The Best Team Money Can Buy comes to Citi Field this week with the best record in baseball in tow. Along with a single championship since 1988 and — more important — over the last 10 years.
Since Guggenheim Baseball Management purchased the Dodgers in 2012, the franchise has been a model for the rest of baseball. They have spent big — over $200 million in payroll in all but one season since 2013. They have won accordingly — over 90 victories in every 162-game season since 2013, and the chance to reach that milestone again this week. They are perennially among the World Series favorites.
And yet, the only time the Dodgers have actually won a title over that span came in a partially-filled, neutral-site ballpark following a 60-game pandemic season. There’s virtue in winning the division, yes, and their fans have gotten plenty of good memories out of the last decade. But by and large, their seasons have ended with a loss.
That’s no revelation — baseball’s postseason is by definition random, and there hasn’t been a back-to-back champion since the Yankees won three in a row at the turn of the century. The sport has changed drastically since then, and it’s accordingly much harder to get the kind of edge on everyone else that results in serial winning. The Yankees themselves have been victims of those changes, winning just one title since their late-’90s dynasty despite regular playoff appearances, high spending and expectations.
Last season’s playoff loss has become all-too-familiar for a Dodgers team that has won nine of the last 10 NL West titles but only one World Series in that span.Getty ImagesWithin that, though, there is a lesson for the Mets as they embark on a series that will be universally seen as a litmus test. What they have this season is special in a way that doesn’t come around often. And they don’t know when the next chance will be.
It figures that under Steve Cohen’s ownership, the Mets will find themselves in the same category as the Yankees and Dodgers — big spenders, capable of winning with regularity. But that does not guarantee championships any more than the Rays’ low-budget operation guarantees failure.
Everything we’ve seen to this point indicates that these Mets have something about them. Their starting rotation looks built for the postseason. So does their late-inning relief. They’ve also proven capable of manufacturing runs without playing inefficient baseball. This team seems to understand how to do the little things right. These Mets look different than the Mets we’re so used to seeing, the ones that find ways to lose.
Of course, that paragraph might look quite bad in three days’ time. But even though the regular season still carries some weight for the Mets with the Braves on their heels for the division, this series will be pulled through the keyhole of a potential NLCS matchup. And whatever happens now won’t mean much then — the 2006 Mets, to pull a random example, swept the Cardinals at Shea Stadium around this time of year.
The chance in front of the Mets is a rare one, even for a team with their resources. How many Yankees teams in the last 20 years came into the postseason truly looking like title contenders? The Dodgers have won 106 games in both of the last two 162-game seasons — both times they failed to even reach the World Series.
A season in which it feels the Mets are doing almost everything right doesn’t come around often enough to not push for a championship.Robert SaboFrom what we can surmise now, the Mets should have another good team next season. As good as this one? There are enough questions between then and now — Jacob deGrom’s contract and Max Scherzer’s age, for starters — that you would lean toward no.
Cohen can, and probably will, throw as much money as he likes into this franchise for the foreseeable future. That might increase the probability of another year like this on a spreadsheet. It doesn’t guarantee anything.
Just ask the Dodgers.
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New York PostA grand stage isn’t for everyone
Serena Williams wasn’t quite ready to end her storied tennis career on Monday night.Robert SaboThe Serena send-off started in style on Monday night, first with a 6-3, 6-3 first-round victory over Danka Kovinic, followed by a ceremony honoring Williams, who will retire following this U.S. Open.
Earlier in the day, on Court 17 away from the spotlight, Dominic Thiem dropped his first-round match 7-5, 6-1, 5-7, 6-3 against 12th-ranked Pablo Carreno Busta, coming undone after some shaky serving at the end of the first set.Thiem, the winner on the men’s side just two years ago, came into this edition of the tournament unranked — a product of a right wrist injury midway through 2021 that quickly became a 14-month stretch without winning a match that required entering a Challenger event in Salzburg, Austria to break. His best result this year is a semifinal appearance in the Swiss Open: a 250-point event won by Norwegian Casper Ruud the last two years.
