New York Yankees: Is bias against the Yankees real?

New York Yankees, Aaron Boone, Gerrit Cole
Dec 18, 2019; Bronx, NY, USA; New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone, left, and pitcher Gerrit Cole pose for photos during a press conference at Legends Club at Yankee Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Danielle Parhizkaran-USA TODAY Sports

Many New York Yankee fans believe there are those that are biased against the Yankees, be they Umpires, writers, the media or announcers, and commentators.  The Yankees being the powerhouse they are having won 27 World Championships are certainly targets of resentment from almost every team in baseball.  If your number one you have to expect the most conversation whether it be positive or negative.

Umpires:  Last year was certainly a bad one for Yankee Umpire relations.  It seemed like were getting bad calls more frequently than ever.   As the season progressed things became almost unbearable for Manager Aaron Boone.   In August umpires called a balk on Yankee reliever Cory Gearrin for his toe tap style of delivery.  Later to be found legal and that a balk should not have been called.  Later in the month, an umpire gave  Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen a time out while Gleyber Torres was on the base path, preventing him from scoring the tieing run.  MLB ruled that the timeout should not have been granted as Torres was already running.  In September Boone had already had it with the umpires, so in a game on September 21st, Boone would go ballistic when Giancarlo Stanton was called out on strikes when two of the strikes were so far off the plate that they might as well have landed in Philadephia.  We all know you can’t argue balls and strikes, but when they are that far out, what else can you do?  The home plate umpire was a minor league call up Jeremie Rehak who made the mistakes and would throw out Marcus Thames who was protesting from the bench.  3rd base umpire Joe West would throw out Boone for protesting.   And then there is the case of a silent Brett Gardner getting thrown out for saying nothing from the bench.  All of that being said, we sit back silently when obviously bad calls go in our favor.

Announcers:  The MLB Network seems to be biased toward any East Coast team unless it’s the Los Angeles Dodgers.  I don’t know why that is but it seems prevalent.  Many Nationally televised Yankee games are broadcasted by Fox announcer Joe Buck.  Buck I believe is a pretty good announcer in general.  But when he announcing Yankee games, he is terrible.  If he wasn’t wearing a suit and tie he would probably be wearing a team shirt for whatever team is the Yankee’s opponent.  Plus his meaningless chatter is annoying.   Homer-ism is a term used to describe and announcer that uses terms like “us, our or we” when describing players, the team or particular plays.  A study was once done during a Yankee Red Sox game to see what broadcaster were homers.  Michael Kay and associates came in right done the middle.  Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo didn’t mention any of the above-referenced words during the entire game.  Ken Harrelson was the most bias.  In the New York scene, the Yankee announces, for the most part, are relatively fair to the opposing team on the TV side.  On the Radio side, John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman are among the biggest homers in broadcasting.  Even some Yankee fans are annoyed by Sterling’s constant praise of Yankee players.  Although Michael Kay made one of the biggest stick your foot in your mouth comments during the 2010  ALCS when the Yankees won game one.  Kay said the series was officially “over” and that the loss was so devastating that the Texas Rangers wouldn’t recover.  The Rangers won the ALCS.

Baseball owners, managers, etc:   MLB Pipeline has just put out their take on the farm systems in baseball.  If you read the survey you might wonder how the Yankees have even won a ball game or how they could possibly have any future in baseball.  The MLB sent out a set of questions to MLB team owners, general managers, scouts, etc., asking everything from who has the best farm system to who are the best prospects.  Nearly every category received votes for several clubs.  For instance one of the questions was what team had the best farm system.  The team with the most votes was the Padres with 48% of the votes, the other teams getting votes were the Padres, Brewers, Diamondbacks,  Dodgers and the White Sox.  On the question of who had the best pitching prospect, the best was listed as the Padres LHP MacKenzie Gore and then they listed eight other prospects, none of them Deivi Garcia.   All of the questions were answered without mention of the Yankees with the exception of which team plays the international market better, the Yankees came in first with 29% of the votes,  Also which team developed their pitchers better, the Yankees came in tied for fifth.  If you read the entire report of the survey you would think the San Diego Padres has one of the best futures in baseball and that baseball executives are not keen on the Yankees.

To generally answer if there is a bias against the Yankees the answer would be probably not.  But when you are the Evil Empire from the Bronx many are going to hate you.  Just by the way, I am biased toward “my” Yankees, but make every effort to fairly report game recaps and previews during the season.