The Evil Empire is back
The Evil Empire is back. Sure, they’ve always been here, but this year feels especially evil. The New York Yankees are finally back to being the villains that everyone hates. Most baseball fans hate us, but the hatred is at its peak when the team is winning. Yankees Twitter is generally a crazy place, but there are always some stragglers from other teams’ fanbases who love to butt in and supply a laundry list of excuses as to why the Yankees’ winning is a fluke.
“The team they just beat is injured.”
“They just faced their worst starters.”
“My favorite player didn’t get to eat his pregame ravioli, so he wasn’t at full strength.”
“Short porch."
“They’re just hot right now, they’ll cool off.”
I hate to break it to other fans, but when we’re almost in July and almost at the halfway mark of the season — it’s no longer hot, we’re just good. Here are the Yankees’ records by month:
Month
Record
Win %
Record Over 162 Games
April
15-6
0.714
116-46
May
19-9
0.679
110-52
June
22-5
0.815
132-30
So even in their worst month, the Yankees still would be on pace to win 110 games. This is who they are.
I’ve seen a lot more tweets this season about the Yankees, a lot of them negative from non-Yankees fans. But that’s what this team needs. They need to be the villain. That’s the type of energy guys such as Josh Donaldson brings. Love him or hate him, he brings an edge that this team has desperately needed the past few seasons. There wasn’t a huge turnover from last year, but even the smaller changes that Brian Cashman and company have made have completely changed the attitude of the team. They go out on the field every day expecting to win. They’ll even spot the opponent a three-run lead just for fun, for the thrill of the hunt.
So if you see more and more negative sentiment surrounding the Yankees, that may in fact be a good thing. I’m sure on October 5 we’ll see a tweet: “They will cool off, they won’t keep winning.” Bookmark that. That’s the fuel this team thrives off of. We’ll need to prove a lot more over the next four months, but as of now, the Evil Empire is back.