It’s a good year to be a New York baseball team. As a slightly truncated April ended Saturday, the Yankees had the best record in the A...
It’s a good year to be a New York baseball team. As a slightly truncated April ended Saturday, the Yankees had the best record in the American League at 15-6 and the Mets were tied with the Milwaukee Brewers for the best record in the National League at 15-7 .
While not unprecedented, the sight of both New York teams atop their respective leagues at the end of April has been rare in the 61 seasons the Mets and Yankees have coexisted. The last time this happened was in 1986 – a year that went pretty well for the Mets. The only other time this happened was in 1976, when the Yankees closed April with a 10-3 record (and went on to lose the world series) while the Mets led the NL at 13-7 (then failed to qualify for the playoffs).
Of course, leading your league in April isn’t everything. In 2000, the Yankees were 15-8 at the end of April, one game behind Cleveland, and the Mets were 16-10, three games behind Atlanta. The New York teams met face to face in October in the Metro Seriesthe Yankees winning the team’s third consecutive championship.
As for this year, the replenished Mets had phenomenal pitching – Friday without a hit was a team effort in the truest sense of the word – while the Yankees also pitched well as their hitters blasted their way to victory. But the Bombers closed April with an odd, beating the Kansas City Royals, 3-0Saturday in a game in which the runs were scored on a double-playing grounder and two sacrificial flies.
“When you want to be a complete, really good team, sometimes you have to find ways to win in different ways,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone told reporters after the original victory.
Overall, the Yankees have had the best AL record entering May Day seven times since 1962, according to Baseball Reference, while the Mets have paced the NL four times. Before that, the Yankees had the best April team in the AL 18 times from 1903 to 1961. In seven of those 18 seasons, the best April team in the NL was either the Brooklyn Dodgers or the New York Giants.
Now the trick for both New York teams is to extend their hot starts, which they both did on Sunday. The Yankees started May by beating the Kansas City Royals, 6-4, extending their winning streak to nine games. And the Mets beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 10-6winning their seventh straight series to start this season.
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