New York’s Baseball Resurgence Sets Stage for LCS Drama

New York is once again a focus of the baseball universe, a development arriving after the high-spending Yankees and Mets have both overcome more than a year of disappointment, but also one that could raise viewership issues in the World Series.

The Yankees clinched a berth Thursday in the American League Championship Series, finishing off the Royals in the Division Series in four games. That win came just a day after the Mets’ four-game National League Division Series victory over the Phillies, setting up LCS berths for the two teams in the same season for the first time since 2000 and just the third time in the 55 years of MLB’s divisional format. 

On the surface, the playoff advancements for the Mets and Yankees represent a simple flexing of financial might as the teams are No. 1 and 2 in MLB player payroll this year, with the Mets coming in at nearly $318 million and the Yankees at $309 million. But each has underachieved recently relative to that spending.

Last year, the Mets sagged to a 75–87 finish, and high hopes raised by an MLB record $344 million Opening Day payroll led to a trade deadline selloff of several notable players. This season’s Mets began with a 22–33 record before a furious on-field turnaround that was complemented by several pop culture intersections that became viral sensations, such as McDonald’s mascot Grimace and infielder Jose Iglesias’s song “OMG.”

The Yankees, meanwhile, missed last year’s postseason with an 82–80 record, and even this year’s run to the AL East division title contained plenty of doubt while the Yankees played all of June, July, and August—representing nearly half the season—as essentially a .500 team.

“This hopefully is not the end of the road for us, and we expect more,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said after the series-clinching win over the Royals. “But you’ve got to savor these times, too, because to get down to the final four here … I feel like we’re playing well, like we’re pretty well-rounded. We’re not perfect by any means, but I’ll take our chances.”

Blast From the Past

As the Yankees and Mets now will be half of that final four for MLB, they are waiting on their LCS opponents. The Padres and Dodgers will play a deciding Game 5 in their NL Division Series on Friday to face the Mets, while the Tigers and Guardians will do the same on Saturday on the AL side to earn a matchup against the Yankees.

The prospect of a Subway Series Fall Classic, however, recalls the widespread angst—outside of New York—that met the 2000 World Series involving the two teams. The five-game win by the Yankees, while heavy with on-field drama, averaged 18.1 million viewers. The number would be considered massive today, as there is a very different media landscape now than what existed then. But the viewership was a 24% drop from the year before and the worst figure for the World Series, as large swaths of the western U.S. had little interest in the inter-borough matchup. 

It would be another five years before audiences for the event shrank as low as what occurred in 2000.

“This has been a difficult year for a lot of us,” then-Fox Sports president Ed Goren said after that World Series.

The 2024 MLB season, however, has contained much more momentum for the league and its rights holders, including attendance growth and initial viewership increases for the Division Series. Fox Sports in particular said Thursday that its coverage of the NL Division Series has produced its best totals for that round in the last decade, and another robust figure is anticipated Friday, in part due to the presence of Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani in a deciding game.