubhouses are bigger than, say, the visitors’ dressing quarters at Wrigley Field, with a couple of workout bikes at the ready as well as a trainer’s room, manager’s office, coaches’ changing area and hitting cages Because of the remote location, both teams will head for Chicago, where they’ll resume their series Saturday at Guaranteed Rate (worst ballpark name ever), following the game’s completion. It’ll be the very rare road trip in which the clubs don’t spend a single night near the ballpark.

It won’t go perfectly, because these endeavors never do. Yet if the players come out of it healthy and somewhat happy and the fans (both on site and at home) are entertained, then this boldest venture yet by MLB will be deemed a success.

“It’s really spectacular,” Brown said. “I was really getting teared up [exploring it].”

“I don’t want to get corn-y on you,” Cook said of his latest creation, “but it’s pretty a-maize-ing.”

Yeah, this’ll be a very family-friendly, if occasionally cheesy, event. A celebration, a callback and a commercial for the sport’s highest ambitions.

“It’s a magical place,” Cook said of the entire site, and for one night, baseball hopes to make all of its modern concerns disappear. It’s hard to envision a better setting to pull off that trick.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

Mets need to show fight and have fun before season fully implodes

How Mets drafting Kumar Rocker went so very wrong

Brett Gardner's big night may be window into his best Yankees role

This MLB simulation predicts big things for Yankees

Luis Rojas' team meeting has its desired effect on Mets

DYERSVILLE, Iowa — What first caught my eye were the wooden bleachers. The seats from which Terence Mann arises to deliver his “People will come” soliloquy. From which young Karin Kinsella falls moments later, requiring the services of Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham — transforming from teenager to senior citizen — to save her life. 

“They’re original,” Tom Mietzel, CEO of Go the Distance, which runs the facility, assured The Post later in a telephone interview. Same goes for the farmhouse behind them. 

Perhaps if you somehow haven’t seen the 1989 film “Field of Dreams,” or if you watched it and it somehow wasn’t your bag, then setting foot on these grounds — on a movie set, let’s acknowledge — won’t get your geek on. The idea of holding an actual Major League Baseball game here might strike you as cheesy. 

If you’re one of the countless people who bought into the film’s messages of hope and redemption and cried at the ending, however? Then Thursday night’s matchup of the Yankees and White Sox at a pop-up ballpark adjacent to the original movie diamond — just through a cornfield, naturally — will serve as a real-life sequel of sorts to the fictional original. Because, in a vacuum, holding a regular-season baseball contest on active farmland isn’t much more absurd than ghost ballplayers emerging from a cornfield. 

“When you can hold dreams and memories back from movies, these things mean a lot,” YES Network analyst (and former Yankee, of course) Paul O’Neill said. “It’s such a great idea. Such a cool thing.” 

“I would never have imagined they’d play a major league game there,” said actor Dwier Brown, who played John Kinsella in the movie, “and I couldn’t be more excited about it.” 

Brown will join his cinematic son, Kevin Costner, the film’s star, in pregame festivities that surely won’t hold back on milking the movie’s most popular elements. Fans will enter the premises via the original field, a tourist site since the movie’s release and success, and walk through the corn to the Yankees-White Sox game. Those corn stalks, cultivated by MLB, will be as tall as 12 feet, which you’ll be able to see through the mesh of the right field wall. Don’t be surprised if the players themselves utilize the corn as an entry point, just like their fictional counterparts. 

In all, MLB spent more than $5 million to construct and maintain the temporary ballpark, for which plans began last year, only for COVID-19 to cause a one-year postponement. Former Yankees general manager Murray Cook, who specializes in helping baseball put on these events, said he utilized the backstop and bullpen seats, among other supplies, from the Yankees-Red Sox London Series of 2019. The stands will hold 7,911 fans, with Iowans getting access to about 2,500 of them. 

“We’ve been trying to find these really cool, iconic locations, places that don’t get to normally experience Major League Baseball,” said Chris Marinak, MLB’s chief operations and strategy officer. “We had one in Omaha, and Fort Bragg, and now our first game in Iowa. This one has a special sort of feeling to it because the movie itself was such a widely appealing movie. Even non-baseball fans watch that movie and love that movie because of that message and storytelling in the movie.” 

It should only enhance the site’s appeal that this remains an active farm, growing soybeans in addition to corn. Joe and Catherine Lansing purchased it in 1906 — the barn is believed to go back to around 1860 — and started a family there, although poor Catherine died during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 (talk about the circle of life), and Joe’s grandson Donnie ran the farm in the late 1980s when Sue Reidel, a volunteer for the Iowa film office, approached him with an idea: Universal Studios wanted to film a movie on his land, which they liked because of its look — especially that farmhouse — and because it was large enough to build a baseball field. 

“He kind of looked at her and thought, ‘Boy, is she crazy or what?’ ” said Becky Lansing, Don’s wife. 

She wasn’t, naturally. The studio performed some construction on the house to make it more film-crew friendly, knocking down some walls (the house scenes were actually filmed there), and Don Lansing relocated to a nearby trailer to let the Hollywood people do their thing. When the film connected with the masses, the Lansings retained the field and turned it into a tourist attraction. 

“In the first year, we logged about 5,000 people,” Becky Lansing said. “It continued to double in size, from five to 10 [thousand], 15, 30, 40, 50.” 

Other Iowans saw even greater potential in the land, in people’s thirst to connect with this film. In 2012, the Lansings sold it to a consortium of investors (called Go the Distance) led by Denise Stillman, who envisioned turning the field into a hotbed for youth baseball tournaments, with 18 fields added to the original (which wouldn’t get touched). A spark for that plan, Stillman thought, would be to hold a major league game there. 

“The Field of Dreams isn’t as much of a baseball field as a feeling,” said Mietzel, who married Stillman in 2016. “It’s a place where family and friends come together. That’s how she got rolling on it.” 

As Stillman engaged with MLB officials on this wild-card idea, though, she contracted liver cancer in April 2017. She died in November 2018, and just a few months later, MLB and Go The Distance completed the agreement to hold the Yankees-White Sox game there. 

“Much of what we’re doing out here is her vision,” Mietzel said. “This was her dream.” 

And for the Lansings, whose family lived and worked here for over 100 years, “The sentiment behind the move is a pretty strong bond for us. Most people look at it as a mecca for baseball and for many other things as well,” Becky Lansing said. “We have the added honor of having had it as a family legacy, which I’m hoping now is secure in the history books of the social fabric of our country.” 

The Field of Dreams, boosted by MLB’s presence here, should welcome more than 200,000 visitors this year, Meitzel said, and there’s increased optimism they’ll accrue the necessary funds to put Stillman’s full plan in motion. 

As for whether this game will be an MLB one-off or the launch to a tradition, Marinak said: “We’ll see how things unfold this first time around. Obviously it’s a lot of effort to keep the field up, plant the corn again. We’ve got to make the call on whether this is a one-time experience or we can do something more with it. We’ll figure that out after this week. 

“But this is a good example of the type of thing we can be doing in the future, an off-the-beaten-path type of game.” 

It required quite a path to get here, into the past, into such rich emotions. This will mark a rare occasion in which you root for the Yankees and White Sox themselves, not protected by a script, to live up to their surroundings and fanfare.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

How Mets drafting Kumar Rocker went so very wrong

Brett Gardner's big night may be window into his best Yankees role

This MLB simulation predicts big things for Yankees

Luis Rojas' team meeting has its desired effect on Mets

Yankees rookie Luis Gil comes up big in toughest of spots

The Mets.

In French, that translates to “Les Miserables.”

At least they mixed up their brand of misery Saturday at Citizens Bank Park?

Oh, the Mets lost yet again, 5-3 to Joe Girardi’s Phillies at their former happy place, to fall 1 ½ games out of the division penthouse. That’s three straight defeats, six in seven tries and 8 of 10. Yeesh.

Yet after a lifeless first 17 innings of this crucial series, the Mets woke up in the top of the ninth by slamming three straight solo homers (Michael Conforto, Jonathan Villar and James McCann) and bringing the go-ahead run to the plate with one out, only for new Philadelphia closer Ian Kennedy to put out the fire by striking out Pete Alonso and J.D. Davis.

After the game, manager Luis Rojas said, “We’ve got to win tomorrow,” and that’s a heck of a mandate to put on this series finale against old pal and new All-Star Zack Wheeler.

More than anything, these Mets, the trade deadline past them and neither Jacob deGrom nor Francisco Lindor anywhere close to returning, need to rediscover their joy for the game that emerged for a glimpse before the Mets’ all-time record at CBP fell to 87-77 (thanks to Ultimate Mets Database for that tidbit).

That assignment falls on Rojas as well as his veteran players.

