The Most Overhyped Team in Baseball

Listen, there’s a pretty good chance that I end up shoving my foot in my mouth during this blog, but the Yankees are not that good.

I’m really sick and tired about hearing about them. I get that they can mash the ball in the middle of the lineup, but the idea that Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge are definitely going to be MVP level players this season is ludicrous. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but ESPN is treating this season as though the other 29 teams shouldn’t even bother showing up in the spring.

Baseball is a sport built around inconsistency. In any given year, a great player can play like garbage, and a no-name 35 year old can mash 50 homers. Giancarlo Stanton is the epitome of this. He’s debatably the most physically talented hitter in the history of baseball. The man is a freak. He has top-tier potential and he proved that he has the ability to fill that potential when he nearly broke the 60 home run barrier for the first time since the steroid era ended. Let’s not pretend he’s a sure thing to light it up in New York, though. A season before the last he put up a meager .240 batting average and 27 home runs. He has also proven himself to be a very injury prone player over his eight years in the bigs, so to put him on a pedestal and put the Yankees in the world series in February because they got a moose from Miami is ridiculous. I get he’s good, but Yankees fans need to tamper their expectations considering his inconsistent track record.

The same can be said for Aaron Judge. As I mentioned earlier, baseball players are the most inconsistent of any of the major sports. The notion that Judge is definitely going to perform at an MVP level is insane. It’s certainly possible, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think we should just assume this and write off the season as a Yankees victory. The and the eyeball test speak for themselves. Judge was bad during the second half of last season. Really, really bad. He batted a startling .228 and struck out more than anyone in baseball.

So are we, as Red Sox fans, really ready to bend over and call Judge and Stanton daddy when they haven’t even played on the same field yet? Absolutely not. I’m tired of hearing the hype about the Yankees. Their pitching stinks, Judge and Stanton are overrated and their two knockout relievers in the pen are absolute mental cases. We’ve won two straight divisions for the first time in like a million years and have the best pitcher in baseball returning to our staff. It’s time to take our hands off of the collective panic button and let the 162 game season play out.

The over under has been set at 95.5 wins for the Yankees. Put your life savings on the under.