|
It strikes me that the Mets are the only team that plays their home games on an island with their back to the sea. Militarily, this would place them at an offensive disadvantage, and if you think about fan affiliation as something that spreads virally (which is and isn't true), it's a marketing disadvantage also. The closest analogy I can think of is the Padres, who have their base contained by the Dodgers and Angels to the north, the ocean to the west, the Mexican border to the south, and the desert to the east.
Of course, that disadvantage is certainly offset from their position in the nation's densest city, but it still is notable to me that the Yankees' position in the Bronx, looked at from the perspective of land warfare, allows them a chokepoint from which to defend against Mets intrusions.
Now, marketing ain't warfare so the analogy has some limits, but COVID permitting, it seems that this can be a really key moment in Mets history.
1) The Mets have a wealthy new owner, and even if he isn't a profligately going to sink his equity into payroll every year, he sure seems to be interested in making an initial splash.
2) Bad money is coming off the Mets' payroll.
3) Core talent under contract is looking strong for the Mets at the moment.
4) Here we return to the land warfare metaphor. The Mets have elevated their Brooklyn franchise to High-A, while the Yankees have abandoned their Staten Island franchise. This is nothing less than the Mets, as Washington, reversing the fortunes of the Battle of New York. They have held Brooklyn and kept the Redcoats from setting up an outpost in lower New York. Placing their new high A franchise in The Hudson Valley is analagous to a fallback and retrenching at their northern choke point.
This leaves lower Manhattan and Staten Island unprotected and New Jersey available as an escape point off of the island and into the mainland United States. I don't know what the actual numbers are, but my sense of New Jersey baseball fanciers is that they've traditionally been about 40% Yankee aficionados, 30% pro-Phillies, 20% pro-Mets, and 10% Orioles/other. The Mets have a wide-open field there now and can turn that paradigm around.
5) Having two-high level minor league teams placed in upstate New York, the Mets can keep the Yankees busy with rear guard actions, making incursions on territories long restricted to Red Sox and Yankee hegemony, forcing the Yankees to play defense from central New York to the capital region, drawing weekending New Yorkers upstate to join with a base of newly fanaticized young Mets fans from across sourthern New York and upper New Jersey colleging in upstate New York and expressing their fandom in Syracuse, Binghamton, across the Finger Lakes and straight on into Cooperstown.
None of that will come easy, but forcing the Yankees to deploy resources there, again, leaves lower Manhattan and New Jersey open for invasion.
6) The Yankees seem to be having an identity crisis. Seeing them dickering over D.J. LeMaihieu is stunning. What happened to the Yankees and their if-we-wanted-him-he'd-be-ours sexy-lady attitude? He was your offensive leader in 2020. What's the problem? Is the Judge/Stanton/Volt wall of DH's going to come crumbling down? Is the president of the Marlins still their most marketable player?
The Mets have a lot to accomplish and many questions to answer. Plus COVID. But there is an opportunity here for an orange wave.
[fimg=500]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/NY-NJ-retreat-1776.svg/1200px-NY-NJ-retreat-1776.svg.png[/fimg]
| 
