According to a new Quinnipiac University poll released a few weeks ago, New York City baseball fans favor the Mets over the neighboring Yankee by a slim two percent margin; The Mets were preferred by forty-five percent of those polled compared to the forty-three percent hat favored the Yankees.
This stands to reason. The Yankees are working to make a transition into the post-Derek Jeter era and have missed the playoffs three of the last four years, marking the worst stretch for the team in two decades. The Mets, meantime, have made the postseason two years in a row largely due to a star-quality rotation. They won the National League Pennant in 2015 and are expected to contend again in 2017, whereas the Yankees may get buried in the tough AL East, which was the case last year.
This was not always the case. The Yankees have almost always held a sizable advantage over the Mets in New York. Over the last twenty years, the Yankees have averaged a fifty-five percent to thirty-one percent lead over their crosstown rivals. In fact, three years ago, the Yankees led the Mets sixty-one percent to twenty-seven percent on the same Quinnipiac University poll.
The Mets need to keep winning if they want to maintain this edge over their New York counterpart — the Mets seem to pick up fans when they win and drop them when they lose. Now, more than ever, the Yankees may start to gain or lose fans depending on their record.
Either way, it’s obvious that New York is a two-baseball-team city right now. As the Mets continue their surge in the polls, Yankee fans will need their team to start winning games again; otherwise, their team will have to make some space for the new baseball boss in town.