“Where, oh where,” Boras asks himself, “is that One Dumb Owner when I need him?”

To his eternal credit, he usually does find him, but this year feels a little different, especially with the two top-tier free agent pitchers, Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery, still out there, seemingly garnering no offers anywhere near Boras’ asking price, despite there being a half dozen large market potential contenders that could really use their services.

You could make the case that a half dozen of the wealthiest teams in baseball — the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Giants, Rangers and Angels — all could use a top-of-the-rotation starter to finish off their winter shopping, but so far none have been inclined to even come close to Boras’ asking price for Snell or Montgomery. It may just be this time Boras has grossly misread the market.

His original ask for Snell was said to be nine-years and around $270 million. The Yankees early on were interested and reportedly offered a deal in the neighborhood of six years, $150 million — with one condition: Boras had to say yes, right away, or they were moving on. They were not willing to be played while Boras waited to find the One Dumb Owner who would come close to the $270 million.

Boras said not enough, so the Yankees pivoted to Marcus Stroman on a two-year deal for $37 million. Despite repeated reports by Boras’ acolytes in the media, the Yankees have been out on Snell ever since Boras turned down their offer — and that appears to be the only offer he’s gotten for the Cy Young-award winning lefty.

Why such a lack of interest in a 31-year-old pitcher who’s won two Cy Young Awards (albeit five years apart)? This is what one assistant GM said to me last week — which seems to be an opinion shared by many: “Boras is selling Snell as a No. 1, which he really isn’t given that he’s never thrown more than 180 innings (actually 180 2/3) in a season and is essentially a five-inning pitcher because of all the pitches he throws in a game and the walks (major league leading 99 last year). There are also questions about his makeup. He’s pitched in Tampa Bay and San Diego his whole career, and been just OK in those seasons between his Cy Youngs. Can he perform in a big market like New York or Boston?”

There appears to be somewhat more interest in the ex-Yankee Montgomery for whom Boras was said to be asking a contract similar to the seven-year, $172 million the Phillies doled out to retain Aaron Nola. But Montgomery’s former team, the Rangers, are apparently tapped out due a lot to the uncertain future of their regional sports network situation. The Red Sox and Angels could be nice fits for Montgomery but the Sawx under John Henry, the soccer, hockey and RFK racing man, are no longer in the business of doing long-term free agent contracts, and Angels owner Arte Moreno, still smarting over owing Anthony Rendon another $115 million through 2026, is also out of the big money free agent business for a while.

The same Boras media apostles who tried to keep the Yankees’ interest in Snell alive are now pushing Montgomery on the Mets. While I agree the Mets could certainly use Montgomery, I don’t see David Stearns abandoning his plan and reversing course by convincing Steve Cohen to go even deeper into luxury tax debt by investing another $150 million or so on a free agent pitcher.

Indeed, at the Cody Bellinger re-signing press conference with the Cubs last week — in which he lamely tried to explain why he had to settle for a three-year, $80 million deal with opt-outs after reportedly originally seeking 12 years and upwards of $200 million — Boras bemoaned the lack of spending this winter by a lot of the large market teams: “In the face of record revenues in our game that will continue to spiral upward, we have major market teams, many of which would otherwise be competitive teams and not investing in competitiveness. We look at the mass decline [of spending] just in eight teams, you might see over $300 million that was spent a year ago that is not being spent today.”

On Friday, Boras was forced to do a similar deal for third baseman Matt Chapman with the Giants — a three-year, $54 million contract, again with opt outs after the first two years — after previously seeking a six-year deal in the $150 million range.

So with no one apparently ready to step up as this year’s One Dumb Owner — as Colorado’s Dick Monfort did in mid-March 2022 by bidding against himself and signing Kris Bryant for seven years, $182 million, or Detroit’s Mike Ilitch going where no one else was willing to go near in signing Prince Fielder for nine years, $245 million in 2012 — Boras appears to be running out of teams.

Right now, he needs to hope a team with designs on the postseason loses a top starting pitcher to injury. Which brings us to the Giants, who have the money and already have two projected down-rotation starters sidelined with injuries this spring in Keaton Winn and Tristan Beck. I’m told Dusty Baker, now a Giants top advisor, has been urging a reluctant Giants Baseball Ops chief Farhan Zaidi to sign Montgomery. But those who know him well say Montgomery, a good ole South Carolina boy, would hate it in San Francisco.

That won’t matter to Boras as long as gets the money. Witness Bryant, who’s been mostly hurt and not very good in his two seasons in Colorado, last week saying he regrets signing that seven-year deal with the Rockies and consigning himself to last place for the foreseeable future. “There were other teams interested [in signing him] but I didn’t want to wait around. I guess I didn’t do as much research into the prospects as I could.”

(For the record, the rotund Fielder was traded to Texas by the Tigers after two years and played only five years of that contract.)

Undoubtedly Boras would love to see the Snell/Montgomery scenario play out the way it did for him with Bryce Harper in the spring of 2019 when, with the help of last-minute bidding by the Dodgers and Giants, on March 2 he was able to get Phillies CEO John Middleton to pony up the record contract he was looking for – 13 years, $330 million. At the time, I called Middleton that year’s One Dumb Owner, only because he’d offered a 10-year contract of around $300 million for Harper two months earlier, only to have Boras let it sit there with no response, all the time waiting for a better offer.

But I now have to admit Middleton has so far gotten his money’s worth on the contract as Harper, despite being sidelined two months last year with Tommy John surgery, has been the Phillies team leader and been a beast in the last two postseasons with 11 homers and 21 RBI. When he signed the 13-year deal which will take him to his age 38 season, all Harper could talk about was how this contract assured him of everything he wanted, to be a Phillie for the rest of his career.

Ah, but Boras being Boras, all of a sudden the biggest contract in baseball history is not enough, and despite eight years and over $200 million remaining on it, he and Harper are now saying they want an extension. I would call this the height of chutzpah. Others might suggest they’re merely giving Middleton another chance at being a One Dumb Owner.

At present there are five “top tier” unsigned free agents — Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery, Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman and J.D. Martinez — all of them Boras clients and all of whom would seemingly provide substantial upgrades, especially the two 31-year old lefty starters, to any team. So why have there been no bites? It’s complicated, other than the fact that, as usual, Boras is commanding exorbitant contracts for them in hopes that teams, getting hammered daily by their fans, will get desperate and meet his price.