“There has to be a sense of urgency,” McCann acknowledged.

The late rally shed new light on the decision by Rojas to stick as long as he did with his rookie starting pitcher Tylor Megill, who, after a strong first four innings, started the fifth by surrendering a 437-foot homer to Brad Miller, breaking the scoreless tie, then allowing two of the next three batters to reach base safely. Odubel Herrera then smoked a first-pitch fastball 434 feet into the second deck in right-center, putting his guys up by a 4-0 margin and punctuating his power display with a beautiful bat flip; the Phillies, winners of seven straight, are having fun, unlike their foes.

“He only had given up one run at the time,” Rojas said of Megill. “He was throwing the ball really good throughout the game. For me, he’s getting out of that inning. I don’t think the kid was gassed, necessarily.”

Eh. The fifth inning sure seems like Megill’s nemesis; the right-hander’s fifth-inning ERA now stands at 11.57.

Maybe the Mets’ manager got punch-drunk from watching his hitters do so little. Rojas understandably stacked his starting lineup with righty bats, leadoff guy Brandon Nimmo the lone exception, to go after Philadelphia southpaw starter Ranger Suarez. But Suarez proceeded to hold that group hitless (with three walks) through his 2 ²/₃ innings — at which point Girardi pivoted to righty rookie J.D. Hammer, who scattered two hits while picking up eight outs. So it went for the Mets, until their dead-cat bounce in the ninth. It proved fitting that Kennedy fanned both Alonso and Davis on fastballs, the club’s downfall of late.

“Throughout the game, we had a bunch of swings and misses on fastballs,” Rojas said. “That’s the pitch we’ve got to be ready for all of the time.”

So it goes for these guys, who have 52 games left to pick up their energy, start showing more fight — earlier and more consistently — and win back the goodwill they had captured in their first half.

“Baseball season’s not easy,” Rojas said, echoing sentiments that he said were voiced by some of his players in the clubhouse after the game. “Nobody expected it to be easy.”

Even in the toughest times, though, the Mets have to make baseball season fun. At the moment, they are failing miserably.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

Brett Gardner's big night may be window into his best Yankees role

This MLB simulation predicts big things for Yankees

Luis Rojas' team meeting has its desired effect on Mets

Yankees rookie Luis Gil comes up big in toughest of spots

Mets falling out of first place starting to feel inevitable

New York sports fans generally regard baseball’s amateur draft the same way they look at NASCAR, or college football, or Republican primaries: as curiosities, shrugged off by the masses and embraced by the diehards.

The Mets’ selection of Vanderbilt right-hander Kumar Rocker with the 10th pick this year violated that norm and transcended the niche following to become a darn big story. It grew exponentially when the Mets, concerned by what they saw in the 21-year-old’s physical examination, decided to not make Rocker an offer at all and consequently received the 11th selection in next year’s draft as compensation.

The sequence of events didn’t merely enrage the Mets’ fan base. It dominated industry talk, with people on both sides of the aisle, team and player representation, trying to make heads or tails of what went down.

Let’s try to do the same, question-and-answer style.

Q: OK, how badly did the Mets screw this up? Should they have been more wary of Rocker?

A: Look, the talk of Rocker’s diminished velocity during his redshirt sophomore season at Vandy was so prominent that Tommy Tanous, the Mets’ vice president of amateur and international scouting, answered a question about it during a Zoom news conference following the draft’s second day.

“We were aware of the velocity decrease in the middle of the year,” Tanous said. “I would say almost all Division I pitchers had a velocity decrease because this is the first time they had been extended [after the COVID-shortened 2020]. It’s just he’s such a highly visible pick and pitcher who was consistently throwing between 96 and 100 [mph], and when he does throw 92, 94, it’s looked at. He was used quite a bit early in the season and his pitch counts were reasonable, but they were high. I think he had a little bit of a lull in the middle of the season. We saw it pick up at the end of the year.

“We were well aware of it, and in some ways, hopefully this was the reason we were lucky enough to land him.”

Undoubtedly, that awareness factored into Rocker, ranked sixth by MLB.com, falling to the Mets with the 10th-overall pick. That didn’t serve as the only factor, however. Rocker’s ask (he and the Mets agreed to a $6 million draft-day signing bonus pending the physical) also played a role, as did the history of his adviser, Scott Boras, being a tough negotiator. If any team obtained a smoking gun that Rocker, who pitched regularly the past three seasons, suffered from real medical problems in his pitching arm, as opposed to simply hearing scuttlebutt, I failed to learn that through my reporting this past week.

If you can justify the Mets’ popping of Rocker as a reasonable risk mitigated by the safety net of next year’s extra pick, the rest of the industry showed little sympathy for the team’s plight because of how it wound up leaving $1.3 million unspent (and unable to be utilized in any other way) as a result of its other picks signing for below their slot values. The Mets did explore taking some high-end high-schoolers late, yet none of their targets appeared willing to cancel their college commitments for anything in the $1.3 million neighborhood. The Angels found such a commodity, 12th-round pick Mason Albright, a high-school lefty, who agreed to a $1.25 million signing bonus. We’ll keep an eye on him.

Q: How big a hit is this to the Mets’ farm system?

A: It’s significant because their cupboard is pretty bare because they have traded away several top guys since late 2018. You saw that at this year’s trade deadline, when the Mets, unwilling to deal their top pieces (Francisco Alvarez, Bret Baty and Ronny Mauricio), fell short in their efforts to land another starting pitcher because clubs didn’t like their depth. And they dealt outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, their top draft pick of 2020, to the Cubs for pending free agent Javier Baez. Without Rocker, the heat turns on the Mets to find a jewel or three from the draft picks they did sign.

Q: What exactly is wrong with Rocker?

A: The Mets expressed concern initially and primarily about Rocker’s right elbow, according to multiple sources. Ultimately, the Mets didn’t like what they saw beyond just the elbow, which is why they didn’t think even Tommy John surgery would alleviate their worries.

Rocker and Boras, of course, insist that nothing is wrong with him, and they possess the rather impressive Exhibit A of the pitcher’s body of work at college. That is why the entire baseball world, no one more than the Mets, will be watching Rocker very closely.

Q: Why is Rocker turning professional rather than returning to Vanderbilt?

A: “We have found that elite talents like Kumar are best served by a dedicated professional conditioning regime to fully prepare for the next professional step,” Boras wrote in a text message. “This also allows him to receive offers from all professional leagues so he can make an informed decision.”

The obvious precedent here is pitcher Luke Hochevar, another Boras advisee, who failed to come to terms with the Dodgers after getting picked 40th overall in 2005, pitched four games for the independent Fort Worth Cats in 2006 and then went first overall, to the Royals, in the 2006 draft. Don’t be surprised if Rocker pitches a few games for a domestic independent team early next year in preparation for the 2022 draft.

Q: What about precedents for guys who failed their physicals?

A: The most recent is left-hander Brady Aiken, drafted first overall by Houston in 2014. The Astros lowered their offer from $6.5 million to $5 million after not loving what they saw in Aiken’s pitching elbow. Aiken passed and, after undergoing Tommy John surgery, went 17th overall to the Indians in the 2015 draft. He never regained his pre-surgery excellence and is now out of baseball.

In 2010, the Diamondbacks picked right-hander Barret Loux sixth overall. He failed his physical, an action evoking so much anger — Arizona changed general managers between the draft to the signing deadline, sparking speculation that the new bosses simply weren’t as gaga over Loux as were the old bosses — that commissioner Bud Selig allowed the pitcher to become a free agent.

Q: Might that happen now with Rocker?

A: No, because Major League Baseball has since created a program by which the top 50 pitchers (ranked by an MLB scouting service) are protected from being shut out … if they submit to a pre-draft MRI exam, an action that mandates the drafting team to offer its pick at least 40 percent of the assigned slot figure (which was $4.74 million for Rocker). Rocker, like many invited to the initiative, didn’t participate in this voluntary program.

Q: So what’s the final takeaway?

A: If nothing else, the Mets’ action was bold. They could have signed Rocker, and had he succumbed to their fears, there would’ve been more disappointment than outrage. Pitchers get hurt, after all. When something this high-profile goes so wrong, though, it opens up more trails to follow: 1) Rocker’s health; 2) The fates of players picked shortly after Rocker; 3) Late, cheap picks in this year’s draft; and 4) That 11th pick next year.

Oh, and rookie owner Steve Cohen, after his first draft hit a major snag, probably shouldn’t have tweeted, “Education time” when defending himself. It’s clear that, when it comes to baseball, he could use just as much education as the rest of us.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

This MLB simulation predicts big things for Yankees

Luis Rojas' team meeting has its desired effect on Mets

Yankees rookie Luis Gil comes up big in toughest of spots

Mets falling out of first place starting to feel inevitable

Michael Conforto's slump complicates Mets' free agency future

Brett Gardner, force off the bench.

