SU says enough batting practice.  Let’s play some games.  The Yankees continue to bring in veteran infielders to compete for the 2nd and 3rd base positions.  Danny Espinoza is the choice at 2nd and Brandon Drury at 3rd.  Competition is good and no one should just be given a guaranteed spot in the line up (see Jacoby Ellsbury for the past few years).  However, it’s time to go with the youth movement and the Yankees can afford to start both rookies at 2nd and 3rd if they deserve it.  My worry is that Cashman likes his version of gritty veterans to complete the line up.  Chase Headley, Todd Frazier, Travis Haffner, Brian McCann – they have all come and gone and have all under-performed.  I have no problem getting behind the youngsters and living with their growing pains.  The prediction: Torres gets sent down to Scranton in order to save a year of arbitration eligibility and returns in May.  They give 3rd base to Drury even if he underwhelms in spring training.  As much as Cashman has amassed prospects effectively, he still seems to shy away from pulling the trigger.  Let’s see what happens.

SU continues to be wary of the Yankees’ line up and the hype.  Too many strikeouts are looming in this line up.  Now maybe that’s the way baseball is played today but it’s not entertaining to watch swings and misses.  Keep in mind that Stanton has rarely played a full season.  Ellsbury needs to work hard and wait for his chance which will come.

For those of you keeping track, today marks the 7-year anniversary of the Knicks’ trade with the Denver Nuggets for Carmelo Anthony.  SU says it’s actually fitting given that the Passover holiday is coming up next month where the Jews wandered the desert for 40 years after leaving Egypt.  Hopefully the Knicks will find their way more quickly than 40 years.  As SU has mentioned many, many times, the team was on the right track prior to that move with a fun line-up.  Seven years later, it’s back to square one.  I was glad to see that Trey Burke was given a chance to shine last night and led the team to victory.  However, with Hornacek, he might be a DNP next game.  There is no rhyme or reason in how he plays guys each game.  SU predicts he will be gone after the season as the next rebuild begins and the next savior coach is brought in.  And so it goes.

March Madness is just around the corner.  Watch out for Michigan which is peaking.  Their style of play is effective in the Tournament as teams are not used to so much motion on offense.  SU predicts a great NCAA tournament this year.  The question is when will the results of the investigation into all of the top programs be released?  Or leaked?  We may have another championship being vacated in 2018 just like Louisville’s in 2013.

Charles Dickens clearly had the 2018 Yankees in mind when he wrote his classic many years ago.  No doubt Aaron Boone who had his opening spring training press conference yesterday would agree.  It will be all downhill from here on out.  In February, you can be a potential genius new manager with no experience.  Most everyone is healthy, there are no personality issues with players or between players and perhaps even Dellen Betances (slimmed down to 265 pounds from 280 last year) can find the plate now.

Last year’s team was one game from making the World Series and anything short of playing in the World Series will be considered a failure in 2018.  That means a lot more pressure on the youngsters.  If Aaron Judge does 2 months again striking out almost every at bat, that will be a lot worse than it was in 2017.  There are still unknowns at 2nd and 3rd base where rookies will be competing for the starting jobs.  SU is looking for both Torres and Andujar to get a shot and hopes they can avoid injury to win the jobs.  Also looking for a big year from SU fave Greg Bird.  And Jacoby Ellsbury is still here and is clearly untradeable.  But SU says you know someone will get injured and he will be thrown into the mix to hit .269 with no power and no rbis.  It’s a living at $23 million a year.

The good news is that baseball is here.  The Mets also unveiled their new manager and if their pitching can stay healthy – a big if – they are contenders in the NL.  Goose Gossage has been banned from the Yankee camp.  Let’s face it: he’s an idiot.  Bad mouths everyone, hates everyone and he shouldn’t be there.  SU would keep him away from the Old Timers Day game as well.

Did you see the story about former Yankee pitcher Esteban Loaiza?  Busted with 43 pounds of cocaine.  Dude made $43 million in his career.  How does that happen?

Hope springs eternal.  SU is ready.  The Knicks are playing for draft positioning, Jeremy Lin is out another year and the NBA won’t get interesting until May and June.  Bring it on.

The Yankees broke from the Chase Headley strategy of signing “gritty veterans” to supplement the roster of young, exciting players with high upside.  Instead of bringing back Todd Frazier, they held firm and allowed him to move to Queens to join the Mets at Citifield.

The Mets will be getting a great guy in the clubhouse who loves playing baseball.  He will be a leader on the field, hit .217, with 32 home runs and 71 rbis.  Of course, you also get the 179 strikeouts and Met fans will get to the point where just putting the ball in play will feel like a successful at bat – especially with a man on 3rd base and less than 2 outs.  As long-time SU subscriber D. Harmon said, pairing Frazier with former Red teammate Jay Bruce adds a lot of strikeouts to the line up and is not a good strategy.  Now in this day and age, maybe that is the strategy.  You no longer worry about putting the ball in play.  Rather, nothing wrong with strike outs as long as you get the occasional home run thrown into the mix.  The Yankees are actually set up that way as well with Judge, Sanchez and Stanton.

