NEW YORK'S GRITTY GUYS!

When Suzie Pinstripe recommended this topic to me she said, “write about the gritty guys on NY teams.”

At first I truly thought she was talking about Gritty the mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers, to which I was very confused. Obviously, she meant to talk about out grittiest and hardcore players that aren’t afraid to get down and dirty and not Gritty (thank god).

One player for the Yankees that stands out is Luke Voit, who is off to a hot start this season. Currently on the road, Voit hit his fifth homer of the road trip against the Diamondbacks on Wednesday night. That plus his run in the eighth sadly were not enough for the Yanks to get a win.

Source: Newsday

Voit still stayed positive after the loss. “I feel like we hit a lot of balls hard tonight, just got unlucky,” Voit said to the Daily News. “They made some good pitches today, and unfortunately we didn’t get the job done. I think we have to take the positives, a good road trip, [with] injuries for us to still win six games is pretty good,” Voit said. “I guess take this off day as a fresh start. I think we get some guys back this weekend and go from there.”  

The Yankees kick off a home stand with the first place, red hot, Minnesota Twins so they need more this game play by Voit, who also has a 41 game on base streak, the longest active streak in the majors and longest by a Yankees player since Mark Teixeira reached base in 42 consecutive games in 2010.

Source: Newsday

For the Mets, Jeff McNeil is absolutely unstoppable. McNeil had another four-hit game Tuesday night to which Pete Alonso gave him a four-star review and said, “He looks like Ted Williams out there.” Nicknamed the “Flying Squirrel” by past teammates, McNeil has continued to belt out hits since he got called up last summer.  With 100 at bats through 28 games, he is hitting .370, second in the NL. His goal isn’t a batting title, but isn’t ruling it out. 

“I think if it happens, it happens,” McNeil said. “But I know I’m a kind of hitter that hits for average. So when you put the ball in play, good things happen like that. I’m just going to keep trying to get on base and at the end of the year, if that wins the batting title, it wins the batting title," reported Newsday.

Source: Yahoo Sports

Both young players have come out of the gate with bats a-blazing and have absolutely been dominating the game. These are the guys the Yankees and Mets need! They play the game the way it was meant to be played, hard core, gritty whatever it takes baseball.  These guys are going to go out there and hit and make the plays that get wins. Hopefully they can bring this energy to the rest of the team and we can start getting more W's from both sides of town.

--Missy O'Rourke
BYB Contributor
Twitter: @missy_orourke