I'm Not Sayin', I'm Just Sayin'

I'm not saying sweeping a brief 2-game series with The Other Team has solved all of the Yankees' recent problems. After all, they had their chances to throw both games away.

I am saying what my grandmother, who started out as a Brooklyn Dodger fan in Queens, and became a Met fan on the Jersey Shore, used to say: "It's not how good you are when you play good, it's how good you are when you play bad." I know: It sounds like something Yogi Berra would have said.

But, in this case, she would have been right. Because, while the Yankees had their chances to throw both games away, they didn't.

Frankie Montas started for the Yankees, and Tajuan Walker started for the Mets. Each kept the other's team off the scoreboard until the bottom of the 4th, when Walker served an absolute meatball up to Aaron Judge, right in his kitchen, and he cooked it, sending it 453 feet to the rear bleachers in left-center field. This was followed by back-to-back singles by Anthony Rizzo and Gleyber Torres, which were followed by back-to-back walks by Josh Donaldson and Oswaldo Cabrera, the former loading the bases and the latter forcing in another run. 2-0 Yankees.

Things got a little bizarre in the top of the 5th. Mark Canha led off with a double. Brett Baty reached 1st base on catcher's interference. Tomás Nido bunted the runners over. Brandon Nimmo hit a liner to 3rd base that DJ LeMahieu caught.

Then Starling Marte singled to right. That scored Canha, and should have scored Baty. But the rookie Cabrera, who set a Yankee record by starting at 4 different positions in his 1st 7 games for the team, threw home from right field to nail Baty, and keep the Yankees on top.

Then came the top of the 6th, and the kind of play that has summed up Torres' career with the Yankees thus far. With 2 out, and Pete Alonso on 1st, Jeff McNeil hit a double to right. Now, Alonso is not the most athletic-looking of men. (Like I should talk. The difference is, he is actually paid to play baseball, so he should at least be more athletic than he looks.) And he tripped rounding 3rd base. He should have been a dead duck. McNeil, expecting a throw home and thus a 2nd out, tried for 3rd base.

Torres took Cabrera's relay throw, and instead of throwing home, saw McNeil off the bag, and ran to tag him out. McNeil got back to the base before Torres, Alonso got up and headed for the plate, and both runners were safe. Tie ballgame.

Torres, the man for whom Brian Cashman threw away a chance at the 2016 postseason in the hope that he could help the Yankees win Pennants starting in 2019, still hasn't helped the Yankees win one, partly because of dumb fielding like this. All together now: "How dumb was it?"

As it turned out, not as dumb as a play that happened in the bottom of the 7th. Because this game was on Amazon Prime, the only way for Yankee Fans who don't have it to watch it was to watch the Mets' broadcast on SNY. Gary Cohen, the Queens native who grew up a Met fan and has broadcast for them since 1989 -- and is no relation to new team owner Steve Cohen, the alleged richest team owner in MLB, whose billions were supposed to help the Mets "take over New York" and win multiple titles -- mentioned the Luis Castillo Game in 2009.

Remember? Yankees were trailing the Mets and down to their last out, when Alex Rodriguez popped up, and Castillo dropped it, and the tying and winning runs scored.

Cohen mentioned this after Cabrera led off the inning with a single, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa bunted him over. The batter was Jose Trevino, and he popped one up, close to the spot where Castillo dropped the ball 13 years earlier. 1st baseman Alonso could have caught it. 2nd baseman McNeil could have caught it. Right fielder Marte could have caught it. But, because the Mets are a fucking joke and always will be a fucking joke, none of them caught it. A ball dropping between 2 players is bad enough, but it takes a special brand of incompetence, however temporary, to allow a ball to drop between 3 players.

Cabrera couldn't try to score, since he didn't know the ball wasn't going to be caught, but he did make it to 3rd, Trevino to 1st. Andrew Benintendi grounded a ball through the shortstop-3rd base hole, and Cabrera scored. After LeMahieu struck out, Judge singled, making it 4-2 Pinstripes.

Aaron Boone trusted Clarke Schmidt for a 10-out save. He got the 1st 9 of those outs. Then he walked Tyler Naquin, who was pinch-hitting for Nido. That brought Nimmo to the plate with the tying run. Naquin stole 2nd. Nimmo grounded up the middle. It would have been a tough play for any 2nd baseman, and Torres, for once making a wise decision, made no throw. And Schmidt walked Marte. 

Naquin's run, on 3rd, meant nothing. But now, Nimmo, the tying run, was on 2nd; and Marte, the go-ahead run, was on 1st. Bases loaded. And Francisco Lindor was coming up. This past Sunday, in his weekly column in the Daily News, Mike Lupica, as usual bigging up the Mets and mocking the Yankees, wrote, "The Mets have never had a more talented all-around player than Francisco Lindor." (Darryl Strawberry, who won 1 World Series as a Met phenom and 3 as a Yankee veteran, was at Yankee Stadium for both of these games.)

Schmidt, who had twice gone the last 3 innings in blowouts, and thus qualified for the save both times under the least restrictive part of the rule, and was now in line to be the winning pitcher, was out of gas. Boone took him out, and brought in Wandy Peralta. Oh no.

But before I could unleash the Star Wars quote and say, "I've got a bad feeling about this," Peralta induced Lindor to fly to center, where Estevan Florial caught it. (Boone had moved Judge over to right in place of Cabrera, and put Florial in center.)

Yankees 4, Mets 2. WP: Schmidt (5-2). SV: Peralta (2). LP: Joely Rodríguez (0-3).

With 38 games to go, the Yankees, having once led the American League Eastern Division by 15 1/2 games, now lead it by 8 games over the Tampa Bay Rays, and 8 1/2 over the Toronto Blue Jays. In each case, the lead is 7 in the all-important loss column. The Magic Number to clinch the Division is 33. 

They trail the Houston Astros for best record in the League, and thus top seed in the Playoffs, by 3 games.

With 37 games to go, the Mets, having once led the National League Eastern Division by 10 1/2 games, now lead it by 2 games over the Atlanta Braves. With all the talk about how the Yankees playing poorly since July 8, hardly anybody seems to have noticed that the Mets could well be in an epic choke. After all, the Braves are the defending World Champions, so they do know how to win.

For the top seed in the NL Playoffs, the Mets trail the Los Angeles Dodgers by 7 1/2, 9 in the loss column, and catching the former Brooklyn team seems unlikely, although hardly necessary: The Mets need to avoid a Game 7 at Chavez Ravine a whole lot less than the Yankees need to avoid a Game 7 at Minute Maid Park.

The Yankees have today off, and begin a long roadtrip: 4 games in Oakland, 3 in Anaheim, 3 in St. Petersburg, before coming home on September 5, Labor Day, for 4 games against Minnesota and 3 against Tampa Bay.

I'm not saying the Yankees are out of the woods yet. I am saying that beating the Mets twice feels damn good. I'm not saying that I'm looking forward to the Yankees playing in California in August, which has been problematic at least since the 1980s. I am saying that taking 2 from the Mets should put them in a better frame of mind for it.

I'm not saying the Mets are done. I am saying the Yankees are better than the Mets, and always have been, and that the Mets, as always, are a joke. I'm not saying the Yankees will go all the way. I am saying the Mets will fall.

As the old saying goes, "I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'."