Who woulda thunk it?

Actually, the Yankees have contemplated that for quite a while now, except that Gardner’s outfield successors keep flaming out and the man himself annually proves to be as durable as a Galapagos tortoise. On Friday night at Yankee Stadium, though, the struggling 37-year-old began his work shift in the eighth inning and provided a whole week’s worth of impact in just four frames, leading the Yankees to a huge, 3-2, 11-inning victory over the Mariners by starting the game-tying rally and completing the game-finishing drive.

“It’s funny, he didn’t start. He came in towards the end of the game,” Giancarlo Stanton, who delivered a clutch hit of his own, said afterwards of his teammate. “It just shows how huge it wound up being, that he had to stay locked in and help us out there.”

“Yeah, maybe a little,” Gardner said, in response to a question about whether he received a rush from entering mid-game, “but especially a game like tonight. To be able to come in in a big spot like that and be trusted in that situation, tonight I was able to do a pretty good job with that. You never know when your name might be called so you just have to be ready.”

With their fourth straight win and 19th in 27 games, the Yankees (60-49) closed within three games of the losing Red Sox (64-47) for the American League’s first wild-card slot and, in a sign of the AL East’s competitiveness, they avoided falling to fourth place behind the en fuego Blue Jays (58-49), who thumped the Sawx on Friday. They did this by relying on a fleet of nine pitchers, beginning with opener Wandy Peralta and ending with victorious rookie Albert Abreu, as a byproduct of COVID-19 sidelining both Gerrit Cole and Jordan Montgomery while Domingo German sits on the injured list with an ailing right shoulder.

The Yankees’ intermittently revitalized lineup, however, accomplished nothing through seven innings, managing a scant three hits (all singles) and two walks off Seattle starter Marco Gonzales (20 outs) and veteran reliever Joe Smith (one out). Then Gardner pinch-hit for recent addition Jonathan Davis (who started in center field) to start the eighth against old pal Diego Castillo, who was recently acquired from the Rays.

Gardner worked a seven-pitch walk against Castillo and moved around the bases when DJ LeMahieu walked and Anthony Rizzo was hit by a pitch, before Aaron Judge swatted a game-tying sacrifice fly. Stanton ended the inning by grounding into a double play, only to come through huge two innings later, the game nearly over, by driving home Gardner with the tying run on a single to right-center.

Then came the 11th, Abreu preventing the M’s from scoring in the top of the frame, only for Gleyber Torres (pop to shortstop) and Kyle Higashioka (strikeout) to fail to advance ghost runner Joey Gallo against pitcher Kenyan Middleton. That brought up Gardner.

The 14-year Yankee fell behind, 0-and-2, before looking at a pair of balls and then drilling a Middleton fastball into center field. The athletic Gallo cruised home for the victory as the Yankees burst out of the dugout and hugged Gardner between first and second base.

“Needless to say, he’s so revered and respected in [the clubhouse],” Boone said of Gardner. “I think that makes this one even extra special.”

For the season, quite likely his last, Gardner now owns a .199/.319/.305 slash line. It has been a rough go, yet he still grinds through each individual at-bat.

“Definitely a good moment for me, a good moment for us, to be able to come through in that spot for the guys and pull that one out,” Gardner said. “Gotta keep working.”

For now, Boone said, he’ll deploy a center field platoon, starting Gardner against righties and Davis against lefties. Here’s a vote for fewer Gardner starts, even if that means replacing Davis with the demoted Greg Allen, so the Yankees don’t overexpose their beloved veteran and enjoy shorter bursts from him.

“It’s definitely nice having him over there and [to] be able to shoot him in the right matchups,” Boone said of Gardner. “Obviously [to] have his speed and defense sitting over there as well definitely gives you a good look.”

It looked great Friday night, as the Yankees look their 2021 best.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

Luis Rojas' team meeting has its desired effect on Mets

Yankees rookie Luis Gil comes up big in toughest of spots

Mets falling out of first place starting to feel inevitable

Michael Conforto's slump complicates Mets' free agency future

Mets, Steve Cohen whiffing on Kumar Rocker looks Wilpon-esque

Can you envision the Yankees upsetting the Astros in the playoffs? How about the Red Sox missing the playoffs altogether? How about the Mets winding up below .500?

If you can, you have company … in the form of a computer program.

A young man named Andrew Reicin, who has been helping me out with some research this summer, recently suggested that he run a simulation of the rest of the season on a program called Out of the Park Baseball 22 that is officially licensed by Major League Baseball. The only question was when to do it. We first contemplated the All-Star break, but I was pretty swamped that week, to be honest, and the more we discussed it, the more we realized the value of trying this exercise shortly after the trade deadline.

So on Wednesday, with the freshest data and roster information available, Andrew ran the rest of the 2021 on this game. The formula for each player invokes a blend of a scouting report plus statistics from this season and the two prior, with a diminishing percentage the further back you go. The “season” took about an hour to unfold.

Someone else could run the simulation with identical information and ingredients and emerge with drastically different results; you’re playing the odds. Think of this as a companion piece to Mike Vaccaro’s recent Strat-O-Matic Subway Series. Here’s what Andrew’s simulation produced:

1. The Yankees went 92-70, capturing the first American League wild card, finishing five games behind the AL East-leading Rays (97-65). The Blue Jays (91-71) nabbed the second AL wild card, with the Red Sox falling out of the playoffs to 87-75.
2. In the AL wild-card game, the Yankees prevailed at Yankee Stadium over the Jays, and then they upset the Astros in the AL Division Series, three games to two. They fell short to the White Sox in a seven-game ALCS.
3. The Mets, meanwhile, sunk to 78-84, even with Jacob deGrom returning from the injured list to lift his wins above replacement to 5.6 (he currently stands at 5.0). The Braves won the National League East with a modest 83-79 mark, while Joe Girardi’s Phillies wound up at 80-82.
4. The Padres ousted the Giants in the NL wild-card game, then did the same to the Dodgers in the NL Division Series, only to lose to the Brewers in the NLCS.
5. Your World Series champion: Tony La Russa’s White Sox over the Brewers, themselves in their first Fall Classic since 1982, 4-2.
6. Vladimir Guerrero outslugged Shohei Ohtani, 49-48, to win the major-league home-run crown, with the Yankees’ Joey Gallo finishing third at 45.
7. The Brewers’ Corbin Burnes and the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole shared the big-league strikeout crown, with 251, edging the Phillies’ Zack Wheeler (250).

Now we’ll let the real thing play out…and we’ll see how close it approaches the simulation’s vision.

— This week’s Pop Quiz question came from the late Jan Bottone of Wellesley, Mass.: A 1982 episode of the sitcom “One Day at a Time” mentions a legendary Yankees player who was already in the Hall of Fame at the time of airing. Name the player. 

– The latest edition of Pinstripe Pod, our Yankees podcast, features me as a guest. Nevertheless, you should listen to it.

– Your Pop Quiz answer is Yogi Berra. If you have a tidbit that connects baseball with popular culture, please send it to me at kdavidoff@nypost.com.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

Yankees rookie Luis Gil comes up big in toughest of spots

Mets falling out of first place starting to feel inevitable

Michael Conforto's slump complicates Mets' free agency future

Mets, Steve Cohen whiffing on Kumar Rocker looks Wilpon-esque

Yankees, Mets on opposite sides of trade deadline winners and losers

Luis Rojas held a meeting for his Mets on Wednesday afternoon to remind them that everything is fine.

The meeting was sparked by the reality that everything is not fine.

Just being playful here. The Mets’ skipper hardly sounded like a man in denial as he shared details of what he told his players. Instead, Rojas explained, he strove to remind them that they’ve come a long way just to get here, their 89th straight day atop the National League East, and therefore they can overcome the funk that has fallen upon them in the dog days of August.

It feels like the right call for Rojas, who is facing arguably his greatest challenge since he accepted this job: Retain the positive vibe that has been constructed in Year 1 of the Steve Cohen Era.

“This is a team that fights and is very resilient and has the ability to fight through any type of situation,” Rojas told reporters before the Mets continued their series with the Marlins at the ridiculously spelled loanDepot park. “If you’re going through a so-called tough situation right now, that’s not new for us.

“That’s where we’re coming from with the talk we had today. This is just another one, and we’re going to face it the same way we faced the ones that we faced this season.”

