Hello Old Friend

Hello old friend, its nice to see you again. Rivalry's are a great thing, especially in state rivals. Well in New York, we've got them in all four major sports. The next two days will highlight the baseball one as the Subway Series gets underway in Queens. Its the Mets and the Yankees for the first of two series this season. This Subway Series has a more special feel to it coming into this one.

The first thing that really sticks out about this edition of the Subway Series is the fact that, for the first time in the history of this series, that both teams are on top of their respective divisions.  The Yankees have a 12.5 game lead over 2nd place Toronto, while the Mets are up two games on 2nd place Atlanta going into tonight's matchup. Pretty good pitching matchups for both games in this series. Walker takes on Montgomery tonight, while tomorrow will see Scherzer square off with German. The Bronx Bombers have dominated the all time series, but its actually closer between the teams in Queens then it is when the games are played in the Bronx.

That's not all that's sticking out about the matchups. Both teams have solid pitching staffs and both are hitting fairly well at the moment. This is the first time really in quite some time that we've had both the Mets and Yankees playing this good of baseball at this time of the year. Both teams have been playing above the norm in the league this year. The Yankees have been running away with the AL East. As for the Mets, they've not only been good, but they've actually been able to maintain it all season to this point.

Truth be told I was half expecting the Mets to start falling off a little bit. They dropped the first two games of the series against the Padres coming out of the break, which gives me as a Mets fan a cause for concern. Not too much worry, but it comes with the territory as a Mets fan that the other shoe will drop at some point. But I have to say that there have been a lot of surprises with the Blue and Orange to this point. Starling Marte and Jeff McNeil have been playing fantastic ball to this point and have looked great in there roles with this ball club. Your getting clutch hitting from guys coming off the bench. Oh and Alonso has been hitting the cover off the baseball. Then the pitching has been pretty good too, and they doing it all without the ace of the staff in Jake deGrom.

The Bombers have been doing, well Bomber things this year. Judge and Stanton (Who it was revealed going to be taking time off for rest and a minor injury) have been hitting the tar out of the ball this season. Pitching has been good, with Nester Cortez coming out as a big surprise and pitching as well if not better at times than Garrett Cole.

This has been great baseball in New York and it keeps going with an exciting Subway Series kicking off tonight.