ON THE SAME TRACK
The Subway Series could turn into a train to nowhere for one of New York’s teams with both the Yankees and Mets fighting for their playoff lives.
The Yankees are in tradedeadline purgatory, unwilling to give up on a season with long playoff odds, even as they sit relatively close in the standings. The Mets have failed to live up to expectations borne out of reaching the World Series a year ago, and have made it clear that no Yoenis Cespedes-type upgrade is expected this season.
“The Yankees still hold a lot of interest on the radio show. I don’t know if that’s a product of me doing the games on TV, but I would say fairly that if we talk about either team we get a lot of reaction,” said YES Network play-by-play man Michael Kay, who sees the Yankees nightly and hears from Mets fans daily on ESPN Radio.
“Mets fans are bewildered by what’s happened this season and the Yankees fans are angry, but both fan bases are out there and interested.”
The Yankees took one step toward rebuilding with the trade of Aroldis Chapman to the Cubs, but still have a strong bullpen with Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller at the back end. The white flag may be out, but it has yet to be waved.
“The two deals that I think if they make you’d have a hard time justifying that you are still going for it are [Carlos] Beltran and Miller,” Kay said.
Even with Beltran, the Yankees’ offense is ranked 23rd in baseball in runs scored, though that is five spots higher than where the Mets were entering Wednesday’s action.
“They just don’t score enough runs. For the New York Yankees to be last in the American League in slugging percentage playing in that ballpark it’s almost incomprehensible,” Kay said. “Everything that could have gone wrong in the beginning of the year did with the biggest being Alex [Rodriguez] and [Mark] Teixeira not playing like they did last year.”
Still, both teams are in playoff contention and the stakes will be high with the four-game series that starts in Queens and ends in The Bronx. One area where the Mets have won is the ratings with SNY telecasts averaging 278,078 viewers, compared to 219,205 for the YES Network’s Yankees broadcasts. That number is influenced by YES Network’s season-long dispute with Comcast that has kept the broadcasts off that cable system.
But Kay does not expect Hal Steinbrenner to let any attention the Mets get influence his decisions.
“I think the [Yankees] still hold games against the Mets and the Red Sox in pretty high esteem, but Hal is too smart to be making a decision on whether or not to trade for assets on whether or not the Mets will get publicity or be the chosen team,” Kay said.