You can define this “another one” by many different pieces of the season. Shoot, the Mets hit their high water mark of 35-25 on June 16 with a win over the Cubs and went an underwhelming 20-26 in their next 46 games heading into Wednesday. Yet if we want to drill down to a smaller sample, we can see that the Mets had lost 12 of their last 20 games, seven of their last 10, five of their last six and three in a row.

Hence Rojas’ call to check in, first among his hitters — the injured Francisco Lindor was among the others who spoke then, the manager divulged — and then the entire roster.

“We met earlier and we talked a little bit as a family in there and we’re just staying within ourselves for the game of the day. And nothing more than that,” Rojas said. “Having fun and trust[ing] our process. I think we’re all on the same page in terms of what we need to do.”

He acknowledged that they had addressed the Mets’ recent tendency to fall behind in games early, which had occurred in each of their last three contests and four of their previous five. He conceded, “I did think we got quiet at a point in the dugout [in Tuesday night’s 5-4 loss to the Marlins] but that changed really quick.”

In the second year of his first major league managing gig, Rojas has shown his strength to be a connectivity to his players, many of whom knew him coming up through the Mets’ farm system, whereas he still makes some in-game decisions that befuddle you, most recently the call to bring in only the infield corners Monday night as the club trailed by two runs in the eighth inning. He might need to improve at the latter to help his group grind through this rough stretch.

Because the Mets risk losing more than their penthouse view and the accompanying playoff invitation. They survived their earlier injury blizzard (with considerable assistance from their underwhelming divisional foes) thanks to insanely good roster depth, endearing themselves to their fans thanks to the likes of Kevin Pillar, Jose Peraza and Tylor Megill. If they fizzle into an empty October, that grit, and Rojas’ role in creating it, will be long forgotten.

So yeah, good idea to convene the gang and remind them how they got here. They require no reminder of where they’ll head if they can’t recapture their earlier magic.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

Mets falling out of first place starting to feel inevitable

Michael Conforto's slump complicates Mets' free agency future

Mets, Steve Cohen whiffing on Kumar Rocker looks Wilpon-esque

Yankees, Mets on opposite sides of trade deadline winners and losers

Mets face troubling problem after underwhelming trade deadline

Envision the ideal scenario to unroll a prospect into the major leagues: Low-pressure, low-profile, on a high note.

Luis Gil came aboard via the completely opposite route. He thrived anyway.

As Gerrit Cole’s COVID replacement, coming off a poor outing for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and asked to erase the stench of a bad Yankees loss Monday, Gil shrugged off such potential burdens to make his big league debut a rousing success, throwing six shutout innings in a 13-1 romp over the Orioles.

“We’re expecting Gerrit Cole to be going tonight and that’s tough news to get when your ace goes down and you’re wondering how you’re going to … cover those innings,” Aaron Boone said. “To have Luis come up for the first time and really shine and embrace the moment, it was much-needed.”

“I feel so proud,” Gil, a native of the Dominican Republic, said through an translator, “because of all the work that I’ve done and because of my family. They’ve always been there for me and they’ve offered a lot of support for so many years.”

The Yankees (57-49) picked up a game apiece on the Rays (64-44) and Red Sox (63-45), both of whom lost, and they have now won 16 of their last 24 games. This marked only the third of those 16 victories that didn’t require either a save or a walk-off. The laughers have been sparse.

And no one in pinstripes chuckled earlier Tuesday when news hit that Jordan Montgomery had joined his fellow starter Cole with a positive coronavirus test, creating two more voids in the team’s starting rotation so soon after Domingo German went on the injured list with a right shoulder problem. In the wake of the Yankees’ ugly, 7-1 loss to the Orioles on Monday night, a series loss to the American League East’s cellar-dwellers suddenly seemed feasible.

Into this mess stepped Gil, ranked by MLB.com as the Yankees’ sixth-best minor leaguer yet owning a 5.64 ERA in eight starts for Scranton, his 38 strikeouts in 30 ¹/₃ innings neutralized somewhat by his 23 walks. Most recently, at Syracuse on July 27, the 23-year-old lasted only 1 ¹/₃ innings, getting knocked around for six runs, two hits (both home runs) and four walks.

And with the heat on Tuesday, Gil scattered four hits, walked one and struck out six, becoming the first Yankee since Sam Militello, in 1992, to throw six or more shutout innings in his major league debut (thanks to the YES Network’s James Smyth for the 411). To turn the night into a full-blown coming-out party, the Yankees relieved Gil with two more pitchers making their big league debuts, Long Islander Stephen Ridings (one inning, three strikeouts) and Brody Koerner (two innings).

“Through all this adversity that comes our way … we got some meaningful contributions from the guys that came up today,” Boone said.

Gil said that, after his lousy outing for Scranton, “I watched a lot of video of that and tried to pick apart what I was doing, what mechanically wasn’t working for me at the time. A good friend of mine offered some advice on what to fix … I put it in action today.” Not bad, considering he learned of his assignment only late Monday night while in Scranton.

He threw strikes, 62 of his 88 pitches, and the Orioles made solid contact on only a few. With Yankees like Giancarlo Stanton (a homer, single and four RBIs), Aaron Judge (a homer and single) and Gleyber Torres (a single, double and sacrifice fly) among those enjoying very good contact against the Baltimore pitching, the Yankees could enjoy this one. On Wednesday, with the hot Jameson Taillon going for them, they’ll try for the series win.

“I’m hoping this is just the beginning and we can keep working together the way we did tonight,” Gil said … minutes before the Yankees returned him to Scranton. Nevertheless, he’ll surely get another shot, this time entering on much more of a high note.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

Michael Conforto's slump complicates Mets' free agency future

Mets, Steve Cohen whiffing on Kumar Rocker looks Wilpon-esque

Yankees, Mets on opposite sides of trade deadline winners and losers

Mets face troubling problem after underwhelming trade deadline

Yankees need Anthony Rizzo, Joey Gallo to balance lineup

The best way to describe these Mets, at this sleepy juncture of their exhausting season, is to reach over the RFK Bridge and steal a quote from Zack Scott’s Bronx counterpart, Brian Cashman:

“We suck right now.”

Cashman offered that appraisal of his Yankees on June 29, which means the words shouldn’t be too stale. Whereas the Mets, who opened their road trip on Monday night with a 6-3 loss to the Marlins at the ridiculously spelled loanDepot park in Miami, currently look more rotten and moldy than a can of tuna left out in the sun.

Thanks to the Phillies’ 6-5 edging of the Nationals in Washington, the Mets’ National League East lead dropped to 2 ½ games. They should thank their lucky stars that they own such a comfortable advantage after suffering their fourth loss in five tries and dropping to 8-11 in their past 19 contests, not to mention their overall 55-50 mark that would place them fourth, ahead of only the Orioles, in the Yankees’ American League East.

“Every team goes through their ups and downs during the year,” said Pete Alonso, who slammed a solo homer in the third inning, his seventh since the All-Star break. “For us right now it’s just a little rut. I don’t think this is any long-term concern.”

Eh. Alonso added: “We’ve faced a lot of quality opponents and haven’t come out on top as much as we’ve wanted to, but that’s baseball.” If he thinks the Marlins, Pirates and Reds — none of them playoff clubs — constitute quality competition, just wait until the Mets embark upon their 13-game stretch playing only the Dodgers and Giants later this month.

The Mets again didn’t hit much in this one, their effort compromised by the understandable decision to bench the slumping Michael Conforto (who delivered a leadoff double in the ninth after entering in the eighth as a defensive replacement) and the late pulling of Brandon Nimmo, who is fighting through a left hamstring situation, from the starting lineup (he pinch-hit in the seventh and grounded out). They managed seven hits and four walks, not awful, and J.D. Davis (in the sixth) and Jeff McNeil (in the eighth) sent flyballs to the warning track that might have left other fields. Neither of those occurred, however, when the Mets had a runner in scoring position. The team went a paltry 1-for-10 in those situations.

“I think we’ve gotten away from our team and our organization approach. We haven’t been aggressive consistently,” manager Luis Rojas said. “I think we’re in between a lot.”

They didn’t pitch sufficiently, although to the rookie Tylor Megill’s credit, he found himself down 4-0 after facing just four batters, the underwhelming Lewis Brinson delivering a grand slam, and permitted just one more run over the next four innings. Veteran Trevor May allowed a critical insurance run in the eighth.

They committed a pair of errors, catcher James McCann interfering on Jesus Aguilar’s first-inning swing (which loaded the bases and set up Brinson’s granny) and new guy Javier Baez throwing away a Brinson grounder in the eighth.

Baez’s positioning on that play resulted from a questionable call by Rojas, who played only his corners in, with his middle guys farther back, after the Marlins put men on first and third with no outs in the eighth. Brinson sent a slow roller to Baez, who might have had a play had he been in, but instead went to first, unsuccessfully.