In the case of Snell, Boras was said to be asking for a nine-year deal at $30 million per. Despite winning his second Cy Young Award in ’23, Snell has (1) never pitched more than 180 2/3 innings in a season, (2) exasperates managers with his number of pitches in the game and (3) last year led the majors with 99 walks. So far the Yankees are the only team to have even made an offer for Snell, who averages 5.6 innings per game, and it was nowhere near Boras’ asking price. As one American League exec told me: “Boras is trying to sell Snell as a top-of-the-rotation workhorse and he’s just not.”

What about Montgomery? For the ex-Yankee, Boras is said to be seeking a contract comparable or better to the seven-year, $172 million the Phillies gave Aaron Nola to re-up. Considering that Nola’s ERA over the last three years was 4.09 compared to Montgomery’s 3.48, it would seem Boras’ ask for him (if that’s what it really is) is much more reasonable. But as is his habit, Boras is perfectly content to sit tight into spring training and even beyond in some cases, until a team’s key player goes down with an injury and he makes his deal.

But that’s happened twice already since spring training began — on Feb. 15 when the Orioles announced last year’s ace Kyle Bradish would be sidelined indefinitely with an elbow injury and then last Thursday when the Mets revealed their ace Kodai Senga has a moderate posterior capsule strain in his right shoulder that will shut him down for at least 3-4 weeks. In both cases, however, the Orioles and Mets said they would not be investing in a big ticket free agent to address their top-of-rotation voids.

Much as Mets fans would like to see Steve Cohen flex his financial muscles to keep the Mets competitive, it’s become clear that’s not in David Stearns game plan. So far the new Mets president of baseball operations is operating the Mets like his old team, the Milwaukee Brewers. After making a strong bid for Yoshinobu Yamamoto on Cohen’s insistence, Stearns immediately scaled down considerably, filling the Mets rotation on a shoe string with low budget deals for oft-injured Luis Severino and back-of-the-rotation mediocrities Sean Manaea and Adrian Houser.

Stearns has got Cohen convinced that the way to go is to invest his money on infrastructure — i.e. the farm system — and not overpriced free agents. Easy to say right now when the Mets are nowhere near the Braves and Phillies talent-wise in their own division, but anytime you’re writing off a season, it tends to look a whole lot like tanking.

Ordinarily, you would think Boras might be able to land a deal to his liking for his two starting pitchers with any one of the Red Sox, Cubs or Angels, all of them big market teams with starting pitching needs, but for some reason none of them so far has been inclined to do much to improve their lot for ’24.

In Boston the winter long hue and cry has been for owner John Henry to cease with this austerity program of limited two-year-only free agent deals, and it grew considerably louder last week when Rafael Devers called out the Red Sox hierarchy, saying “they have to make an adjustment to help us players to be in a better position to win.” Right now the 2024 Red Sox starting rotation is a very underwhelming Lucas Giolito, Brayan Bello, Nick Pivetta, Kutter Crawford and Tanner Houck.

Likewise, the Cubs after luring manager Craig Counsell to Wrigley Field with a record five-year, $40 million contract, have mysteriously done almost nothing toward acquiring players around him to help him win. It was thought they would almost certainly re-sign Bellinger to play center field after his 26 HR/97 RBI/20 stolen bases season last year, but apparently Boras’ asking price has soured them on him. They also badly need a power hitting third baseman but again have been lukewarm on the strikeout prone Chapman.

You would also think Angels owner Arte Moreno, after losing Shohei Ohtani to the Dodgers (and in the process saving $700 million) would want to spend some of that savings improving the starting pitching which is always an issue in Anaheim. That’s what Mike Trout thinks and he’s been pressuring Moreno to do something but the owner has so far been disinclined to bid on either Snell or Montgomery.

Right now, it’s looking like a long ’24 for the fans in Boston, Chicago (White Sox included), Anaheim and Flushing. Boras is counting on them to keep the heat on the team ownerships to start opening up their wallets. Met fans in particular are wondering how long Stearns can keep a leash on Cohen.

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

This latest kerfuffle over the new baseball uniforms with the see-through pants and the shrunken letters and numbers on the back is just the latest example of MLB’s misguided decision to get in bed with Nike. It was bad enough back in 2019 when MLB entered into their one billion dollar marriage with Nike and it meant the swoosh would now be defacing all the major league uniforms, but now the so-called Nike Vapor Premier jerseys that were introduced last Tuesday with their apparel retailer Fanatics are getting horrible reviews from the players and fans alike. Supposedly cooler and more comfortable, the players are complaining the fabric has a different consistency and is creating a see-through vibe especially in the pants. A majority of the players said they just look cheap, “like a T.J. Maxx knock-off” said one player. …It’s understandable if the reason Angels owner Arte Moreno is reluctant to engage in any more expensive long-term free agent contracts is because he’s stuck with one of the most unpopular players in the game, Anthony Rendon, who has three years and $117 million left on his contract, but has failed to play in more than 60 games four years in a row and can’t seem to stop talking about how much he hates baseball. Upon arriving at Angels camp last week, the perpetually sullen Rendon told reporters that baseball has never been his top priority — his faith and his family are — and that baseball is just a job to make a living. Back in 2018, Rendon said: “I think we play too much baseball” and that MLB needs to shorten the season. In lieu of that, he’s apparently decided the shorten the season himself… Even though expansion is at least 2-3 years away, I’m hearing of a growing sentiment among the owners for Nashville and Salt Lake City, which would certainly make sense geographically.

Considering the circumstances, the Yankees have never made a trade with more potential risk than the deal for Soto in which they sacrificed Michael King, who was projected to be their No. 3 and possibly even their No. 2 starter behind Gerrit Cole, plus the minor league pitcher of the year in Drew Thorpe and two useful back-of-the-rotation/swing guys in Randy Vasquez and Jhony Brito. The prospect of having Aaron Judge and Soto, possibly the most explosive righty-lefty hitting combo in baseball, back-to-back in the lineup has Aaron Boone understandably psyched about the Bombers this year. Championship or bust as he put it the other day.

And that’s what it has to be. Because even if Soto has another monster year, should the Yankees fail to reach the World Series for the 15th straight year, or, even worse, miss the postseason altogether like last year, due to a shortage of starting pitching, the deal must be considered a bust. It would leave the Yankees with another ring-less season and at the mercy of Soto’s agent Scott Boras, who still thinks he’s going to get a $500 million deal for the lefty slugger.

No question, losing out on Yoshinobu Yamamoto was a gut punch for the Yankees, making signing Marcus Stroman for mid-rotation depth a necessity. But as much as Boone is going to bask at the sight of Soto hitting bombs this spring, he can be forgiven for also casting a wary eye on whoever is starting the games for him.

