The Basement View

  The key for both the New York Mets and New York Yankees offensive success throughout the summer and into October will come in form of players who part of why both teams won games but haven’t had major success at the big-league level in quite some time. DJ LeMahieu and Jeff McNeil at the start of the 2020’s for the Pinstripes and the Metropolitans were the table setters for the offense. Both won batting titles in a time in baseball where the glitz and glamour of the highest batting average is all but gone. Suddenly, so too was the production of LeMahieu and McNeil that made the Yankee and Met offense so dangerous. Everything about their at-bats didn’t feel the same as it did before. Part of that is rest of the league figuring out ways to get them out. The other part is the natural aging progression in baseball. LeMahieu is now 36. McNeil 33. And the last part is injuries. Each of the last two seasons each has missed major time with their own injuries. McNeil hasn’t played 150 plus...

  The New York Yankees might have just found of one the rarest things in baseball in 2025 during  last weeks series against the Angels. An old-school starting pitcher. Ryan Yarbrough is not a starting pitcher by trade. In his eight seasons in the Majors, Yarbrough has pitched in 209 games and started just 73 of them. For those not good at math, that’s about 34% of the time he’s started a game. At the beginning of his Major League career with the Tampa Bay Rays, Yarbrough was a starting pitcher. It wasn’t until injuries set in for the Tampa Bay staff and himself during the 2022 season that Rays shifted him into the bullpen. Then, he found a roll with something now known as “The Opener.” A pitcher who starts a game but doesn’t get more than nine outs. Since then, with Kansas City, the Dodgers, Toronto, and in the beginning of this season in the Bronx, Yarbrough has been a lefty out of the pen. Because of starting pitching injuries, the Yankees have had to work Yarbrough back up ...