Thiem has earned himself permanent status as an intriguing story whenever he plays in New York. So, too, did Juan Martin del Potro, who looked so promising after defeating Roger Federer at the peak of his powers in the 2009 U.S. Open, before suffering a wrist injury of his own and never quite being the same.
But being a fun story doesn’t get you any further than an occasional appearance in this newspaper. And even sustained success doesn’t earn you the kind of adoration Williams will get for as long as her presence in the tournament lasts. (Does anyone expect Novak Djokovic’s retirement to look like this?)
Two years after winning the U.S. Open, Dominic Thiem was ousted in the tournament’s first round.USA TODAY SportsThe enormity of her accomplishments — 23 majors, six here in New York, 319 weeks as the world No. 1 — is so grand that they can be hard to comprehend. The best way to do so can be to look at the myriad examples of players who have touched greatness but failed to make it last. Thiem is only 28, so there is still time for him. But right now, that is where he finds himself.
The Huskers get humbled again
If you squint hard enough at Nebraska’s schedule, you might be able to make a case for six wins. But after a 31-28 loss to Northwestern in the Huskers’ Dublin-based opener — a royal disaster in which coach Scott Frost attempted an onside kick up 11 in the third quarter to set up a collapse and bring his record in one-score games at Nebraska to a staggering 5-21 — it’s not an easy case.
Nebraska has found more than a few ways to lose seemingly winnable games since moving to the Big Ten.REUTERSThis is no great achievement we’re talking about, either. The Herculean task in front of one of the most successful college football programs in history is … getting to the Quick Lane Bowl. That would mark Nebraska’s first bowl game since 2016 and maybe buy Frost another year in Lincoln.
Nebraska is further from being Nebraska than Texas is from being Texas, Tennessee from being Tennessee and even Florida State from being Florida State. The Seminoles, at least, lost the Sun Bowl following the 2019 season. The Huskers are the poster child for blue blood programs that have lost their way.
It’s not likely that the Huskers will get back to being championship contenders anytime soon when doing so would require bringing high-level talent from California and Texas to Lincoln. But Nebraska has the resources that come with being a Big Ten football team and a local economy built to help the university capitalize on NIL.
There’s no reason for the Huskers to be consistently behind their neighbors, Iowa, in recruiting, but they are. And when it comes to players like five-star Kadyn Proctor, an offensive tackle from Des Moines currently committed to the Hawkeyes, Nebraska is just another school in a long list of offers, not even having received an official visit.
Now in his fifth season coaching Nebraska, Scott Frost has a 15-30 record at the school without a bowl appearance.APAthletic director Trev Alberts is the person who needs to figure out exactly what the way back is, and that’s not an easy question to answer. Frost, a local hero and son of Lincoln who led UCF to an undefeated season, worked on paper.
It’s abundantly obvious now that Alberts will have to go back to the drawing board.
What lies beneath
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan couldn’t have dreamed up a better outcome for the Tour Championship than Rory McIlroy’s come-from-behind victory on Sunday. Not only is McIlroy the most marketable player in the PGA other than Tiger Woods, he’s also been the Tour’s most stalwart defender as LIV Golf has raided its stars.
Rory McIlroy’s win at the Tour Championship helped the PGA score a symbolic victory, but the steady defection of golfers to the LIV tour is further splintering the sport.Getty ImagesOn top of that, the victory came after McIlroy, along with Woods, spearheaded a series of reforms and initiatives designed to help the PGA retain its top talent, making the announcement along with Monahan at a press conference earlier in the week.
That the moment feels fleeting, as more LIV defections — including British Open champion Cam Smith — were reported over the weekend, and underscores just how tenuous a position the PGA is in. The weekend felt like a microcosm of the last four months in the golf world: a gripping finale, in front of the backdrop of more cracks snaking their way across the sport.