So far at least the news has been good on the starting pitching front. Nestor Cortes is reporting no ill effects with his rotator cuff which shut him down in August last year, while Carlos Rodon has reportedly already been clocking 97 mph as opposed to 92-93 this time last year at the outset of camp. Both have had the experience of pitching at the top of the rotation and both have had a history of injuries. If they can avoid the latter and come close to the former this could indeed be a special seasons for the Yankees.

But there’s no getting around all the injuries that have plagued the Yankees these past few years, and with Vazquez, Brito and Thorpe gone, the reinforcement brigade has been thinned to two — righties Will Warren and Chase Hampton — both of whom have shown considerable promise but are still said to be a ways away from contributing at the major league level.

The good news for the Yankees is that the rest of the American League East teams all have issues, none more so it would seem now than the defending division champion Orioles who, a week after seemingly addressing their biggest need — a No. 1 starter — with the trade with Milwaukee for Corbin Burnes – lost last year’s ace, Kyle Bradish, with an elbow injury that is looking ominously like a coming Tommy John surgery. There are also legitimate questions about Craig Kimbrel adequately replacing Felix Bautista as their closer.

Meanwhile, the Rays are counting on raw rookie Ryan Pepiot, who they obtained from the Dodgers for last year’s ace Tyler Glasnow, to anchor their rotation while waiting on the midseason returns of last year’s Tommy John victims Shane McClanahan and Jeffrey Springs. They will also be without their best player, Wander Franco, indefinitely as he stands accused of sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl in the Dominican Republic. Hard to see how they’ll come close to the 99 wins they had as division runners-up last year.

And the Red Sox did very little to improve their lot either other than signing the maddeningly inconsistent Lucas Giolito for their rotation, while the Blue Jays, who lost (and didn’t adequately replace) clubhouse leaders Matt Chapman and Brandon Belt, remain an underperforming enigma waiting for Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to ever live up to his ability.

So say what you will, even with losing out on Yamamoto, the Yankees did more than any team in the AL East this winter to improve off last season which Brian Cashman rightfully termed “a disaster.” If the starting pitching holds up, the Soto deal could have the same effect as another trade the Yankees made for a left-handed power hitter in Roger Maris 60-plus years ago, after they’d finished an uncharacteristic third and then went on to win five straight pennants.

Of course that’s assuming they’ll be willing to pay another $500 million Boras ransom for keeping Soto long term.

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

A year after signing Xander Bogaerts to an astounding 11-year/$280M free agent contract, the Padres have announced they are moving him to second base and replacing him at shortstop with the more defensively efficient Ha-Seong Kim. This is the second time in recent years the Padres have given a shortstop a contract of around $300 million and then moved him off the position. In February 2021, the Padres signed Fernando Tatis Jr. to an historic 14-year/$340M deal and anointed him as their franchise shortstop, only to have him miss the entire 2022 season with an injury and a PED suspension. By the time Tatis came back, they’d signed Bogaerts and he was moved to right field. … Nice to see the A’s and Oakland making nicey-nice again in the midst of their ugly divorce after a “positive” meeting Thursday in which they came closer to an agreement that would allow the A’s to extend their agreement with the Coliseum that runs out after this season. The A’s have tentatively planned to open a new ballpark in Las Vegas in 2028 at the earliest and need a place to play in the interim, the most preferable being the Coliseum where they would continue to receive the $67 million a year from their TV contract which is only good if they play in the Bay Area. In truth, they really should take the advice of Las Vegas mayor Carolyn Goodman, who stunned the Super Bowl media horde by saying the proposed Tropicana Hotel site for the A’s stadium in Las Vegas “doesn’t make sense” and they should really go back to the bureaucrats in Oakland and work out a new plan there. I agree. The A’s move to Las Vegas — from the 10th largest TV market to the 40th — makes no sense and will doom them as the lowest revenue team in baseball. They already have the worst owner in baseball in John Fisher.

Adrian Beltre, who had the magic number of 3,000 hits, was a lock to be elected and the only question I had was how high a percentage he would get which, at 95.1%, was impressive but still a tad lower than three other third basemen in the Hall (Chipper Jones, George Brett and Mike Schmidt). It figured, too, that Todd Helton would get in after moving to the doorstep at 72.2% in his fifth year on the ballot in 2023 and he squeezed out another 26 votes to get him safely over the necessary 75% at 79.7.

Even though he was the best catcher in the American League for seven seasons and the only receiver in history to win three batting titles, there was question whether Joe Mauer would make it in his first year on the ballot after having to shift over to first base his final five years because of a severe concussion. But enough writers, of which I was one, didn’t hold his truncated career against him and gave him 293 votes for a narrow 76.1% plurality.

When it comes to this annual exercise, I’ve always been a “Small Hall” guy who, to the best of my knowledge, has never voted for more than six players in any one year, and more often than not, three or less. My criteria is quite simple: Did this player dominate the game at his position and did I know in watching and covering this player I was looking at a Hall of Famer? As such, Beltre and Mauer was an easy vote.

I realize a lot of my BBWAA brethren agonize over this vote every year which is good, but to them I would also say: “If you have to think about him, he probably isn’t.” Which brings me to the subject of Scott Rolen, the elite-fielding Phillies, Cardinals, Blue Jays and Reds third baseman who was last year’s only electee with 76.3% on his final year on the ballot. Rolen’s election appears to have been a product of the newer more analytically inclined BBWAA voters, who put a heavy emphasis on defense and on-base percentage.

Mind you, Rolen was an excellent player who played third base as well as anyone I’d ever seen and was also a player of high character. But the Hall of Fame (at least in my Small Hall view) is for the greatest players of all time and it’s hard to think of Rolen that way with only seven seasons of more than 140 games, no boldface (as in ‘denotes led league’) anywhere in his 17-year career, barely 2,000 hits (2,077) and only one top 10 MVP finish.

Likewise, this year’s “Rolen” seems to have been Chase Utley, the five-time Phillies All-Star second baseman whose career was also curtailed by injuries. Utley got 111 votes for 28.8% in his first year on the ballot, despite the fact he had only five seasons of 140 more games, only 1,885 hits and led the league in only one category (131 runs in 2006) in 16 years. What’s most striking about Utley’s impressive first-year showing was that he surpassed his Phillies shortstop mate, Jimmy Rollins, who finished at 14.8% in his third year on the ballot.

