new york mets

The New York Yankees and Mets spent about half a billion dollars this week on free agents. Aaron Judge, the best player on the market, never received an offer from one of the richest owners in sports, Steve Cohen, from across town. The Major League Baseball Players Union can call it collusion. Most call it doing business in New York. Two successful baseball teams in the Big Apple create a summer craze of headlines and packed ballparks. Now the Mets are in competition to sign a free agent pitcher from Japan and the Yankees may benefit from the star landing in Queens.

The New York Mets wasted no time in replacing Jacob deGrom, in fact the addition of Justin Verlander might even be an upgrade.

Jacob deGrom's career with the New York Mets has come to an end, leaving the team without an elite pitcher in their rotation. So, what do the Mets do now?

It didn't take a brawl, or a clothesline hit, for former New York Met Nelson Figueroa to put a showboat baseball player in his place. He handled it much better.

Some may say that dishing out a record contract to your closer days after the conclusion of the World Series isn't playing your hand slowly. As New York Mets general manager Billy Eppler heads into his second off-season at the helm of Steve Cohen's team, he is well aware that one has to move fast at times and be patient at others to be successful. Eppler made some key acquisitions last winter, like right fielder Starling Marte, left fielder Mark Cahna and third baseman Eduardo Escobar. Those three moves, along with Eppler's hire of Manager of the Year, Buck Showalter, changed the culture of the Mets. Now it's time to continue the improvement. That is what Cohen expects.

Carlos Castro may have celebrated a bit too much after hitting home run, but that still wasn't enough to justify what ex-New York Met Asdrubal Cabrera did next.

Developing the surrounding area of the Mets home ballpark and the U.S. Open Tennis Center is a major win for New York sports fans. Now it looks like Amazin's billionaire owner Steve Cohen is looking for his own win.

If the New York Mets want to be a perennial playoff team, then they have to make decisions with their head and not their heart. Faced with the prospect of paying their free-agent, ace right-hander, Jake deGrom for the next 3 or 4 years, at $40 plus million per, Amazin's general manager Billy Eppler had better think long and hard about the investments that he makes over the next year, as Mets president-in-waiting David Stearns bides his time, collecting checks from the Milwaukee Brewers and making notes on his future employees.

Not one, but both of New York's baseball teams have been implicated in a collusion scandal over the biggest free agent in Major League Baseball this offseason.

For decades New York Mets (and for many years Jets fans) always felt that the area in Queens surrounding Shea Stadium, now Citi Field, detracted from the fan experience. From the rows of auto repair shops to the barbed-wire fences surrounding the junk yards, there is basically nothing for fans to do outside of Citi Field, if they don't need work done on their car. However, that is about to change. New York City officials have reached an agreement to build the city’s first professional soccer stadium and it has benefits for Mets fans.

The New York Mets do not have a storied history of great managers. Gil Hodges was terrific for his few years prior to his passing in 1972. Davey Johnson did a great job winning games with his late 1980s teams but his undisciplined style rubbed management the wrong way. Terry Collins was terrific in 2015, especially if you want a guy to win with a sub-par roster. However, none of them was ever named National League Manager of the Year, like this year's winner, Buck Showalter.

Baseball players who belonged to New York organizations were a few of the many involved in an out-of-control brawl during a Venezuelan Winter League game.