“We were playing ‘three’ up the middle [not all the way back] because … there is a ball that, if it’s hit a certain way, you’re going to have to turn a double play and it’s just tough to get the out at home plate,” Rojas explained. “It’s a pick-and-choose right there for us.”

The pick-and-choose didn’t work, as Baez didn’t have a play at home — a chance to keep the Mets’ deficit at 5-3 — because of where he stood.

Not much worked on this night, just as it hasn’t lately. The Mets suck right now. And if they don’t wake up shortly, they could suck all the way down to second or third place.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Mets manager Luis Rojas said, before the team opened a series with the Marlins at the ridiculously spelled loanDepot park, that the team benched the profoundly slumping Conforto so that he could work on his approach at the plate and stop “thinking too much” during his at-bats.

“The plan is for him to work,” Rojas said. “We want him to work and find himself rather than being a little bit too mental at the plate. He’s not mental when he’s not playing. So he’s not beating himself up or anything. He’s taking advantage of the time and he’s just working hard. We’re trying to get, probably past, his mental state when he’s at the plate. That’s it right there. When he’s thinking too much and he’s probably holding himself off from being aggressive. Those are some of the conversations that we had today. 

“We’re looking at him to simplify things. We want to simplify things for him so he just goes to the plate looking for his pitch and just takes his A swing. That’s part of his homework today pre-game and he should be available today for any situation [where] we need him to deliver a big hit like he did a couple of weeks ago for us in Pittsburgh and in Cincinnati.”

While the 28-year-old indeed delivered some big hits during the team’s road trip to start the second half, he slashed a brutal .133/235/.167 during the Mets’ just-completed 11-game homestand, lowering his overall line for the season to a highly disappointing .196/.324/.324. 

“He’s not producing like he has produced in his career,” Rojas said. “We’re figuring it out. … The approach today is to work on finding himself. Michael could be back in tomorrow’s lineup. The homework for him is to simplify things and just go out there and look for a pitch and crush it. “

Conforto can be a free agent after this season.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

Yankees, Mets on opposite sides of trade deadline winners and losers

Mets face troubling problem after underwhelming trade deadline

Yankees need Anthony Rizzo, Joey Gallo to balance lineup

Jon Matlack re-lives iconic World Series near-miss before entering Mets Hall of Fame

Yankees must rely on pitching to spark season rebound

Steve Cohen is absurdly rich, surprisingly charming and, it sure appears, diligently devoted to his new endeavor.

What he is not, is Rookie Owner of the Year.

For as much enthusiasm as the Mets’ new big boss has generated among the jewel franchise’s rabid fan base, as much on-field success as his club has enjoyed, Cohen also has managed, inadvertently, to rehabilitate the reputation of his predecessors, the Wilpons. It turns out that gargantuan mistakes were not exclusive to the previous owners: Fred and Jeff Wilpon and Saul Katz.

Perhaps the biggest doozy yet came to a head on Sunday, shortly after another loss by the big league team at Citi Field, when the Mets announced their failure to sign top draft pick Kumar Rocker, infuriating those same rabid fans who couldn’t believe their good fortune when, exactly three weeks prior, the Mets chose the Vanderbilt right-hander with the 10th selection.

As first reported by The Post on July 27, the Mets held concerns about Rocker’s pitching elbow following a physical examination, Rocker’s camp, headed by adviser Scott Boras, disputed those concerns, and they never came close to a resolution.

“This is clearly not the outcome we had hoped for and wish Kumar nothing but success moving forward,” acting general manager Zack Scott said in a statement, and that the Mets employ an acting GM harkens back to their other epic blunder under Cohen and president Sandy Alderson, their December 2020 hiring of Jared Porter to head their baseball operations. That blew up the next month when ESPN reported of Porter’s inappropriate 2016 contact with a female journalist.

If Porter’s horrendous conduct appeared to catch the bulk of the baseball industry by surprise, however, the Mets simply should have better inoculated themselves better against the Rocker situation. Start with the fact that he fell to them at 10 after being projected to go much higher. While Boras said in a statement, “Kumar requires no medical attention and will continue to pitch in the regular course as he prepares to begin his professional career,” backing that up with assertions of clean MRIs — and Rocker deserves the benefit of the doubt based on his track record of never missing a start at Vandy — the scuttlebutt about Rocker’s arm had been out there.

The Mets could have gambled on the worst-case scenario of Rocker requiring Tommy John surgery, from which most pitchers recover, and stuck with him. The Yankees drafted Clarke Schmidt 16th overall in 2017 a month after he underwent Tommy John surgery and Schmidt’s ceiling remains high.

Or the Mets could have hedged their bets and drafted a reach guy late in the draft as a Plan B, in case the Rocker situation imploded. The Angels, who passed on Rocker with the pick directly in front of the Mets, selected high-school southpaw Mason Albright in the 12th round and gave him a signing bonus of $1.25 million, a record for that round, to forego his commitment to Virginia Tech. The Mets, who had budgeted $6 million for Rocker, left more than $1.3 million of their $9.02 million pool unspent, as first reported by ESPN, because they signed the rest of their selections to under-slot figures.

As a result of not signing Rocker, the Mets get a makeup pick next year that will be no lower than 11th. Active players who were drafted 11th include Max Scherzer, Andrew McCutchen, George Springer and current Met Dom Smith. Yet the Mets won’t get that $1.3 million back, and that presents terrible optics for an owner trying to show off a new and improved culture.

Meanwhile, the Mets wrapped up their longest homestand of the season with a sleepy, 7-1 loss to the Reds, dropping them to 5-6 during their extended Flushing stay. Their National League East lead fell to 3 ½ games over the Phillies. To the road they go, their short-term future hazy and their long-term future having taken a big hit.

It was a rough day for Cohen and his deputies, who will get more chances to do this right, but are showing everyone that money can’t buy you anything close to perfection.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

The draft-day arrangement with the Mets and the Vanderbilt pitcher for a $6-million signing bonus — well over the $4.74 million slot figure for the 10th overall pick — hit a snag when Rocker’s physical examination resulted in the Mets expressing concerns over the right-hander’s pitching elbow, as first reported by The Post on July 27.

Rocker did not miss any time due to injury during his time at college, although his fastball velocity dropped during the 2021 season.

If the two sides indeed part ways without a deal, the current Basic Agreement (which expires on December 1) would call for the Mets to receive the pick immediately following that of the 10th-worst team of this season. They need not make a below-slot offer to Rocker because, as ESPN reported on Sunday, Rocker didn’t participate in Major League Baseball’s voluntary MRI program in which the top 50 pitching prospects are asked whether they want to proactively subject themselves to testing

The 21-year-old Rocker, meanwhile, has two years of eligibility remaining at Vanderbilt.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

Mets face troubling problem after underwhelming trade deadline

Yankees need Anthony Rizzo, Joey Gallo to balance lineup

Jon Matlack re-lives iconic World Series near-miss before entering Mets Hall of Fame

Yankees must rely on pitching to spark season rebound

Mets' trade-deadline task: Adding starting pitcher

As baseball’s players and owners talk through the game’s future, with this current collective bargaining agreement expiring on Dec. 1, let’s hope they remember the glory of this 2021 trade deadline.

Are they sure they want to temper this by expanding the postseason next year and beyond?

For if this campaign featured a 14-team playoff, the notion that Major League Baseball has fancied for a while now, then the Cubs would’ve started play Friday two games out of the final National League wild-card spot (that’s with them already dumping some pieces), and the Nationals four. Would these two proud franchises have called it quits, or would they have geared up for one more run?

Of course, if you’re a Nats or Cubs fan, you very well might prefer the latter scenario. Yet baseball features the undisputedly best trade deadline of any sport — the most exciting buildup, the biggest names switching clubs and the most tantalizing post-transaction storylines — because of its high standard for an October invitation. Mediocre teams can employ many intriguing players ripe for a swap. Less so terrible teams. Last year, when it made sense to deploy a 16-team postseason to align with the COVID-shortened, 60-game schedule, the deadline proved lamer than “Another 48 Hrs.”

Yes, broadcasters love playoff games and both players and owners love money. But if the deadline can’t generate the same sort of revenue as playoff games, can’t something be said about dominating the sports landscape (all the more so in non-Olympic years) for a week?