If you ask me, Rollins has a far greater case for the Hall of Fame than Utley. Besides being regarded as the best shortstop in the National League from 2001-09, Rollins led the league in triples three times, runs once, stolen bases once and was NL Most Valuable Player in 2007. He is also the only shortstop in baseball history to hit at least 200 homers and steal more than 400 bases. Up until now I have not voted for Rollins, probably because it was hard to compare him with his American League counterpart Derek Jeter, who I covered on a daily basis, but I have to admit he does at least meet my first criteria about dominating at his position.

The one other checked name on my ballot was Gary Sheffield. It took me a while to come around on Sheff and not because of his link to steroids with Barry Bonds’ trainer back in 2001. He swore he didn’t know the cream he was rubbing on his body was a PED and I believed him because if there is one thing I learned about Gary Sheffield it’s that he’s honest to a fault.

I voted for him this time especially because it was his last year on the BBWAA ballot, but he fell short at 63.9% and will now have to wait until 2025 when the Contemporary Era veterans committee next meets. No doubt the steroids taint has hurt him, but I also think his vagabond career (eight teams), where every place he went always seemed to end badly, was a factor. But he was arguably the most fearsome hitter of his time, with those 509 homers, eight 100-RBI seasons and six top 10 MVP finishes and, despite his firebrand reputation, really is a good guy. I hope the vets smile favorably on him in ’25.

Finally, there was the sad story of Billy Wagner, who missed election by five votes in his next-to-last year on the ballot. Wagner is another really god guy, always accommodating to the media, who unquestionably had a regular season Hall of Fame career with the sixth-most saves (422) in history and the all-time records for 11.9 strikeouts per nine innings .187 batting average against. But after covering Mariano Rivera for his entire career and voting for a closer for the Hall of Fame, I could never get past Wagner’s 21 hits allowed, 13 runs and 10.03 ERA in 14 postseason games.

It took Tom Verducci, my respected colleague from Sports Illustrated, to bring me to my senses about Wagner. “For God’s sake, it’s only 11 2/3 innings!” Verducci said, adding: “Ted Williams hit .200 in his only World Series. Are you gonna keep him out of the Hall of Fame for that?”

So next year, Wagner can count on getting at least one more vote. Besides, I could never live with myself if he missed by one vote on his last time on the ballot and it could’ve been mine.

With 75% of the vote needed for election, Beltre received 95.1%, Helton 79.7% and Mauer 76.1% while former Mets closer Billy Wagner missed election by five votes on his next-to-last year in the ballot.

By virtue of having the magic number 3,000 hits (actually 3,166), Beltre was a lock his first time on the ballot since the only member of the 3,000-hit club not to be elected on the first ballot is steroids-tarnished Alex Rodriguez. But Beltre had plenty of other Hall-of-Fame credentials, including four All-Star Games, five Gold Gloves and six top 10 Most Valuable Player finishes. He’s also one of only four players with 3,000 hits 400 homers (477) and five Gold Gloves.

Mauer, who was also in his first year on the ballot, is the only catcher in history to win three batting titles and was the American League Most Valuable Player for the Twins in 2009 when he was the only catcher ever to lead the league in batting (.365), on-base pct. (.444), slugging (.587) and OPS (1.031), while also winning his second of three straight Gold Gloves. The only knock against him was that his career was shortened and his production diminished after a foul tip off his mask caused a severe concussion in 2013 and he was forced to switch to first base the final four years of his career.

The case for Helton, who jumped from 72.2% to 79.7% on his sixth year on the ballot, was a little more complicated despite his .316 lifetime batting average that included a monster 2000  National League MVP season when he won his third of three batting titles (.365), and led the league in on-base pct. (.444), slugging (.557 and OPS (1.031). Fair or not, Helton was always perceived to have benefitted from the rarified air of Coors Field as evidenced by his .287, .316 OBP and .855 OPS on the road compared to .345, .441 and 1.048 at home. In 2002 when MLB began storing baseballs in a humidor in Coors Field, Helton’s home run total fell to 30 from, 42 and 49 the previous two seasons and he only twice more hit more than 30.

Wagner, a consistently excellent blue-collar closer for 16 year seasons with the Astros, Phillies, Mets and Red Sox, ranks sixth on the all-time saves list 422 and holds the major league records for relievers with 11.9 strikeouts per innings and a .187 opponents’ batting average. What’s held him back was his dismal postseason record — a 10.33 ERA and 21 hits in 11.2 innings.

For Sheffield, who improved from 58.1% last year to 63.9%, it was his final year on the writers ballot and now he will have to wait until 2025 and the Contemporary ERA veterans committee. The volatile Sheff, one of the most fearsome hitters of his time, sure has the Hall-of-Fame numbers — 509 homers, eight 100-RBI seasons, a .batting title in 1992 and a .292 lifetime average — but he remains stained by his link to steroids with Barry Bonds’ trainer in 2002, even though he insisted he didn’t know what they were. Perhaps his biggest deterrent, however, was that he played with eight different teams and seemingly with almost all of them it ended badly.

In recent years there’s been a strong emphasis on defense from the more analytically inclined BBWAA voters, which accounted for the election of Scott Rolen a year ago despite the fact the superb-fielding third baseman had only seven seasons of 130 or more games played, only one top 10 MVP finish and barely 2,000 hits (2,077). This year’s “Rolen” was Chase Utley, who garnered 28.8% his first time on the ballot despite the fact he had only 1,885 hits and really only 4-5 Hall-of-Fame seasons before injuries limited him to a below-average player the last six years of his career.

Defensive analytics is also the reason behind Andruw Jones’ increasing vote totals in the balloting. Jones went from 58.1% to 61.6%, largely on the merits of his defensive metrics which rate him as one of the greatest defensive center fielders of all time. Jones was on his way to Cooperstown with an excellent first nine seasons with the Braves (albeit only two top 10 MVP finishes) when his career mysteriously fell off the cliff, batting under .230 his last six years as he bounced around with five teams.

The case for former Met closer Billy Wagner in the Hall of Fame

Former Mets closer Billy Wagner misses out on Baseball Hall of Fame by 5 votes

Former Yankee Gary Sheffield falls short of Hall of Fame induction on final ballot

Finishing right behind Jones was Carlos Beltran, still feeling the voters’ blowback from the Astros sign-stealing scandal, who made a gain from 46.5% to 57.1%. But with eight more years on the ballot and credentials that include 2,725 hits, 435 homers, eight 100-RBI seasons and a phenomenal postseason with a .307 average, 16 homers, 42 RBI and a record 1.021 OPS in 65 games, he appears trending to eventual election.

