Let's face it: the Mets are a better team.

 

Just to riff a little on what our Peerless Leader—and Hammer, in the comments—were saying:

The inter-city series is usually fraught with peril for the Yankees because the Metsies—the most truly cursed team in baseball—play it like their World Series. They go all out, guys who have wallowed in suckitude the entire season playing out of their heads. 

You go over to SNY, maybe half of the incredibly sucky, "Mets Classics" are the Flushing team beating our boys over the last ten years. They even have a "Classics" game that is a win from the Covid year, played before one of those eerie, silent, face-card "crowds." 

This year, though, if you look at it honestly, the Mets are better at 6 of 8 positions. Only Judge and Juan Soto—who is probably playing hurt, and now seems able to do little but draw walks—could crack the Metsies' lineup. After coming back from early-season slumps and injuries, they are better at catcher, first, second, shortstop (yes, Lindor is a better glove and more of a power hitter), third, and the remaining outfield spot.

Yes, we probably have better starting pitching—for now. And thanks to another, inexplicable Mets Folly, they just lost their closer, leveling another place where they had an advantage.

Much worse than all this, though, they also acquired an old nemesis to best us at DH. Yes, they have J.D. Martinez.

Some of you will remember when the Yankees decided they had a choice of acquiring Giancarlo Stanton or J.D. Martinez before the 2018 season. 

In the true Yankees way, I thought...why not get both? And indeed, if they had to get both, they would have almost certainly have won at least 4 more rings. But I digress.

If they had to get just one, Stanton seemed like the way to go. He had just hit those 59, garbage-time homers in Miami. He played much more outfield than Martinez did, and was two years younger.

Only our Dauntless Leader, Alphonso, stood up vehemently for Martinez over Stanton—and with what now seems like impeccable logic. 

Martinez, first of all, was a free agent, who could be got for a fraction of the years and money that Stanton's existing contract required. We would not have to give up second baseman Starlin Castro, a 27-year-old, good-fielding second baseman who had hit .300 in 2017. He could have been traded for a pitcher we needed, or who knows what prospects?

But no, Brian Cashman insisted on Stanton—in good part, it soon seemed, because he wanted to stick it to Derek Jeter, especially in a book Bob Klapisch was obligingly writing for him, telling us all what a genius Cashman was.

Well, the rest is history, of course. 

Martinez has drilled like a jackhammer everywhere he's gone, outhitting Stanton, out-homering him, out-everything him.

Cashie's mistake was evident even before Klapisch's book hit the stores, as J.D. hit 43 homers, batted .330, and led the league with 130 ribbies and 358 stolen bases in his first year at Fenway.

In their big, head-to-head confrontation that postseason, Martinez hit a homer and drove in 6 runs against us in the four-game ALDS, with a line of .357/.421/.571/.992. He drew 3 walks, and did not strike out once.

Stanton? Well, he did a little worse: .222/.222/.222/.444. No homers, no RBI, no walks; just 6 strikeouts. Including, most memorably, the last inning of the last game that year, when he flailed wildly at one Craig Kimbrel pitch after another outside the strike zone. 

Martinez led the Sox to a ring that year. Giancarlo has led us to nothing but the knackers' yard. Of course, there won't be another "showdown" because Stanton has just made his EIGHTH trip to the DL.  

But never forget—Brian Cashman is a genius! And he showed that Derek Jeter!