The possibilities for New York baseball — briefly, at least — seemed limitless.
In 2022, Aaron Judge smashed 62 home runs for a 99-win Yankee team. The Mets, dismal no more, rocketed to 101 wins, and a shock loss in the wild-card round seemed like just a temporary setback with Max Scherzer returning; Justin Verlander imported; and Buck Showalter, a four-time manager of the year, back at the helm.
All of it would curdle rapidly in 2023.
The Mets, underperforming and injury ravaged, limped to a Metsian 75-87. The Yankees barely avoided their first losing season since 1992, the year Judge was born. Steve Cohen, the swaggering billionaire hedge funder who bought the Mets and aggressively inflated their payroll, dealt away both Verlander and Scherzer. Showalter was eventually fired. The Yankees, meanwhile, hardly hit at all and trotted out a shockingly mediocre and forgettable team — a true Big Apple sin.
What to expect now? Neither team is forecast for genuine greatness. Thanks to their blockbuster trade for Juan Soto, the 25-year-old on-base machine who has drawn comparisons to Ted Williams, most projections at least have the Yankees ranked in the top half of the American League — seventh overall in ESPN’s ranking. But they’re starting the year without Gerrit Cole, last year’s AL Cy Young, who has nerve inflammation in his elbow and could be out until June. The only upside is that Cole dodged having season-ending Tommy John surgery and should return at full strength to top a rotation of evident talent and glaring question marks. The consensus pick to win the AL East are the Baltimore Orioles, who swung a trade for Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes and boast one of the deepest wells of young talent in baseball.
The Mets are viewed as a .500-team-in-waiting. Kodai Senga, their best pitcher in 2023, begins the season on the injured list. The rest of the rotation was stitched together at minimal expense. Cohen, who currently seems more interested in lobbying the state to build a casino next to Citi Field than he is in the Mets, sat out most of the offseason and only recently........