By contrast, there is no forgiving from the writers for the steroids cheats. Both A-Rod (34.8% from 35.7%) and Manny Ramirez (32.5% from 33.2%) actually lost votes.

Desperation as in the Dodgers forking over $325 million over 12 years to Yoshinobu Yamamoto who’s never thrown a single pitch in the majors and another $136.5 million over five years to Tyler Glasnow who’s never thrown over 150 innings. Desperation as in the Mets giving Luis Severino $13 million, the Reds giving $16 million to Frankie Montas, who missed all of last year and is recovering from shoulder surgery, the Red Sox signing Lucas Giolito, who was a mediocre 8-15 with a 4.88 ERA for three teams last year, to a two-year, $38 million contract.

It goes on. Jack Flaherty, with a 4.99 ERA and 162 hits allowed in 144 1/3 innings last year, gets $14 million from the Tigers; Shota Imanaga, another Japanese pitcher, gets $53 million from the Cubs without ever throwing a pitch in the majors. Seth Lugo, who only last year became a fulltime starter, parlayed a nice middle-of-the-rotation 8-7, 3.57 season in pitcher-friendly Petco Park with the Padres into a three-year, $45 million deal with the Royals.

Everyone is looking for aces, or pitchers they think can be pseudo aces, like the Yankees’ two-year, $37 million signing of Marcus Stroman, who pitched like an ace with a 2.28 ERA the first half of last year before regressing badly the second half with a multitude of injuries. But once the Yankees were spurned by Yamamoto and saw how ridiculous Scott Boras’ demands were for Blake Snell, they became desperate too and swallowed hard in signing Stroman despite his reputation as a clubhouse disrupter.

The problem is there are fewer and fewer prototypical 200-plus inning “Gerrit Cole/Justin Verlander/Max Scherzer/Adam Wainwright” aces in baseball anymore, as evidenced by a recent Elias Bureau “durability” chart that shows a dramatic decrease in workhorse starting pitching over the last 10 years.

In 2014, there were 34 pitchers in the majors who logged 200-plus innings. A year later that number was down to 28, then 15 in 2016-17 and ’19. Following the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, the numbers have dropped into the single digits, to just five this past year. At the same time, the MLB average of innings per game for starting pitchers has dropped a full inning — from 6.0 in 2014 to 5.0 in 2023. This may be the reason why Boras is having so much trouble landing an “ace-like” deal for Cy Young winner Snell this winter.

Boras is said to have set the Snell benchmark at nine years, $270 million. That’s quite a hefty number for a pitcher — Cy Young Award aside — whose 180 innings ranked 24th in the majors and led the majors in walks with 99. As effective as Snell is, he’s become the epitome of the five-inning pitcher. The Giants were one of the teams pursuing Snell but when they saw what Boras was seeking, they made their own “desperation” pivot, signing Jordan Hicks, a career reliever who’s started only eight times in 212 games, for four years, $44 million, with the idea of converting him to a starter.

Nevertheless, Boras is selling Snell as a workhorse ace and is obviously counting on some owner getting really desperate — which could still happen if a team expecting to contend for the World Series loses an “ace” to injury in spring training. Right now, no one is buying on a pitcher who’s never pitched over 180 innings but seeking that kind of years and money.

And just where have the 200-inning aces gone? Gone to analytics, every one.

Jan. 12, 2024: Look who's back

As we all know, one of the principal tenets of pitching analytics is not allowing starting pitchers to go through the batting order a third time. From the moment pitchers are drafted and signed, they immediately are conditioned not to have to worry about pitching out of trouble once they’ve gone through the batting order two times around.

When the owners first started buying into analytics they were told how much money it was going to save them as it would help them to better put values on players. What’s happened instead is they’ve created a whole generation of five-inning pitchers, where genuine 200-inning aces are few and far between — and when they’ve got one, like Cole, Scherzer or Verlander, or think they may have one in Yamamoto, the price tag is over $300 million for them.

Such is the desperation level in baseball for quality starting pitching.

The Mets announced Thursday morning Harrelson died at a hospice house in East Northport, Long Island.

It is incidental that the bantamweight Harrelson hit only .237 with a scant seven homers in 5,516 plate appearances across 16 seasons in the major leagues. What made him a Met mainstay and one of the most popular players in their history was his superb glove work and feisty on-field leadership qualities, particularly with their 1969 and 1973 World Series teams.

The trademark of those Met championship teams were pitching, led by Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman, and up-the-middle defense with Tommie Agee in center field, Jerry Grote behind the plate and Harrelson at shortstop. Though he won only one Gold Glove award, in 1971 when he fielded .978, Harrelson was unquestionably the glue of the Mets infield. “There was no way we’d have won those two pennants without Buddy,” his best friend, Seaver once said. In 1970, Harrelson set a major league record (since broken) with 54 consecutive errorless games at shortstop.

Born Derrel McKinley Harrelson in Niles, Calif., on June 6, 1944, he was accidentally given his permanent nickname “Buddy” from his older brother Dwayne who had trouble pronouncing “brother.” After hitting .430 in his first year of college ball at San Francisco St., Harrelson decided to turn pro and signed a contract for about $10,000 with the Mets at age 19 in 1963. A right-handed hitter all through high school and college, Harrelson taught himself to switch-hit when he reached Triple-A with the Mets’ Jacksonville farm club in 1966. The next year, he and Seaver made the jump to the big leagues as Harrelson won the Met shortstop job, hitting .254 over 151 games, and Seaver won National League Rookie of the Year honors with a 16-13 record.

Two years later, Seaver and Harrelson were the principles on the Mets’ “impossible dream” 1969 world championship team. In an effort to add some bulk to his slight 160-pound frame, Harrelson spent the ’68-’69 winter lifting a lot of weights and it helped him improve his batting average from .218 in ’68 to .248. He made just 19 errors at shortstop in a season in which military service limited him to 119 games. The play he was most remembered for in ’69 was scooping up the Joe Torre’s grounder and starting a game-ending double play on Sept. 24 against the Cardinals that clinched the first NL East division title for the Mets.

Harrelson made only one error in 44 chances in the ’69 postseason and although he hit under 200, had a double, triple and three RBI in the ’69 NLCS against the Braves.

