The New York Yankees will meet the New York Mets twice this weekend in the first exhibition games of the summer camp. The Yankees will meet the cross-town rival Mets at Citi Field on Saturday at 7 pm. The following night at 7 pm, the Mets will take the subway to Yankee Stadium for an evening game. On Monday at 6 pm, the Philadelphia Phillies will be at Yankee Stadium. All three games will be televised in the YES Network.
These games are in preparation for the regular 60 game season that will start next Thursday in the Nation’s Capital when Gerrit Cole is scheduled to face the Washington National’s, Max Scherzer. That game will be the first of the season for any team. Later in the night, the Los Angeles Dodgers will face the San Francisco Giants. The remaining teams will have their opening games on July 24th.
The New York Mets look formidable for the 2020 season. They have a new manager in Luis Rojas. They have a strong pitching rotation even with the loss of Noah Syndergaard, and a dependable bullpen. Jacob deGrom, Marcus Stroman, and Steven Matz is a rotation not to be laughed at. Add to that the Mets have added Rick Porcello and Michael Wacha. They also added the former Yankee Dellin Betances to their already strong bullpen.
Where the New York Mets fall short is in their hitting lineup. Both Amed Rosario and Robinson Cano had poor seasons last year, and there is no reason to believe 2020 will be better. The Mets have traditionally played poorly against the Yankees. In the cross-town matchups, the Yankees lead the Met 58-43. The last time they met up in a World Series was in 2000 when the Yankees took the series in five games.
For the New York Yankees, manager Aaron Boone who is coming off a 100 and 103 game-winning season, has been preparing his pitchers and hitters for these exhibition games. The Yankees are not without their problems. They will play the season without star pitcher Luis Severino who is out the whole season after having Tommy John surgery. And they won’t see last year’s most winning pitcher, Domingo German. He will be serving the last 60 games of his suspension.
But, unlike the Mets, the Yankees have a lot of things going for them as the season starts. During the offseason, they acquired arguably the best pitcher in baseball, Gerrit Cole. They also have the up and coming Jordan Montgomery, and a host on young talent to augment both the pitching and the strong lineup that now features a healthy Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge.
The Yankees/Phillies game on Monday night should be far more interesting when ex-Yankee manager Joe Girardi brings his team to his old Yankee Stadium. Girardi has already said it will be strange showing up at the Stadium in a different uniform. How that exhibition game goes could be telling in a short season where the Yankees will face the Phillies just seven days later in the regular season on July 27th at Citizens Bank Park for a two-game series. The teams will meet for the final time in the season at the Stadium in the following two games.
The Phillies are not the team the New York Yankees are. They, of the East Division teams, are 3rd after the Washington Nationals and the Atlanta Braves. They come in somewhere between the 5th and 8th of the remaining NL teams, including the league-leading Los Angeles Dodgers. That being the case, the Yankees should take 3 of the 4 games facing the Phillies.
The baseball umpires union has announced that 11 umpires have opted out of playing the season because of the coronavirus, or for other reasons. This leaves the umpire crews short from their usual 19 crews for a total of 76 umpires. Assuming they will have a further opt-out, injuries, and positive tests, they may find themselves relying on less experienced umpires from the minor leagues that are not playing this season.