Yankees as Mario characters

I’ve done Yankees as Thanksgiving foods and Yankees as parts of a taco. So while we have no baseball going on right now, I thought I’d try another: Yankees as Mario characters. The descriptions below are courtesy of mario.fandom.com. (Side note: Please excuse my horrendous photo editing skills. I am not responsible for any nightmares you have because of the following images.)

Mario

“Mario is aggressive and impulsive, sometimes going head-on into things without much meditation. Despite these potential flaws, he is a brave, just, moral, righteous, and kind-hearted hero with a strong sense of justice, morality, and righteousness. He acts as a leader and puts, more often than not, other people's needs before his own.” Mario is the face of the Mario franchise. Aaron Judge is the face of the Yankees franchise. And Judge can be over-aggressive sometimes — namely on sliders down and away.

Year

AVG Against Sliders Out of Zone Swing % 2017

.149

26.7

2018

.340

23.5

2019 .169

27.6

However, he also embodies all of Mario’s positive characteristics: “brave, just, moral, righteous, and kind-hearted…with a strong sense of justice, morality, and righteousness.” He is the leader of this team and never props himself up too high — apparently just like Mario.

Luigi

“Luigi is a heroic, kind, and sensitive character. He tends to chicken out of situations that are beyond his capabilities.” The second sentence makes me think of Gary Sanchez and Edwin Encarnacion during the 2019 ALCS. Both came up with some big hits throughout the regular season and ALDS, but for some reason whenever they came to bat in the ALCS you lost hope.

Bowser

“Bowser is a villain of pure evil. Cruel and ruthless, Bowser is commonly portrayed as a power-hungry tyrant. He also does not doubt himself, and is always confident in his plans and appears to enjoy making fun of his victims. One of Bowser's common traits is his insatiable lust for power and conquest. He thinks of everything in terms of power and is always looking for ways to extend his dominion over the world. Several times, Bowser has shown to possess an arrogant sense of entitlement. Bowser lacks a sense of empathy and shows as little mercy to his followers as to his enemies. He has an extremely low tolerance for failures and disrespect.” Honestly, this just makes me think of the Yankees in general. We are portrayed as the Evil Empire and we have an extremely low tolerance for failures. So I let the team be represented by Brian Cashman for this one — he may not seem like a Bowser on the surface, but we all know that deep down he intends to find ways to extend the Yankees’ dominion over the world.

Princess Peach

“Princess Peach is sweet, kind, optimistic, friendly, and experienced. Peach has a lot of experience while she lacks learning from it.” Brett Gardner is the longest-tenured current Yankee, having been called up in 2008. That’s why he fits the description of being experienced. And there have been times when he hasn’t learned from his experience. In July 2019 he banged the bat on the roof. He did it a month later and got thrown out of the game. He also did it a couple of other times. Nevertheless, he is still our sweet Gardy. https://twitter.com/BigBabyDavid_/status/1162809527819001856?s=20

Yoshi

“Yoshi is kind and generous and childish at times. He loves his friends and is very compassionate and playful.” This makes me think of Tommy Kahnle. The guy is just full of energy at all times. Some may see him as childish, but he loves his teammates and his teammates love him.

Toad

“Toad is mostly a cute and happy guy, almost to the point of being childish. He is humble and innocent, with most of his official artwork displaying him with a wide smile. He usually doesn't get angry, more likely to be scared. Toad is also a bit cowardly but is always willing to help his friends.” Giancarlo Stanton seems to be a pretty happy guy. Some may even say he’s cute. And while some might not classify him as “humble and innocent,” he does seem willing to help his friends (teammates) in the chase for 28.  However, sometimes he can be a bit cowardly in the eyes of fans. For instance, he missed Games 2-4 of the 2019 ALCS with a quad injury, came back for Game 5, and then was out again for Game 6. Fans probably thought he could play through something like that as the DH, given that it was the postseason. Speaking of the postseason, he had a -0.30 clutch rating (measuring how well a player has performed in high leverage situations) in 2018 and a -0.19 clutch rating in 2019, both of which are below average. 

Wario

“Wario typically has a natural greed for money, which also balances it out for his competitive side when it comes to having a competition with Mario, Wario also has quite the temper, when he usually gets into a typical rival competition, or if he loses or tries to best Mario.” I’m going with Gerrit Cole for this one. Do I think Cole is greedy? No. But he just so happens to be the latest Yankee to receive a huge contract. As for the rest of it, here’s what Boone had to say about his new ace right after Cole signed: “He reminds me a bit of CC (Sabathia), frankly, you know, when I played with CC and Cleveland, he was the same great competitor and very intense, but I feel like sometimes his intensity, it got the best of him. We can get emotional, frustrated. And then you see the finished product coming into command of those emotions.” What I’m trying to say is that Cole is similar Wario in terms of his competitiveness. However, I hope he doesn’t end up coming out on the losing end most of the time.