In 1970, Harrelson enjoyed his best season, hitting .243 with a career high 42 RBI and was selected to his first All-Star Game in which he went 2-for-3 with two runs scored. He made the All-Star Game again in 1971 while his high water full season batting mark was in 1973 when he hit. 258. But as far as Mets fans were concerned, his finest moment of ’73 occurred in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the National League Championship Series against the Reds.

There were already brewing hostilities between the two clubs after Jon Matlack had shut out the Reds on two hits in Game 2 to even the series at a game apiece and Harrelson made an off-the-cuff disparaging remark to reporters that the Reds’ hitters “all looked like me.” Before Game 3, the Reds’ Joe Morgan approached Harrelson at the batting cage and warned: “If you ever say anything like that about us again, I’ll punch you out.”

And then it happened. The Mets were well on their way to a 9-2 rout of the frustrated Reds when with one out in the fifth and Pete Rose on first, Morgan hit a ground ball to the right side which Mets first baseman John Milner fielded and threw to Harrelson covering second for a force play on Rose. On the play, Rose slid hard into second, hitting Harrelson with his elbow.

“That was a cheap shot what you said about us,” Rose said.

“What did you say?” said Harrelson who, at that point, suddenly found himself pinned on the ground by the 40-pounds heavier Rose. The two came up swinging and both benches and bullpens emptied with a wild brawl ensuing. The game was nearly called when the angry Shea Stadium fans began pelting Rose with debris after he later returned to his position in left field, prompting Reds manager Sparky Anderson to call his team off the field. Only when Mets manager Yogi Berra, Seaver, Rusty Staub and Willie Mays went out to left field and made a personal plea to the fans to cease and desist was the game able to be finished.

In the Mets clubhouse afterward, Harrelson was sporting a big bruise over his eye which he said was the result of his sunglasses being broken, but it was viewed as a badge of honor by Met fans who from that day lionized the little guy as a hero. Harrelson was injured much of the ensuing four years and by 1977, the year they traded Seaver, the Mets had handed the shortstop job to Tim Foli. The following March they traded Harrelson to the Phillies for infielder Fred Andrews. He played two more years as a backup infielder, finishing his career with the Texas Rangers in 1980.

But he never lost his Mets roots. His 1,322 games played are second in franchise history behind Ed Kranepool and in 1986 he and Staub were the first two players to be inducted into the Mets Hall of Fame.

Harrelson returned to the Mets in 1982 as first base coach for manager George Bamberger, then moved to the broadcast booth with Tim McCarver and Ralph Kiner in 1983 and managed in their minor league system for two years before being promoted to their third base coaching job in 1985. As such, he was the only Met in uniform for both the 1969 and 1986 world championship clubs.

He remained Mets third base coach until May 29, 1990 when he was named manager to replace Davey Johnson. Unfortunately, his managerial tenure was brief, largely unsuccessful and marked by periodic player insurrections as he was perceived as a weak and indecisive leader who relied too heavily on his bench coach Doc Edwards. In June of ’91, Harrelson and David Cone got into a heated, finger-pointing dugout confrontation over a pitchout call by Edwards with the opposing pitcher at-bat.

Buddy Harrelson remembered as a ‘spark plug’ of the Miracle Mets and for his work to fight Alzheimer’s

The Mets had been 46-34 at the All-Star break in 1991 but thereafter went 28-46 before Mets GM Frank Cashen fired Harrelson with a couple of days left in the season. “Buddy has been on the defensive and it was cruel and inhuman to have him being grilled every day,” Cashen said. Pitcher Frank Viola put it even stronger: “The situation here was as bad 10-12 weeks ago and that’s when it should have happened.”

His disappointing managerial stint notwithstanding, Harrelson remained a popular and integral part of the Mets and New York baseball community — especially after spearheading the formation of the independent Long Island Ducks in 2000. The Ducks became one of the Atlantic League’s most successful franchises and Harrelson, their co-owner and first manager, was credited for that with his tireless promotion of independent league baseball.

At a seminar at Hofstra University in 2012, Harrelson was asked what he thought was his greatest accomplishment in baseball and he answered unhesitatingly: “The Long Island Ducks were the best thing I’ve ever done because the fans know me and I know them,”

It was in the summer of 2016 when Harrelson was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease but despite the grim diagnosis he continued to make public appearances, including all the 1969 Mets 50th anniversary festivities where he was accompanied by his ex-wife Kim who’d become his primary caretaker. He is survived by three daughters, Kimberly, Alexandra and Kasandra, and two sons, Tim and Troy.

As all the baseball folks began gathering at the Opryland Hotel last Sunday, the Hall of Fame announced that the 16-member Contemporary Era Committee had elected former Tigers and Pirates manager Jim Leyland to Cooperstown and that was a good thing because Leyland, who won pennants for the Tigers in 2006 and 2012 and a world championship with the Marlins in 1997, was eminently deserving. But he should have been accompanied by Piniella, whose overall credentials were equally Hall-worthy, and what happened to Sweet Lou was nothing short of a tragedy.

Going into the meeting, the committee members were fully aware that Piniella had missed by a single vote in the previous Contemporary Era election three years ago — and probably semi-aware that, since then, he’d turned 80 and had serious health issues with cancer and a stroke. With the most wins (1,835) of any of the managers (Leyland, Davey Johnson and Cito Gaston) on the ballot and a higher overall winning percentage (.517-.506) than Leyland, and the fact that of the 16 managers ahead of him on the all-time wins list, 12 are already in the Hall of Fame while three others, Bruce Bochy, Dusty Baker and Terry Francona are sure shots for election in the near future, Piniella seemed like a sure shot this time around — especially because the committee members all had three votes.

And yet five of the committee members declined to give any of their three votes to Piniella and he wound up missing out on election to the Hall of Fame by one vote. Again.

The argument you are going to hear against Piniella is that he had only one World Series — in 1990 when his Reds team went wire-to-wire for the National League pennant and then scored one of the biggest World Series upsets in history by sweeping Tony La Russa’s heavily favored 103-win A’s — and I get that, when you consider Joe Torre, one of the members on the committee, had six World Series to his credit.

But even with that, of all the 10 candidates on the ballot only former National League president Bill White got more than five votes and Piniella’s overall resume for 40 years in the game was clearly superior to any of the candidates. As a player, Piniella hit .291 over 18 seasons (the last 11 with the Yankees), was Rookie of the Year with the Royals in 1969, and hit .305 in 44 postseason games and won two world championships with the Yankees, while as a manager he was the only person on the ballot credited with literally saving a franchise

Before Piniella came to Seattle, the Mariners had had only one winning season in their history, but under his direction they achieved their greatest success — to this day — with four postseason appearances in 10 years, including a major league record 116 wins in 2001 — despite constantly being unable to afford to keep their biggest stars, Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson.