OK, time to get off the soapbox and determine this deadline’s winners and losers:

Winners

1. Blue Jays: The Twins stuck to their high asking price for frontline starting pitcher Jose Berrios, and Toronto met it, giving up Austin Martin and Simeon Woods-Richardson to land the best non-rental arm that got moved, as well as useful relievers Brad Hand and Joakim Soria. What a way to celebrate their long-awaited return to Rogers Centre. What a grind the American League East is going to be, with all four contenders upgrading.
2. White Sox: Pairing Craig Kimbrel with Liam Hendriks gives them the best back-end bullpen in the game. Cesar Hernandez brings veteran steadiness to second base. If Eloy Jimenez’s groin injury, suffered just days after returning from a season-long injured-list stint, isn’t too bad, then these guys are primed to soar into the playoffs.
3. Athletics: They didn’t mess around, getting Starling Marte from the Marlins — giving up pitcher Jesus Luzardo for the rental — and Yan Gomes and Josh Harrison from the Nationals. The AL wild-card race will be killer.
4. Yankees: Major upgrades arrived in the forms of Joey Gallo, Andrew Heaney and Anthony Rizzo, and let’s see what Clay Holmes and Joely Rodriguez bring. They don’t rank higher because they jettisoned very useful reliever Luis Cessa to the Reds (along with Justin Wilson’s salary) in order to stay under the $210 million luxury-tax threshold and couldn’t find a taker for Luke Voit.
5. Dodgers: They acquired the most accomplished starting pitcher on the market, Max Scherzer, and perhaps the best position player, Trea Turner, from Washington. They don’t rank higher because they still must cope with the consequences, on the field and off, of committing $102 million to known terrible person Trevor Bauer, currently on administrative leave amidst a sexual-assault investigation.
6. Twins: They serve as the exception to the aforementioned rule that lousy teams generally don’t possess many attractive trade pieces. By getting a high return for Berrios and keeping their other high-ceiling players under control (Byron Buxton and Josh Donaldson), the most disappointing entity of 2021 can go right back to contention next year. Not trading impending free agent Michael Pineda surprised.
7. Rays: Two words: Nelson Cruz. Shawn Armstrong and Jordan Luplow add depth. This team’s culture is such that the trade of high-leverage reliever Diego Castillo to Seattle gets treated like business as usual and doesn’t rock the boat.
8. Astros: They just keep rolling, scandals and injuries be damned, as they added Kendall Graveman and Phil Maton to their bullpen. Get ready for more Dusty Baker in October.
9. (tie) Braves and Phillies: If the Mets’ top two pursuers don’t impress in the standings, you have to love their aggressiveness. Atlanta has brought in four outfielders (Adam Duvall, Joc Pederson, Eddie Rosario and Jorge Soler) plus reliever Richard Rodriguez since the All-Star break. And Phillies first-year president Dave Dombrowski lived up to his reputation by acquiring pitchers Kyle Gibson and Ian Kennedy from the Rangers and bringing back Freddy Galvis, who started his career in the Land of Cheesesteaks, from the Orioles on Friday.
10. (tie) Cubs and Nationals: There’s something to be said for ripping off the Band-Aid, and boy, did these two franchises do that, breaking up cores that each won a title. Now it’s on these front offices to make the most out of their returns and newfound payroll flexibilities.

Losers

1. Mariners: You record your biggest win over the season, over the rival Astros, on Monday. On Tuesday, you trade your closer, Graveman, to the Astros. Facepalm emoji. While Seattle wound up replacing Graveman by getting Castillo from the Rays, why would you mess with a group vying to end the longest playoff drought (20 years) of any North American professional sports team?
2. Rockies: Remember back in June, as the Cubs and Nationals hung in there, when it looked like Trevor Story would be the best player traded? Instead, he stayed put, and afterward told The Denver Post, “I’m confused and I don’t have really anything good to say about the situation and how it unfolded.” Yeesh. The best-case scenario will be the Rockies connecting on a compensatory draft pick after Story rejects the qualifying offer, no easy mission. Colorado also retained free-agent-to-be Jon Gray and reportedly hopes to sign him to an extension.
3. Red Sox: The biggest surprise team of the AL picked up the currently injured Kyle Schwarber from Washington and a pair of low-profile bullpen arms, former Met Hansel Robles from the Twins and Austin Davis from the Pirates, a haul that paled in comparison to the Rays, Yankees and Blue Jays.
4. Mets: I’ll allow for the possibility that Javy Baez could be a season-changing and -saving arrival. He’s that sort of special player. Though he’s not a perfect positional fit, at least once his pal Francisco Lindor heals his oblique, and Jacob deGrom’s setback cast a harsh light on the Mets’ inability to find starting pitching help beyond Rich Hill and Trevor Williams.
5. Padres: To be fair, they brought in Adam Frazier from the Pirates and Daniel Hudson from the Nats. However, general manager A.J. Preller has developed a reputation for big-game hunting, and in this instance, the biggest game (Scherzer and Berrios) went elsewhere, Scherzer to the rival Dodgers, while the stunning Giants added Kris Bryant.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

Yankees need Anthony Rizzo, Joey Gallo to balance lineup

Jon Matlack re-lives iconic World Series near-miss before entering Mets Hall of Fame

Yankees must rely on pitching to spark season rebound

Mets' trade-deadline task: Adding starting pitcher

Mets should make all-out push for Max Scherzer at trade deadline

The best trade deadlines captivate a team’s fan base (compel the fans to buy tickets or stream the games, right?) and reward a clubhouse for making such reinforcements necessary. They provide a clean narrative, a simple formula, for everyone to digest and execute.

The Mets’ 2021 deadline? It wound up giving most everyone indigestion.

Good god, what a freaky Friday for the Mets, who somehow managed to pull off one of the most compelling trades of the deadline — landing the dynamic Javier Baez from the Cubs — only to leave their fans reeling from 1) an injury setback for ace Jacob deGrom; 2) a 6-2 loss to the Reds at Citi Field; and 3) the postgame disclosure that Brandon Nimmo, one of the team’s best hitters, wouldn’t have hit in the bottom of the ninth, had the Mets’ rally continued, due to “a pinch in his hamstring” suffered while making a diving catch in the top of the frame.

It nevertheless won’t surprise you to learn that, on the bright side for these guys, they maintained their 3½-game National League East lead over the Phillies and four games over the Braves, as their top two challengers — both of which pulled off reinforcement deals on Friday — also lost.

Friday wound up being the type of day on which Francisco Lindor again expressed his unhappiness with Mets fans who expressed their displeasure, this time with the slumping Michael Conforto (“I hate seeing the crowd boo our players. It sucks”), and it barely registered, thanks to the overload of news.

The Mets would have benefited by making more news in the form of acquiring a pitcher besides Trevor Williams, who joined Baez in coming over from the Cubs and was immediately optioned to Triple-A Syracuse.

“Some of the top-end pitching just wasn’t available to us,” Mets president Sandy Alderson said at an in-person news conference Friday afternoon. “Some players had no-trade clauses and didn’t want to perhaps come to New York. In other cases, top-end starters were kept off the market until the very last minute and then exacted very high prices. So as you look at the starting pitching market, top to bottom … [we decided to] stick with our long-term plan just better off going in a different direction.”

Surely you know that Alderson was referring to two pitchers: future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer, who used his collectively bargained no-trade protection to steer himself from the Nationals to the Dodgers, and Jose Berrios, whom the Twins dealt to the Blue Jays for a delicious return of Austin Martin and Simeon Woods-Richardson. An equivalent package from the Mets, going off MLB.com prospect rankings, would’ve been Ronny Mauricio and Brett Baty, which surely would have turned some stomachs in Queens. And the Mets, their farm system top-heavy, couldn’t unearth any other treasures.

As for Baez, there’s no denying his strengths — power, proficiency against lefty pitching, speed, defense and a love of the spotlight — and maybe those can prove even more valuable now that the Mets have suffered the gut punch of deGrom’s right elbow inflammation, a development that imperils the rest of his season. Baez’s primary weakness is that he doesn’t walk; his 15 bases on balls for the season placed him sixth-worst among qualified major league hitters entering Friday. A curiosity has to be his propensity for in-game drama, as exemplified just this past week by his fine-drawing taunt of Reds reliever Amir Garrett after ripping a walk-off homer against him.

“What’s wrong with drama?” asked Alderson, who of course made Yoenis Cespedes a Met six years ago Saturday. And acting general manager Zack Scott said he joked to Baez, “We’re playing your buddy’s team.”

The other concern should be Baez’s role once Lindor recovers. Whose playing time, at what position, will the versatile infielder be taking if everyone’s healthy? Will it create unhappiness for Luis Rojas to manage?

Will Friday go down as the Mets’ catapult to greater things or their ultimate obstacle? We can’t possibly know, for the Mets gave neither themselves nor their observers a clean solution to a troubling problem.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Texas substituted lefty bullpenner Joely Rodriguez for King and the Yankees subsequently altered the mix of minor leaguers going to the Rangers, and the transaction was made official by both teams Thursday.

