Calling time on the Yankees’ and Mets’ season after a pair of subpar starts, it turns out, might have been a little bit premature.
Hard to see coming, we know, but the month of April does not make a season.
There is still some work to do in both boroughs, but after Sunday, the Yankees have won four in a row , eight of their last 10 and are just 5.5 games back of the Rays for the AL East lead.
The Mets, who swept a doubleheader with the Guardians to go two games over .500, have a bit more work to do, but have found a degree of steadiness.as well as late-inning magic.
Both games on Sunday were won in the late innings, with Starling Marte’s go-ahead home run in Game 1 and Jeff McNeil’s sacrifice fly in Game 2 following a walk-off win via Francisco Lindor on Friday.
The thing about a 162-game season is that there is a lot of time for water to find its level.
And both teams look like they are starting to find their footing with improving health underscoring a couple weeks that qualifies as a step in the right direction.
There are reasonable doubts as to whether either the Yankees or Mets can really contend for a championship.But there is not much question as to whether either is a generally good baseball team if healthy.
In no surprise to anyone, the Yankees’ hot stretch has coincided with Aaron Judge’s return, with the reigning MVP hitting seven home runs with a 1.402 OPS in 12 games, powering the team through a bizarre, controversy-filled road trip.Harrison Bader has hit since returning as well, homering in Sunday’s win over the Reds.
Aaron Judge’s momentous return to the lineup has helped the Yankees reel off nine wins in their last 12 games.
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Luis Severino, vitally, returned to the rotation on Sunday to give up a run over 4 ⅔ innings with five strikeouts.That doesn’t solve all the problems for a group that is now missing Domingo German due to suspension, and for which Nestor Cortes has been less than impressive, but it is a major step forward.
For the Mets, the likes of Marte, Brandon Nimmo and Pete Alonso have been at the center of this week’s success, as they should be.Furthermore, the recently called-up Mark Vientos is forcing Buck Showalter’s hand to be in the lineup, though it is happening much slower than fans would like.
What matters most, however, is the starting pitching, and that is where Sunday’s doubleheader told us something — as the Mets looked for a day like the team we imagined them to be .
Max Scherzer made it through six scoreless innings without incident in Game 1, in which the trouble came from a normally reliable bullpen.Justin Verlander went eight innings and gave up a run on three hits in Game 2.
That is the kind of doubleheader every fan would have signed up for in a heartbeat seven weeks ago.
Given the health troubles and age of both, there is a little more uncertainty than the Mets might like, especially given their sky-high expectations.
But nothing is lost yet.
Max Scherzer’s six innings of scoreless work Sunday afternoon was the kind of outing most Mets fans have been expecting but not getting a lot this season.Corey Sipkin for the NY Post
The sort of drama and stakes we’ve gotten over the past week — one which saw both teams combine for 12 wins — is what we should have all summer long.That is what the city deserves after all the hype and money spent on both teams, and after none of the five winter teams to make the playoffs got past the second round.
And finally, it looks like what we will get.
Today’s back page New York Post
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Hard to root for, impossible to not appreciate Novak Djokovic would become the all-time Grand Slam titles leader if he can beat the odds and take another French Open.Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Im
Two weeks from Sunday, a strange scene could begin to unfold in Paris.
If Novak Djokovic wins the French Open, which begins next Monday after this week’s qualifying, he will have passed Rafael Nadal for first on the all-time Grand Slam list, at the venue which Nadal has made his own over the past two decades.
Even as Nadal’s body has betrayed him and his game on other surfaces has gotten more fleeting over the years, the Spaniard has won a staggering 14 of 18 titles at Roland Garros since 2005.The years he hasn’t won have largely been due to injury — knee tendinitis against Robin Soderling in 2009, a withdrawal due to a wrist injury in 2016, a foot injury that hampered him against Djokovic in 2021.
Despite the tilt toward clay-court dominance in his game, Nadal has something Djokovic cannot and will not add: likability.
No matter the degree of Djokovic’s greatness — and he is perhaps the greatest ever, a title he can confirm with another major victory — he’ll always be the player who got kicked out of the US Open after hitting a linesman in the throat with a ball, who got kicked out of Australia over a vaccine standoff , who held exhibition matches with fans in the early days of the pandemic.
Where Roger Federer’s game was defined by elegance and Nadal’s by sweat and brute force, Djokovic is more like a cyborg.He is hard to root for — the parts of himself he allows to be defined publicly tilt toward negative.In the eternal comparison to Federer and Nadal, Djokovic has always been the villain.
Though generally not as popular as Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal, Djokovic has been every bit their equal on any tennis surface.AFP via Getty Images
According to the oddsmakers, Djokovic is not the favorite in Roland Garros, with Carlos Alcaraz currently holding shorter odds.
Alcaraz, the current world No.1, has thrice won the Madrid Open on clay, including wins over Djokovic and Nadal last year, and looks like the natural successor to his countryman as the best clay court player on tour.
Alcaraz, though, does not yet have a major championship and is too young, too new to be the main character of a tournament such as this.That title belongs to Djokovic.
Follow the money The relative influx of gambling scandals in sports — five NFL player suspensions, the firing of Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon and investigations into players at Iowa and Iowa State — are not signs of the downfall that come with legalized betting.
They are signs that the system is, in fact, working as intended.
It is naive to the nth degree to believe that those who wanted to gamble prior to Murphy v.NCAA and the ensuing allowance and regulation of gambling in some states could not gamble.Offshore books existed then and continue to exist now.So do local bookies, especially on college campuses.So does crypto currency, whose purpose in large part is being hard to trace.
You know what is not hard to trace? A legal bet placed on FanDuel, DraftKings or any other licensed and regulated sportsbook.
It didn’t take long for sportsbook monitors to flag the suspicious betting that led to the firing of Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon.Gary Cosby Jr/USA TODAY Network
Is it true that greater access could lead to more issues? Perhaps.
But the Alabama case provides a perfect example of why we should trust the system.
Suspicious activity, in the form of two bets on LSU to beat Alabama, was noticed in the sportsbook at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, according to reports.Per ESPN, surveillance video at the sportsbook showed the person placing the bets communicating with Bohannon, whose starting pitcher was scratched due to back tightness.
Similar activity occurred in Indiana, which along with Ohio halted betting on college baseball games involving Alabama.The chain of events continued to Bohannon’s firing, which happened within a week of the incident.This is how the system is supposed to work.
This is not 1919, when cash placed in envelopes and backroom deals had a chance of going undetected.It is not 1979, when Boston College was caught for point-shaving, or 2007 when Tim Donaghy allegedly fixed basketball games — although the commonality in those examples is that the perpetrators were caught.
Any bet of any substantial sum of money is monitored.Names and social security numbers are attached to online accounts.
There is a regulatory structure around legal sports gambling in 36 states and Washington, D.C.
Maybe it is the other 14 that ought to be worried..