The Mariner owners in 1995 had threatened to put the team up for sale after King County voters rejected a proposal to fund a badly-needed new stadium to replace the Kingdome. But after Piniella rallied the Mariners from a 0-2 deficit and defeated the Yankees in the 1995 American League Division Series, the state Legislature reversed course and voted to approve a $384.5 million retractable roof stadium to keep the team from moving.

In 2020, former Mariners CEO John Ellis wrote a letter to the Hall of Fame extolling Piniella’s role in saving the franchise and making baseball relevant in Seattle. “Lou was the right man at the right time to breathe life into an organization, change the culture in the process and make baseball relevant in an entire region of the country,” Ellis wrote. “During his time as manager of the Mariners (1993-2002) home attendance doubled from 1.6 million in 1992 to over 3.2 million in 2000-2002. Without his passion, our wonderful ballpark would never have been built.”

Although he won only the one World Championship, everywhere Piniella went after leaving the Yankees, he immediately turned things around in his first year. His 1990 Reds improved by 16 games before going on to win the World Series. His ’93 Mariners improved by 18 wins. His 2003 Tampa Bay Rays had plus eight wins and in 2004 won 70 games and finished out of last place for the first time in their history. And his 2007 Cubs had plus 19 wins.

“I never had a manager who had the fire Lou had for winning,” said Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr., who played for Piniella with the Mariners from 1993-99. “Lou was one of the best managers of his time, right up there with La Russa, Bobby Cox and Joe Torre.”

Five people on the committee didn’t agree, and that’s a shame on them.

Meanwhile, after two days of inaction and boredom at the winter meetings, the Yankees and Padres shook things up by pulling off the Soto deal as everyone was headed out of town and from the sounds of things, it was Hal Steinbrenner who initiated things. Yankee GM Brian Cashman had been loath to surrender Michael King or top pitching prospect Drew Thorpe and knowing how desperate Padres GM A.J. Preller was to move Soto’s estimated $30 million salary, along with the fact there was probably no other team able and willing to give up a front line starter and a No. 1 pitching prospect for a high-priced rental player, he was content to wait it out until the price went down.

But sometime during the week Hal summoned up his “inner George” and ordered Cashman to give up the two pitchers and just make the deal, even though it now means staring down the barrel of Scott Boras and the prospect of another 10-year contract, this one likely well over $400 million, if he wants to re-sign Soto.

The trade for Soto will be minimalized, however, if the Yankees are unable to address the top of their rotation after Gerrit Cole — which is why beating out Steve Cohen for Yamamoto would seem to be imperative. If the Yankees fail to land Yamamoto, a logical backup plan would be Jordan Montgomery, who the Rangers are now saying they won’t be able to re-sign because of revenue uncertainty from the potential $100 million RSN default payment by bankrupt Diamond Sports Group.

* * *

Tis the season for Boras chutzpah. During one of his scrums with the media, Boras announced that Bryce Harper has expressed a desire for an extension of his 13-year/$330 million contract, which has eight more years to go!

Stearns: “The first thing we have to do is get rid of Buck Showalter.”

Cohen: “Why?”

Stearns: “Because, Steve, any time you have a chance to hire Carlos Mendoza as your manager you absolutely have to do that!”

OK, so maybe that isn’t exactly how the conversation went down when Cohen explained to the media back on Oct. 2 that Showalter was shown the door because he felt obligated to let his new president of baseball operations hire his own manager. I’m sure Cohen fully believed Stearns would be bringing in his sidekick in Milwaukee, Craig Counsell, the primo manager on the free agent market. Neither one of them realized how little appetite Counsell had for managing in New York. But in the end Stearns got what he wanted in Mendoza, a nice guy who interviewed well and who everyone likes, but with no previous managerial experience will obligingly do whatever Stearns’ analytics geeks lay out for him, with no pushback.

This unfortunately is what the state of managing has come to in the new age of analytics in baseball, and Counsell should be commended for shattering the appallingly low salary structure for managers, with the record five-year, $40 million deal he negotiated from the Cubs. You could make the case that the most important person on any major league team is the manager, who not only is in charge of the game on the field but is the front man for the entire organization every day of the season.

But that isn’t how the new wave of analytically–driven GMs see managers. In their view the manager is simply a necessary appendage to the analytics department — whose decisions on lineups, player availability (i.e. load management) are all made for him. Which is why most managers in baseball are earning less than $2 million, or akin to what middle relievers and backup infielders make. It’s baseball’s disgrace.

This is one of the reasons why Showalter, at the time a three-time Manager of the Year, waited three years between managing jobs before being hired by the Mets in 2021. Money may have been a reason why Showalter didn’t get the Angels job last week, despite his longtime close relationship with Angels GM Perry Minasian, although I suspect a bigger factor was that Angels owner Arte Moreno wanted to hire a minority — and he couldn’t have gotten a more qualified one in two-time American League pennant winner Ron Washington.

The truth is Showalter should be glad he didn’t get the Angels job. It’s the worst managing job in baseball, starting with the fact that Minasian is in the last year of his contract and the mercurial Moreno has made no effort to extend him. That aside, the Angels are (1) a bad team in one of the most competitive divisions in baseball with the Rangers, Astros and Mariners, (2) with not much coming in the farm a system, and (3) a $245 million third baseman, Anthony Rendon, they can’t get to play. Throw in the fact that constant injuries have rendered Mike Trout a shell of the player Moreno extended for 12 years, $426 million in 2019 and the uncertainty of Shohei Ohtani re-signing, and what Washington is looking at is a team guaranteed to have a ninth straight losing season. It’s probably why Moreno gave him only a two-year contract.