SU prefers seeing the ball put into play and moving runners along with speed.  The Yankees went in a different direction and time will tell on that front.  Aaron Boone will be on the hot seat if they get off to a slow start – say 2-4 (just kidding, the media and Yankee fans will allow him 9 games to get comfortable).  The expectations will be very high this year – a totally different feel from last season.

Tough injury last night for KP on the Knicks.  But that was an injury that was bound to happen as he is often in the air given his style of play.  A torn ACL takes 10 months to rehab and this will likely cost them next year as well.  The good news is that they can now move some players off the roster before the trade deadline and give Trey Burke more minutes to see what they have there.

Finally, SU provides this public service announcement to men riding on Metro-North trains in the middle seat.  When you slide in there, do not put your computer bag on your lap – that widens your area and you end up infringing on the space of your neighbor.  And please, don’t feel the need to send 87 texts from the train where your elbow is flapping wildly into the side of your neighbor.  It just doesn’t feel good for 38 minutes of train time.  Women riders may ignore this public service advice – they keep to their personal space.  But men, get with the program. You know who you are – knock it off.

We now return you to your original programming.

Who wouldda thunk it?  We got an action-packed, high powered offensive Super Bowl in Minneapolis  that featured over 1,100 yards of offense and maybe 2 punts.  There were 4th down attempts near mid-field, passes to the quarterback by both teams and a game that came down to the final play.  Who invited these two Big – 12 Conference teams to play?  For SU, this much more preferable than a 13-10 slugfest with 7 punts in the 1st quarter where the coaches are playing field position with their defenses.  I just can’t watch that style of football anymore.  The reality is that if player safety matters, this may be the future of the NFL – less hard hitting and more up and down the field.

It was a great game – close throughout and you felt it would come down to whoever had the ball at the end of the game.  The refs got the two calls right on the touchdowns that were closely reviewed even though SU says that in the regular season both calls get overturned.  It’s time to change the rule on the ball moving in the receiver’s hands.  There is no way the refs on the field can see that in fast motion and let’s allow them to focus on whether they get the feet in-bounds.  Replay is fine but not for overkill purposes.  SU does note that the head referee, Gene Steratore, is the same ref who changed a possession call with 8 seconds left when Michigan played Purdue that was ridiculous.  Apparently, he has learned from his mistakes.

Chris Collinsworth is taking a beating on Twitter today by questioning both calls.  SU still likes him as an announcer but the Philly fans are not happy.  SU is wondering why Malcom Butler did not play on defense for the Pats after starting all year.  They were torched all night long.  Odd move by Belichick but of course he has been right much more than wrong in his career.

Tom Brady is the only QB in all of NFL history to throw for over 500 yards, 3 touchdowns or more and no picks to lose a game.  Crazy.

So, about those predicted scores.  Let’s review who weighed in:

• SU: Eagles 31 – 24
• PBok: Eagles 31 – 30
• Mark N: Pats 24 – 17
• Steve: Pats 27 – 24
• David Ball: Eagles 30 – 28
• David Stockel: Pats 27 – 23
• Robert A. Rifkin: Pats 27 – 23
• Tom: Pats 34 – 20

Hmmmm.  Final score was Eagles 41 – 33 – an 8-point differential.  Who was closest?  Wait for it…….. Ah, SU!  I guess I get to keep the SU travel bag and windbreaker for another year.

Do the Eagles have a QB competition next season?  Will Nick Foles be in high demand when he becomes a free agent in a year?  Or is he only good in Philadelphia?  Do the fans that abandoned the NFL over player kneeling come back now after an exciting Super Bowl?  SU suspects that if the President stops talking about it, this will go away.  SU also suspects that ain’t going to happen.  And so it goes.

Super Bowl comments?  Did the Pats get robbed on the TD calls?

SU’s crack research team  has been running thousands of simulated game scenarios for this weekend’s Super Bowl.  So far, the Patriots are coming out on top 54.3% of the time while the Eagles win 45.6% of the games.  Donald Trump won 0.1% of the time but SU believes some Russian bots may have infiltrated the system so we will just call this outcome illegitimate.

SU is on the record predicting an Eagles 31 – 24 victory in an upset.  As is tradition at SU, we ask the subscribers to weigh in with their game predictions.  The person who comes closest to the actual outcome will receive props from SU and of course, the complimentary SU windbreaker and travel bag.  And a special shout out to long-time SU subscribers J. Winston and R. Winston who will be heading to Minneapolis for the game to root on their Iggles.

This is your chance to shine.  Let’s see what you’ve got.