Mike Lupica: It’s time for the Yankees to play the young kids and become fun again

The Yankees will be good again this season. Why? Because they’re always good, even if it’s been a long time — 2009? 1909? — since they were good enough.

They will hit a lot of home runs because they always hit a lot of home runs, and that doesn’t just mean Aaron Judge. Sometimes they even lead the league in home runs.

And they’ll have pitchers hurt because they always have pitchers hurt, another area where they always seem to lead the league. Maybe they’ll even have a big closer again in Clay Holmes, unless he is another Yankee pitcher who gets hurt. Seriously: Are you surprised that Carlos Rodon has already felt something in his pitching elbow? I’m not.

But you know what we really want from the 2023 Yankees? We want them to be fun again.

We want them to be a show. We want them to be something more than Judge because, let’s face it, other than Judge, who were you really buying a ticket to watch play last season?

The Yankees were fun when they were winning last season, you bet they were. They were 64-28, and seemed to find a new way to win every day, even without home runs sometimes. But even then they were fun because they were winning. And you know what happened after 64-28. The Yankees were a .500 team from there until the end. Or there until the Astros. Same thing. The Astros always are the end for the Yankees.

This is the year when the Yankees need to be a show again doing something other than circling the bases after another home run. The Mets were the better show in town last season, even with the way they couldn’t take the NL East away from the Braves in the end, and then the way things ended against the Padres. The Mets hit 83 fewer home runs than the Yankees did, and were still a better show.

The Yankees had Judge, absolutely. But the Mets had Francisco Lindor, a streak of light at shortstop and somebody with enough pop to hit 26 homers and knock in 107. The Mets had the Polar Bear, Pete Alonso, getting back to 40 home runs and breaking the Mets’ all-time RBI record. They had Max Scherzer pitching the way he did until he faded in the end. They had Jacob deGrom, though if you blinked you were in danger of missing his last season in a Mets uniform. And then to close out so many great Citi Field nights, they had the trumpet guy, Edwin Diaz, looking as dominant for one season as Mo Rivera was for a lot of them.

I was in the Trophy Room at Gallaghers not long ago, speaking to some New York sports fans, and a lot of them were Yankee fans. And I talked a little bit about the fun factor I thought was missing from the Yankees. After I did, a guy raised his hand.

“You want to know how to make my team more fun? Tell them to play the kids.”

Every few years we hear a lot about a new generation of Baby Bombers on their way to Yankee Stadium. It wasn’t so long ago that we were looking at Gleyber Torres and Miguel Andujar and Clint Frazier. And Gary Sanchez. Only Torres is still here, and there were stories all winter that the Yankees were trying to move him, and might be still.

Now the new kids are Oswaldo Cabrera and Oswald Peraza and Anthony Volpe and the 20-year-old phenom, Jasson Dominguez, who has been lighting up the Yankee spring in Tampa. This likely isn’t the year for Dominguez, who’s barely played Double-A ball so far. But at a time when the Yankees seemed stubbornly fixed on starting the season with Aaron Hicks, another dumb long-term Yankee contract, ask yourself a question if you’re a Yankee fan:

Would you rather see Hicks as your starting left fielder or Cabrera this season? The only more unpopular Yankee than Hicks is Josh Donaldson, your starting third baseman. Here’s another question: What Yankee fan doesn’t want to see Estevan Florial in center, or even Dominguez, until Harrison Bader is healthy again?

I asked that same Yankee fan on Thursday afternoon, during a Q&A, how many of these kids he wants to see make the team, and make it to Yankee Stadium for Opening Day against the Giants.

“All of them,” the guy said.

It won’t happen. Put Volpe at short. Put another kid in left. Turn the page. But you know what we’re already reading and hearing? That the Yankees are going to wait until the trade deadline and go after a veteran left fielder then. The Yankee way. Of course. Then they turn around and say they want to build a new core around young guys like the old Core Four. When?

You know what the Astros did when Carlos Correa left them in free agency for the Twins? They ran an exciting kid named Jeremy Pena out to short, and we all saw — and Yankee fans certainly saw — that the Astros hadn’t just turned the page. They hadn’t missed a beat.

The Mets are a veteran team, especially in their starting lineup, even though Alonso is under 30 and so is Lindor and Jeff McNeil, the batting champion, didn’t turn 30 until last season. The Yankees, though, are the team that has the chance to get a lot younger a lot faster. So do it. Turn the page. Stop just talking about kids. Play them. Now that would be fun, wouldn’t it?

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