SHOOTING FROM THE LIP
Yankees and Dodgers were best teams on paper before pandemic, but now it’s all up for grabs
Before the pandemic changed everything, certainly not just in baseball, there was little doubt that the Dodgers and the Yankees were the two best teams in baseball on paper. The Yankees added Gerrit Cole toa team that won 103 games. The Dodgers added Mookie Betts to a team that won 106 games. Big numbers. And it was more than that. Both teams were coming into the 2020 season with equally big chips on their shoulders, placed there by the Houston Asterisks. They both think they should have won at least one World Series apiece in the past three seasons. And both thought they were set up pretty good to win one right now.
But the Yankees are still stuck on one World Series since 2000. The Dodgers haven’t won since 1988. The Yankees will always think that the Astros stole two American League Championship Series from them because of sign-stealing. They will believe until the end of time that Jose Altuve knew what pitch Aroldis Chapman was going to throw him in the bottom of the 9th in Game 6 last year. The Dodgers will always believe that the Astros stole the 2017 World Series — after the Yankees had lost to the Astros in seven games — from them because of sign-stealing, especially Game 5, the 13-12 win by the Astros that changed everything in that Series.
They both think that they, well, wuz robbed. Now, if the coronavirus doesn’t take baseball away from us a second time in 2020, this time for good, they are both still loaded coming into a short season. The Yankees have had the added benefit, because the regular season isn’t scheduled to begin until the third week of July, to get so many key injured players back, starting with Aaron (All Rise) Judge, who’s had the distressing habit over the past two seasons of doing more sitting down than rising up, which is why he barely has more home runs for 2018 and 2019 than he had in ’17.
But now comes the short season, marathon becoming sprint. And, as Buck Showalter said to me the other day, “everybody is in play.” Might form hold. Might the Dodgers and the Yankees be the two best teams after 60 games the way they most likely would have been over 162. Of course they might. Dodgers still added Mookie. The only player better than him is the guy about 30 miles south of L.A. in Anaheim. That would be Mr. Trout. And you better believe the
Yankees still added Cole, their first ace since they last won a World Series with CC Sabathia carrying their starting pitching, and sometimes the whole team.
Only now comes the short season, one in which anything could happen.
Even people in outer space know what the Nationals’ record was after 50 games last season, before they turned things around at 19-31 and turned themselves into one of the great baseball stories of all time. If a team as good and deep and talented and as full of baseball character as the ’19 Nationals were could have a bad 50 games, the Dodgers or Yankees or anybody could be about to have a sketchy 60 games themselves, if the virus does let everybody get back on the field.
Again: Buck is right. Everybody might have a chance. The Mets happen to think they have a great chance — and that means without even knowing if Yoenis Cespedes might be healthy enough to play by the end of July — because of the last 60 games they played last year. It’s easy to forget now, but they turned things around the way the Nationals did, just a couple of months too late.
The Mets were 47-55 after 102 games. You know what their record was over their last 60? It was 39-21. You want to know what the Yankees’ record was over their last 60 games? It was 37-23. The Mets were two games better. Imagine what it would be like around here come September if the Mets had the best record in town at that point.
Could that happen, even if the Yankees have Cole now and the Mets do not have Noah Syndergaard? You better believe it could happen in a year like this, if the virus does allow baseball’s regular season to go the distance. And maybe the Angels could shock everybody and have a better record than the Dodgers. Could the Angels, now managed by Joe Maddon , do
it over a long season? Not on your life. But there’s a brand new abnormal in baseball, the way there is everywhere else on the planet. A sprint this time in baseball. Not a marathon. Stuff happens.
Aaron Boone was talking with the media about what he thinks his general message will be to his team once the Yankees report for summer training. Here is part of what he said on a TickPick video chat:
“Certainly my message is you can’t live in that world where, ‘We’ve got to play well,’ or ‘We can’t lose too many games in this stretch.’”
But the truth is, the Yankees don’t want to lose too many games in one stretch, as good as they are. There is just no form chart for any of this. There is no way to predict which teams will play with urgency from the jump, and which ones weren’t. Maybe the analytics will hold. Maybe chalk will hold.
Or not.
Look at the Mets and Yankees another way: For the first 102 games last season, the Yankees were 19 games better than the Mets. Nineteen. Then the Mets were those two games better the rest of the way. There’s no doubt the Mets were trying to grind their way to a Wild Card in the NL East, and the Yankees were running away with things in the AL East. But still. A lot changed after that, in just 60 games. The Yankees and Dodgers, more than anybody, do believe they got screwed by the Asterisks. Now they have to wonder if it might happen again. Not because of sign-stealing. They have to wonder if they might get screwed by the schedule. That’s if there is a schedule.