It’s easy to forget that the New York Yankees are world champions today in large part because they didn’t make the playoffs last season.
The Yankees finished third in the AL East in 2008, behind the upstart Tampa Bay Rays and their arch-rival Boston Red Sox. They weren’t a bad team – 89 wins in a division featuring the league champions and the wild card winner is nothing to be ashamed of. The 2008 team simply wasn’t good enough by the franchise’s lofty standards.
It was the first time since the doomed 1994 season that the Yankees stayed home in October – and they didn’t take it lightly.
...
The Yankees used their natural financial advantages to fill all of their holes and to create a championship-caliber ballclub. The Mets, on the other hand, superficially patched some of their holes and blatantly ignored others, choosing to rely on hopes and dreams instead of reality.
...
The Yankees are world champions today because they didn’t make the playoffs in 2008 and reacted decisively. The Mets are also-rans because they didn’t make the playoffs in 2008 and refused to react decisively. Instead, the Mets acted as though they were merely a few tweaks away from being world champions.
On a day where it’s tough enough just to be a Mets fan, knowing that the difference between the two organizational philosophies led to such disparate results makes it that much more difficult to root for them.
(Read the entire post at Productive Outs and Crackerjack)
The Yankees finished third in the AL East in 2008, behind the upstart Tampa Bay Rays and their arch-rival Boston Red Sox. They weren’t a bad team – 89 wins in a division featuring the league champions and the wild card winner is nothing to be ashamed of. The 2008 team simply wasn’t good enough by the franchise’s lofty standards.
It was the first time since the doomed 1994 season that the Yankees stayed home in October – and they didn’t take it lightly.
...
The Yankees used their natural financial advantages to fill all of their holes and to create a championship-caliber ballclub. The Mets, on the other hand, superficially patched some of their holes and blatantly ignored others, choosing to rely on hopes and dreams instead of reality.
...
The Yankees are world champions today because they didn’t make the playoffs in 2008 and reacted decisively. The Mets are also-rans because they didn’t make the playoffs in 2008 and refused to react decisively. Instead, the Mets acted as though they were merely a few tweaks away from being world champions.
On a day where it’s tough enough just to be a Mets fan, knowing that the difference between the two organizational philosophies led to such disparate results makes it that much more difficult to root for them.
(Read the entire post at Productive Outs and Crackerjack)
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