King, 26, a southpaw like Rodriguez, is currently on the 10-day injured list with left shoulder fatigue, having last pitched on July 6.

The Rangers believe that King, who already has thrown off a mound in his rehabilitation, will be back pitching in August or September. He owns a 3.52 ERA in 27 games totaling 46 innings pitched on the season, striking out 40 and walking 12. The Yankees liked him enough that they were willing to include centerfield prospect Everson Pereira, whom they value highly, in a package for him and Gallo.

But a deep dive on King left the Yankees concerned with at least his shoulder, and that prompted the shift in the deal’s terms.

The Yankees wound up dealing a quartet of minor-leaguers — right-handed pitcher Glenn Otto and infielders Ezequiel Duran, Trevor Hauver and Josh Smith — to the Rangers, who will pay the full salaries of both Gallo and Rodriguez the rest of the season.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

Mets should make all-out push for Max Scherzer at trade deadline

These Yankees have you always fearing the worst

Yankees can't keep surviving these bullpen blowups

Giancarlo Stanton outfield experiment is a big Yankees gamble

Early glimpse of MLB's Field of Dreams pop-up for Yankees-White Sox game

OK, playtime is over.

It’s time for the Mets to make TBD DOA.

No doubts remain over where the Mets must focus their trade-deadline energy, right? Even if the dream, Max Scherzer, now looks far more like a fantasy.

The NL East leaders hope Tuesday night’s 12-5 blowout loss to the Braves at Citi Field marked the farewell to fill-in starting pitchers, as Jerad Eickhoff, drawing his fourth such assignment, got torched to the tune of 10 earned runs over 3 ¹/₃ innings, lifting his 2021 ERA to 8.69.

The 31-year-old, twice designated for assignment by the Mets this season (including just last week), appears headed for the undesired hat trick, as Carlos Carrasco, who came with Francisco Lindor from Cleveland in January, finally should make his Mets debut Friday night, hours after the trade deadline arrives, against the Reds.

“Looking ahead, there’s no blank spot right now,” Luis Rojas said of his starting rotation. “There’s names on each day. There’s no TBDs.”

Combined with newcomer Rich Hill, the Mets will have five healthy, full-time starting pitchers, a phenomenon they have experienced only sporadically this fakakta campaign. Yet even with Jacob deGrom on the mend from the injured list, the Mets surely will require more help in this department to reach the finish line. They know this.

Can they nab Michael Pineda or, even better, Jose Berrios from the Twins? Must they settle for the likes of the Angels’ Alex Cobb or Andrew Heaney?

Can they find another surprise option like Hill, whom the contending Rays gave up, only with a higher ceiling? The beauty and bafflement of trade-deadline week is you can bluff and posture all you want until the expiring clock tells the truth of your intentions.

Scherzer very likely will not be a Met, not after the Nationals told the Mets not to bother with trade discussions because the three-time Cy Young Award winner, who can control his destiny by virtue of being a 10-and-5 player (10 years in the majors, five or more with his current club), purportedly doesn’t want to join them (nor do the Nats seem very excited to hand over Scherzer to an NL East rival). Only the deadline, however, can formalize that fate.

It’s a tough row for the Mets (53-46) to hoe, yet if Tuesday’s result — which kept the losing Phillies (50-50) 3 ½ games behind them in the NL East as the Braves (50-51) closed within four games — brought any good news, it offered further evidence that their offense doesn’t require a major upgrade.

Jeff McNeil extended his hitting streak to 14 games, homering off Atlanta starter (and winner) Charlie Morton and adding a ninth-inning ground-rule double. Pete Alonso singled and doubled. In all, the Mets put together 10 hits and two walks.

“We always have to be exploring ways to improve the club. But as I’ve said before, we have a lot of good position players,” Mets acting general manager Zack Scott said on Monday. “We’re mindful of, if we add a player, it’s a zero-sum game here. We’re taking away at-bats from someone else. We need to make sure it’s actually improving our club depending on acquisition costs.”

Would guys like Javier Baez, Kris Bryant and Trevor Story be worth the acquisition costs as well as the disruption of this team’s mojo? In-season position-player deals work best when the import fills a void rather than kicks an established guy aside; think of Yoenis Cespedes joining the Mets in 2015, or David Justice with the Yankees in 2000.

These questions become more meaningful because of the special vibe this group has built, grinding through a blizzard of injuries. Said Scott: “[We] always have to do our due diligence so that we understand not just the kind of the player that we’re bringing in but the kind of person, because I do think it’s important and what we do have in the clubhouse has been pretty special. And we want to keep that going or even add to it.”

The fewer mound TBDs the Mets require moving forward, the more likely they can prevail in this slog of a division race … and pose a threat in October, too.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Rocker’s camp disagrees with those concerns, citing the pitcher’s durability at Vanderbilt, leading to a stalemate as Sunday’s 5 p.m. signing deadline approaches.

Rocker, whom the Mets drafted 10th overall, had agreed to a $6 million signing bonus on draft day pending the physical. The two sides could either sign off on a smaller figure, part ways altogether, or move forward with the original deal if the Mets determine that he’s worth the risk.

If an agreement can’t be reached, Rocker could return to Vanderbilt for his senior year, aim to get selected even higher in 2022 and earn outside money through the NCAA’s name, image and likeness allowance in the meantime.

Unless the rules change through the upcoming Basic Agreement (the current one expires on December 1), the Mets would get a “makeup pick” next year behind the 10th-worst club if an agreement cannot be reached.

Citing the team’s intention to reserve comment on all draft picks until the deadline, Mets general manager Zack Scott declined comment. Rocker’s agent, Scott Boras, also declined comment.

Jack Ramsey of the USA Today-Mets Network first reported of a medical issue regarding Kumar, who underwent his examination with the Mets last week.

Rocker, 21, made 42 appearances in college ball, 39 of them starts, without missing any time.

He didn’t participate in Major League Baseball’s voluntary MRI program, by which the top 50 pitching prospects are asked to undergo the test prior to the draft.

Boras relies on his own team of medical experts to evaluate all of his players and has proactively alerted clubs of potential physical issues, such as when the Mets selected his advisee Matt Allan in the third round of the 2019 amateur draft.

Allan underwent Tommy John surgery earlier this year. No such alert occurred with Rocker.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

These Yankees have you always fearing the worst

Yankees can't keep surviving these bullpen blowups

Giancarlo Stanton outfield experiment is a big Yankees gamble

Early glimpse of MLB's Field of Dreams pop-up for Yankees-White Sox game

Mets need to bolster pitching before trade deadline ends

It might not work. It could be too soon.

After all, Max Scherzer leaving the Nationals midseason for the Mets would be like Elaine Benes dumping Jerry for Newman.

By golly, though, the Mets owe it to themselves to try. Because is there an image more tantalizing right now than Jacob deGrom starting an October series opener and Scherzer going in Game 2?

So the Mets should offer the Nats any player not currently on their major league roster. They should offer Scherzer, the impending free agent, an extension in return for joining them. They should view Washington’s recent plummet as the next opportunity to change their organization’s culture.

Scherzer, who turns 37 on Tuesday, is closing out his seven-year, $210 million contract with characteristic brilliance. Don’t blame him for the Nationals’ problems. He owns a 2.83 ERA in 18 starts totaling 103 innings, with 142 strikeouts against 25 walks, and a look under the hood (at exit velocities and the like) largely affirms his 2021 excellence, even as it also shows that he’s no longer the dynamo who won the 2016 and 2017 National League Cy Young awards for the Nationals. He missed his last start with right triceps discomfort but is scheduled to start later this week.

Take his present value and add his past postseason experience, and there’s no other player on this trade market who can similarly 1) energize the Mets’ clubhouse; 2) fire up their fan base; and 3) help the Mets achieve their goal of winning it all.

For this, yes, I’d trade one of Francisco Alvarez, or Brett Baty, or Ronny Mauricio to headline a package, an indication of the Mets’ seriousness to the Nationals, who are not a natural trade partner given the two clubs’ residence in the NL East.

Mets general manager Zack Scott, asked before Monday’s doubleheader split against the Braves about making intra-division trades, said, “I don’t have any problem dealing within our division. …There are times, I’ve had experiences in my past, where I’ve seen teams within the same division have an in-division tax associated with the trade. It’s not clear whether that is the case now. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is for some players. I don’t think we should be afraid to make moves that improve our club.”

You’d expect the Nats to impose such a tax on the Mets, given that Washington almost certainly won’t look at a full teardown. The Mets should be willing to pay it as long as it’s not outrageous (which would be an ask for two of the top three prospects).

Then there’s Scherzer himself, who controls his destiny thanks to his 10-and-5 rights (10 years in the big leagues, at least five with his current team) and might not want to compromise his bond with the Nats and their fans by reporting to Citi Field.

