I can see the current iteration of the Yankees over the next few years either becoming the Yankees of the early to mid 80s or the 1995-1996 Yankees.
They can continue to employ aging and/or mediocre veterans to plug holes and continue to slide. At the same time, the Mets could be on the ascent with their plethora of pitching, seeing the tide of fandom on NY shifting back to the Mets. This would be the scenario similar to the early/mid 80s.
On the other hand, they can commit to calling up more youngsters (Refsnyder, Pirela, etc.) to go along with the pitchers they've already called up to fill injury slots. This could mirror the 1995 Yankees calling up a number of AAA players to fill injury spots. A lot of people had written them off, but the youngsters performed well enough to keep them afloat and they rallied around Mattingly. In this case they could rally around Jeter.
Which team will the end up resembling?
Think about it this way. In the mid 90s to just a couple of years ago, the Yankees had a number of All star caliber players and/or household names on their roster. Simply, they had star appeal. Right now, Jeter is the only guy that fits the bill and Tanaka has potential. They have no other stars. On the flipside, the Mets still have Wright and Harvey was on his way to exploding to that status. With the right couple of moves the Mets could be the team of more interest to fringe fans.
Now, the real x factor is that Mets ownership is terrible and very likely to screw things up. But, the Yankees could end up on the downward path regardless.
And yeah, having the Wilpon sell wouldn't hurt...
Hopes that they will sell will probably go unfulfilled. There were high hopes that balloon payments on their stadium loans would do them in, starting with a $250M payment that was due this summer. But they were able to refinance the loans, and so there is nothing impelling them to sell anymore.
The question now is: is spending still low because they can't afford it, or is Sandy advising them to keep their powder dry until the team is ready to make a serious move to contention? Or maybe somewhere in the middle, where they're not on desperate footing anymore, but funds are tight enough that they need to start winning enough to see attendance grown before they infuse more money.
Time will tell. The fact that the banks were willing to refinance rather than forcing a sale gives us at least some hope.
That would be awesome if we are talking about anything like Jeter, Posada, Rivera and Petite. As long as you are making comparisons.
That would be awesome if we are talking about anything like Jeter, Posada, Rivera and Petite. As long as you are making comparisons.
No, Refsnyder is not likely to be one of those guys. But he could be a longtime average to above average starter at the position, think maybe Brian Roberts in his prime but with 25 steal potential instead of 50. That's a good building block, particularly because the money you don't pay for an established starter there is one you can use on an established starter somewhere else (SS, for instance).
There just doesn't seem to be any indication the Mets are going to get that good anytime soon, or get a marquee player as beloved as Jeter or Rivera, or that they'd be able to sustain success if they got there, or that the Yankees are going to suck for an extended period of time.
The Yankees followed that with perhaps the worst period of their history, or at least one of the worst. But, they were building their farm system and by about 1993 were on the rise again and re-taking NYC. They have had a stranglehold for 2 decades. But, it did get close in late 90s to 2000, though.
I will add, depending on what they do this offseason, this could be the first time an entire generation of Yankee fans has a team without a legitimate star on it.
And remember in the 80's you had people who grew up with the Dodgers and Giants, the Mets were an easy transition for them and their kids. Most of them have passed on at this point, and generally speaking Mets fans are not as anti-Yankees as the prior generation (recovering Dodger and Giant fans) were because they rarely play meaningful baseball against each other. More likely than a switch for any but the casual fans is just that lukewarm Mets fans would care more and lukewarm Yankee Fans would care less.
Attendance isn't necessarily the end-all be-all, especially when the experience at YS was pretty mediocre (not that new YS is much better). I get that one was trending up and the other down, but if the Mets had fallen off and the Yankees had come on the attendance figures would have flip-flopped.
So it would seem like things are changing because the team with the recent success would have fans that come out of the woodwork, but perception isn't always reality.
Yup. I'm actually looking forward to cleaning that element out of the fan base. The hell with them.
As fun and great as 85 & 86 were as a Mets fan there was something a little extra special and in a ways even more enjoyable for me in 84. I was at Shea for so many games from 82 though 84 and watching it all unfold and feeling like really being part of it as a fan made 84 almost our little secret. Then by 85 everyone was getting on board and were "die hard fans".
The Mets fall apart, the Yankees start winning, so what happens? During the 1994 season, George gets a job with the Yankees and the Yankees become a major part of the series - cameos by Showalter, Tartabull, O'Neill, Jeter and Bernie, the recurring Steinbrenner character, etc.
To some degree this is true. I was born in 1979 and grew up in Manhattan. Among my friends, fandom is really split 50-50. Except the Mets were very successful in the mid/late 80s while the Yankees didnt make the playoffs from 82-94 (though they had some very good 80s teams). You'd think with the 86 series and 88 playoffs as part of 5 straight 90+ win seasons that the split would have been more than 50-50 between Mets and Yankee fans. My friends who had dads that rooted for the Yankees almost all became Yankees fans (I was an exception, but I didnt know my dad was a Yankees fan until the late 90s when he started working less and eventually retired).
If the Mets start winning again, there won't be many empty seats at Citi. It's just a winning/losing thing. I'm sure there are more Yankee fans than Met fans but I don't think the split is quite as drastic as Knicks/Nets fans or Rangers/Islanders.
In 2006 and 2007.. even 2008, I had partial seasons and went to a ton of games and a lot of those times, Shea was packed. There is no shortage of Met fans. Just a lot of people who got tired of watching a shitty team but will come back if they start winning again.
When it comes to the NY baseball teams, fans will be there when they're winning and will stop showing up during extended down periods. That's just how it is.
That NL bias was still in NY until the mid-1990s. Manhattan, Northern Jersey, and Westchester were always dominated by the Yanks.But in Brooklyn, there were very few Yankee fans.
I think the major thing that has changed is that you have had an influx of immigrants into NY over the last 30 years--Dominicans, Koreans, Russians etc --who did not inherit the Dodgers/Mets/Giants vs Yankees mentality. And most of them became Yankee fans because of their great success over the last two decades.
Families who go back for four or more generations in the NY metro area probably still have a good percentage of Met fans. But among more recent immigrants. I would bet that it is overwhelmingly Yankee fans, and they will pass that rooting interest onto their kids.
I think the Yanks could be heading into oblivion if they do not get their heads out of thier asses and fix the minor league system. That is broke. Plus they need that to be the priority, because if it isn't, you are no longer going to be able to be good consistently. i still do not know if cashman understands this, he certainly makes you wonder.
The mets are in great shape with thier pitching, i think they will hit big on some, and i do think they will spend when they really feel they can make enough noise, and that is coming, very soon.
My point is that once Jeter packs it in at the end of this year, there's really no reason to watch this team. They need to bring up young players with potential and they need to do it fast. I'm not sure this management knows how to draft and develop young players.