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

The selection of Orioles GM Mike Elias as major league executive of the year is a real puzzlement. Yes, the Orioles had a breakthrough 101-win season and made the postseason for the first time since 2016, but as far as the personnel was concerned, Elias had very little to do with it, other than drafting catcher Adley Rutschman No. 1 (over Bobby Witt Jr.) in 2019, a decision you couldn’t miss on either way. Otherwise, the Orioles core players, Ryan Mountcastle, Anthony Santander, Cedric Mullins, Austin Hays, and even their very promising rookie right-handed starter Grayson Rodriguez, were all brought into the organization by Elias’ predecessor Dan Duquette. And even though it was clear to everyone the Orioles had a huge deficit in their starting rotation, Elias, both last winter and at the trade deadline, failed to address it adequately and that was why the Orioles flamed out in the division series. They still have big holes in their rotation and there are plenty of free agent front line starters out there — Blake Snell, Aaron Nola, Jordan Montgomery, Sonny Gray, Eduardo Rodriguez — but just going on past performance there is no reason to believe Elias’ penurious Orioles will sign any of them. At the trade deadline, they could have had Dylan Cease from the White Sox but Elias refused to sacrifice any of his top prospects at Triple-A, all of whom are blocked at the big league level, and wound up with Jack Flaherty from the Cardinals who was awful and pitched one inning of relief in the ALDS. Meanwhile, Braves’ GM Alex Anthopoulos somehow finished second to Elias despite the fact he acquired almost everyone on their 104-win team, most notably beating out a half dozen of his peer in his brilliant trade for catcher Sean Murphy last winter. And where in the heck was Kim Ng in the voting? Apparently nowhere despite the fact that she literally traded the underfinanced Marlins into the postseason with her inspired deals for Luis Arraez, Josh Bell and Jake Burger, along with her gutsy hiring of Skip Schumaker as manager…The announcement last week that MLB settled a federal law suit and two others in New York State by the parent companies of the Staten Island Yankees, Tri-City Valley Cats, Salem-Keizer Volcanoes and Norwich Sea Unicorns — all of whom had their franchises eliminated when baseball downsized the minor leagues from 160 teams to 120 in September 2020 — kind of slipped under the radar. But I’m told it cost the MLB owners well over $100 million, especially the anti-trust one which they obviously feared could be headed all the way to the Supreme Court.

We commend the 84-win Diamondbacks, who’ve had everyone watching this postseason making like Butch and Sundance and asking “Who are these guys?” They did a remarkable job of perseverance, at the same time playing the game the way it’s supposed to be played (was that a sacrifice bunt I just saw?). You can understand if Buck Showalter’s been watching and saying to himself, “That coulda been us.”

I remember Showalter telling me a few days after Steve Cohen and Billy Eppler blew up the 2023 Mets that he wished he’d have been asked for his opinion. “If they had,” he said, “I’d have told them I still think we can get a wild card. We were starting to get whole, we were gonna get Edwin Diaz back at some point in September and my vote would’ve been to stay the course. I would’ve said, all you need is to just get in. Then anything can happen.”

As the Diamondbacks have proved.

But apparently nobody did ask Showalter’s opinion, just like Eppler ignored his pleas to bring up Ronny Mauricio earlier or to get rid of Daniel Vogelbach. Rather, what was apparent was that Eppler had given up on the Mets season way before the trade deadline and was not all interested in staying the course or doing anything to help Showalter.

Since the advent of the wild card, there’ve been seven wild cards — the 1997 Marlins, 2002 Angels, ’03 Marlins, ’04 Red Sox, ’11 Cardinals, ’14 Giants and the ’19 Nationals — to go on to win the World Series and this year will be the eighth. But it’s hard to say whether MLB should be elated at this Cinderella World Series, or embarrassed. Because the decision to go to three wild cards in each league in 2022 is really coming back to haunt them.

And this year, the regular season was blown all to hell when three 100-win teams, the Braves, Orioles and Dodgers, were all knocked out of the postseason in the best-of-five divisional series, and one 99-win team, the Rays, was knocked out in the two-out-of-three wild card series. I admit, the postseason is a crapshoot and as Buck said, “anything can happen” but there’s no way for MLB to spin the fact that none of the three best teams in baseball are in the World Series — or for that matter even the League Championship Series.

If you want to know the reason why, I would submit the absence of starting pitching.

The Braves especially, were a team built for the 162-game season, with a powerful top-to-bottom lineup that had largest run differential, 231, of any team in baseball, along with the most runs, homers and highest OPS. But all season long they had only one consistently excellent starting pitcher in Spencer Strider. Max Fried, last year’s ace, missed three months with injuries. Rookie Bryce Elder was brilliant from April-August then hit the wall in September, and old reliable Charlie Morton had a finger injury and missed the NLDS. All season long, it was a patch work effort for the Braves with their rotation, although, to be fair, they didn’t hit a lick in the Division Series. At least in a seven-game series, they might have had time to recover.

It was pretty much the same thing with the Dodgers, who were second behind the Braves in runs homers and OPS, but got by with a decimated rotation after Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May went down injured and needed Tommy John surgery and, further, when Julio Urias was placed on administrative leave in September amid sexual assault charges. There was no way they were going anywhere in the postseason.

As for the Orioles, they have only themselves to blame for watching their first AL East title since 2014 go down in flames with a three-game wipeout by the Rangers in the Division Series. They knew they needed frontline starting pitching last winter and addressed it by going cheap and signing the mediocre Kyle Gibson. And it was same thing at the trade deadline when they refused to give up any of their highly rated (but blocked) Triple-A prospects for the White Sox’s Dylan Cease, the Cardinals’ Jordan Montgomery or the Mets’ Justin Verlander. Instead they traded a couple of non-prospects to the Cardinals for the oft-injured Jack Flaherty, who had a 6.75 ERA in seven starts and was demoted to the bullpen.

One other thing about the Diamondbacks: Watching the way they’ve played, with all their athleticism and energy, it’s hard to believe they had only two more wins than the Yankees.

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

There was a report last week about the Yankees and Padres supposedly having had a preliminary trade discussion about Juan Soto that was debunked by both teams — but not before a few online bloggers picked up on it without bothering to consider all the reasons it would never happen. For one, why would Hal Steinbrenner sacrifice what few top prospects he has to acquire a Scott Boras client who’ll be a free agent after next year and seeking upwards of $300 million, when he already has one $30 million a year slugger in Giancarlo Stanton who he can’t get rid of, locked in until 2028? That said, Steinbrenner will be monitoring the Cody Bellinger market and just how high Boras can drive that price. Meanwhile, the Padres are going to try and move Soto because they don’t believe they can sign him, but for the same reason — Boras — that may not be easy. And if they are able to trade Soto, they’re saying they need to get back at least one frontline starting pitcher to replace likely free agent departee Blake Snell — another commodity the Yankees (or the Mets for that matter) don’t have. … About the reports of Brad Ausmus — who was a terrible manager in Detroit and one 90-loss year with the Angels — emerging as a front runner to replace Dusty Baker in Houston: How many times does a guy have to fail before they stop offering him jobs?