“That’s a variable that can complicate things at times,” Scott said generally of no-trade protection. “For any player that has no-trade protection, that’s an issue that we need to be mindful of, that could be a challenge. In some cases you don’t have to go too far down the road before you know that they’re just not going to waive it, so we don’t spend much time on it.”

It would be surprising if Scherzer and his agent Scott Boras passed altogether on a conversation with Scott and his bosses Steve Cohen and Sandy Alderson, if for no other reason than to make introductions and gather information for this coming offseason. If the right-hander is open to conversations about an extension, then by all means the Mets — with Marcus Stroman and Noah Syndergaard coming off the books — should offer one for a short term (two years?) and a high salary ($35 million per year?).

The Mets should go all-out because they have a team capable of winning the World Series now and a group of guys that has grinded through a blizzard of injuries to earn the reward of a second ace. With Stroman a free agent this winter and deGrom’s multiple injury-list stays creating concerns about his long-term viability, the stars might not align similarly next season.

That’s right, the Mets should exhibit Max effort in trying to land Scherzer.

(Sorry.)

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

Yankees can't keep surviving these bullpen blowups

Giancarlo Stanton outfield experiment is a big Yankees gamble

Early glimpse of MLB's Field of Dreams pop-up for Yankees-White Sox game

Mets need to bolster pitching before trade deadline ends

Greg Allen bringing element of speed to Yankees

BOSTON — The Yankees led with their ace on the mound, and you would’ve bet your house on a defeat.

You know this team too well.

Gerrit Cole indeed lost on Friday night, 6-2 to the Red Sox at Fenway Park, and you don’t pin much blame at all on the $301.3 million man, not after the way he has performed recently. In the context of his two previous outings — a shutout of the Astros on July 10 and a rain-shortened, six-inning complete game to beat the Bosox on July 17 — Cole pitched satisfactorily, limiting the Red Sox to three runs in five innings as they wore him out for an astounding 104 pitches.

“It’s the AL East. Tough division,” Cole said. “We’re playing good clubs.”

Unfortunately for him, the nitrous oxide of the “Bronx RailRiders” vibe seems to have worn off, the Yankees now feeling the full effects of their COVID-19 outbreak as well as their overall roller-coaster campaign. With each loss generally (this was number 46, two fewer than their entire 1998 regular season) and specifically to the Red Sox (against whom they are now 2-9 and whom they trail by nine games in the American League East, yeesh), you increasingly wonder what sort of resources the Yankees should expend before the July 30 trade deadline. They can’t give up anyone good from their minor league system, right? Not for an endeavor that looks too much like a Hail Mary pass.

In the wake of Thursday night’s disastrous loss, which featured Chad Green coughing up a two-run, ninth-inning lead and Brooks Kriske throwing four wild pitches to lose it in the 10th, the Yankees created (and received) one shot to move past that on Friday, and when they blew that, you could start writing their nightly obituary. Whether they’re soft or are just wiped out at this juncture might be inconsequential.

That one opportunity arrived in the top of the second inning, when Brett Gardner doubled home Gary Sanchez for the 1-0 lead and put Yankees on second and third with no outs. Boston starting pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez summoned his manager, Alex Cora, to the mound and accompanied Cora and other VIPs back to the dugout moments later, his night felled by migraine systems.

In came righty reliever Phillips Valdez for the southpaw starter Rodriguez, and righty-swinging first baseman Chris Gittens clearly struck out. Ryan LaMarre loaded the bases with a hit-by-pitch, only for recent hero Greg Allen and former team most valuable player DJ LeMahieu to fan, leaving the bases jammed and completely flipping the momentum.

“With Gerritt on the mound, it didn’t feel like the game at the time,” said LeMahieu, whose slash line dropped to .266/.350/.357, “but it ended up being some pretty big runs [left on the table].”

For this was not the Cole of recent vintage. He battled like crazy, picking up eight strikeouts against six hits and two walks, yet through three innings, he had thrown a startling 70 pitches. When the Sawx did connect against him, they hit the ball hard. Hence it proved no surprise when the home team broke through with a three-run fifth, a Xander Bogaerts sacrifice fly tying the score and a Rafael Devers two-run homer putting the Red Sox up by a 3-1 count. Cole finished the inning with 104 pitches thrown, and Aaron Boone showed mercy by lifting him there.

By the time Devers slammed a three-run shot off Nestor Cortes (the first returnee from this outbreak) in the seventh, Sanchez had left the game with mid-back spasms and all hope had been lost, the Yankees 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position (and adding one more failure each in the eighth and ninth). Five Red Sox relievers combined to throw eight innings of one-run ball, that run coming with two outs in the ninth. Brutal.

This Yankees club inspires a lack of confidence. It instills you with a fear that something disastrous will occur. Even with its best player front and center.

“It’s frustrating,” Boone said, “but we also have a 4 o’clock game [Saturday] that’s really important.”

Your 2021 Yankees, ladies and gentlemen. Coming to an ulcer near you.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

Early glimpse of MLB's Field of Dreams pop-up for Yankees-White Sox game

Mets need to bolster pitching before trade deadline ends

Greg Allen bringing element of speed to Yankees

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on Yankees, Phillies rosters

Drama-filled Mets just won't stay down

BOSTON — “If that’s true, if you don’t know who I am, then maybe your best course would be to tread lightly.”

— Walter White (to Hank), “Breaking Bad”

Do the Yankees know who Giancarlo Stanton is, four years into their 10-year commitment? Do they have a firm enough grip on the slugger’s strengths and weaknesses? Do they know how to get the most out of their sizable investment in him?

They’re putting that knowledge to the test, and they had best not fail if they want to continue their recent climb to relevance.

Aaron Boone said Thursday, before his Yankees opened a critical series with the Red Sox at Fenway Park, that there’s “a good chance” Stanton will start in left field Saturday or Sunday, which would constitute his first time wearing a glove in a game since Game 1 of the 2019 American League Championship Series.

Look, if you’re going to play the oft-injured Stanton anywhere on defense, left field here is about as risk free as it gets. The proximity of the Green Monster to home plate (310 feet) will limit Stanton’s workload, and right field in Yankee Stadium (314) ranks as only slightly more challenging. Mickey Rivers, 72 and still full of energy, probably could handle these two terrains with relative ease.

Beyond that, especially with eight interleague games at National League parks remaining? They should tread lightly with one of their bigger bats, given Stanton’s injury history.

“Hopefully we get him out there maybe one day this weekend. One or two days in Miami [July 30-Aug. 1]. Obviously when we go play other National League series in a National League park, have that available to us,” Boone said. “And if that goes well, especially when we get Aaron [Judge] back, maybe pick some spots at home in right field where I can give Judgie a DH day and things like that. So hopefully this is something we can do at least sparingly to have in play.”

“Sparingly” ranks as such a critical term when it comes to Stanton’s time as a Yankee. He played sparingly in 2019, 18 out of 162 regular-season games and five of nine in October, and then sparingly last year, 23 out of 60 in the regular season before figuring things out sufficiently to start all seven games during the playoff run.

I expressed similar concerns earlier this season when the Yankees started playing Judge, also injury-prone, in center field, and to date those concerns have gone for naught; Judge is currently not active due to a positive COVID-19 test. If Stanton and Judge became attached the prior few years as much for their frequent visits to the injured list as their massive exit velocities, Judge distinguished himself from his fellow behemoth in that some of his ailments resulted from aberrational events (a hit-by-pitch, a diving attempt at a catch) rather than standard play going wrong.

Stanton memorably and frighteningly got beaned by the Brewers’ Mike Fiers in 2014, suffering serious injuries and missing extensive time with the Marlins. In his four years with the Yankees, however, all six of Stanton’s problems — four IL stays, missed playoff time in 2019 and missed spring training time in 2020 prior to the shutdown — resulted from standard work, be it running, swinging or fielding.

A changed protocol with Eric Cressey, the Yankees’ second-year director of player health and performance, appears to have paid some dividends. Thursday marked Stanton’s 75th game of the Yankees’ 95. If he’s still exceptionally streaky, the .260/.349/.469 slash line he brought to work made him a significant overpayment without qualifying him as a disaster in a vacuum. The bigger problem is that he’s too similar to too many other free-swinging, righty-hitting Yankees, but you already knew that.

It would be a bad development for Stanton to wind up hurting himself from a defensive shift, particularly at the Marlins’ ridiculously spelled loanDepot park or the Braves’ Truist Park or the Mets’ Citi Field. How confident are the Yankees that he has worked his way up to avoiding such a fate? We’ll find out, the stakes being quite high.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Ken Davidoff