There is always urgency for our baseball teams, and big stakes. This is Baseball New York, where everything gets dialed up, every year, even if the Mets haven’t won a World Series since 1986 and Yankee fans now treat the last time their team won one — in 2009 — as having been 86 years ago.

But as we officially get baseball back this week, you wonder which team feels more urgency to win it all, Hal Steinbrenner’s or Uncle Steve’s?

And when you look at the whole picture, including the way last season ended for both teams — the Mets were a slow-moving wreck over the second half of the season while the Yankees waited until Toronto in October to look like second-raters — you come to the conclusion that there is more urgency for the Mets. The best reason might be this:

The Mets, and that includes not just Steve Cohen but David Stearns, were clearly humbled by what happened to them after they had the best record in the sport at 45-24. The Yankees are never humbled. Well, not since 2004.

The Yankees do something that the Mets don’t, which means make it to the postseason just about every single year, while never having the kind of losing season the Mets did in 2025. But when they do walk away from another season that ends without them winning World Series No. 28, they generally think that they were just victims of life circumstances, whether it was against the Astros in more than one October, or getting knocked through the ropes the way they were in Games 1 and 2 in Toronto.

The Mets did a massive overhaul after the way things ended for them because Stearns felt as if he had no choice. And even with the long-term contract bestowed upon him by Cohen to get Stearns out of Milwaukee, Stearns has to be enough of a realist to know that he needs to produce for Cohen and soon — and that means produce a World Series — because he’s never going to have as much runway as Brian Cashman has with Hal Steinbrenner.

Cashman didn’t make big changes to last season’s team, meaning the one he finished with, because he didn’t think he needed to do that. He knew he was getting Gerrit Cole back, he saw what Cam Schlittler did in the game of his life against the Red Sox in the wild card series, he knew that he was getting a healthy Carlos Rodon back at some point. So he brought back Trent Grisham and brought back Cody Bellinger and clearly believes he has almost too much starting pitching, despite the fact that under Cashman the Yankees have never had too much starting pitching.

“I think we have a good, strong, deep roster of players that are capable of great things,” Cashman said not long ago in Tampa. “And we’re going to look forward to testing that theory.”

He always thinks that, and year after year he convinces his owner that the Yankees are capable of great things, even across an era where despite all the winning seasons they’ve never been quite good enough.

Still: Without coming right out and saying it, Cashman  believes this Yankee team is different, and loaded, whatever his fan base thinks about that, or about him, or about his manager, someone else who probably won’t have to worry about job security unless the Yankees somehow crash and burn the way the Mets did last summer.

So another season begins for the Yankees, in San Francisco, and they try to do everything possible to make sure they don’t go 17 seasons without winning the World Series, something that would tie the record for the longest series drought since Babe Ruth came to New York and effectively invented the Yankees. As they do, Yankee fans once again have to ask themselves if they believe in the people running their baseball team as much as their owner does.

Should there be as much urgency as ever in the Bronx? You bet. It’s not just because of the series drought for a team that has appeared in 41 of them, but because they need to make sure this isn’t another season out of Aaron Judge’s prime when he doesn’t finally make it to the Canyon of Heroes, who has become the Ruth of his generation, the kind of slugger we never thought we would see again at Yankee Stadium, but have.

This is about to be Judge’s 10th full season wearing a Yankees uniform. The last four have been something for the ages, when he truly has become Babe Ruth East to Shohei Ohtani’s Babe Ruth West. The difference between them — other than Ohtani being a starting pitcher the way Ruth was in Boston — is that Ohtani’s team has won the last two World Series, beating Judge’s Yankees in one of them.

The difference between the Yankees and Mets, of course, is that the Yankees really do make the tournament year after year, when Cohen’s Mets have made it to the tournament twice. They are a perennial contender, just not a closer. Cashman absolutely had the right to run things back. David Stearns did not have that luxury with the Mets.

So Edwin Diaz is gone, even if the Mets wanted him back before misreading his market, and forgetting that the Dodgers sure are closers when there is a player they want. Pete Alonso, who Stearns was prepared to let walk a year ago, is gone. So is Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil. Stearns talked an awful lot about run prevention after last season, but will now open the season with a shortstop — Bo Bichette — at third base and Jorge Polanco at first, a position he’s played about as much as you and me. Stearns watched the Mets blow sky high last season and decided to blow things up.

Stearns is convinced he has a lot more starting pitching than he did a year ago, if only because he has a new ace in Freddy Peralta. He is hopeful about the health of Kodai Senga and Sean Manaea getting his fastball back, though there have been few signs of that in spring training. There is a new centerfielder in Luis Robert Jr., a player who still has tremendous upside, and a hot kid like Carson Benge expected to be next to him in Carlos Mendoza’s outfield.

And, oh by the way, Juan Soto is still around, coming off one of the great individual seasons any Mets hitter has ever had, but one that ultimately got lost because of the way the Mets had become one of the worst teams in baseball by the end of September.

The Mets have more to prove this season than the Yankees do, absolutely. A lot more. And act like it. Stearns responded to three bad months one way. Cashman responded to two bad losses in Toronto quite another. Maybe it turns out they’re both right. We begin to find out this week. There’s a tennis expression that covers this: Why they put the net up.

AN INJURY CHANGES EVERYTHING, WBC IS A WIN FOR SPORTS & WATCH OUT FOR CAMERON AT AUGUSTA …

Last spring, the Knicks saw how fast everything can change in sports when Jayson Tatum went down with his Achilles injury.

Now we’re about to find out just how much changes for the Pistons because of Cade Cunningham’s collapsed lung.

Which is why, more than ever, the Knicks ought to be kicking themselves all the way up and down Seventh Ave. for that miserable 2-9 stretch in January.

Speaking of Tatum?

It apparently didn’t take him as long to come back from his surgery as it did Iran to rebuilt that nuclear arsenal we’re told we “obliterated” about twenty minutes ago, right?

Before Otega Oweh made that crazy 3-pointer to save Kentucky against Santa Clara, I was thinking they were probably missing Coach Cal in Lexington more than ever.

It was big fun for awhile on Friday afternoon watching Speedy Claxton’s guys from Hofstra make the run they did at Alabama.

That was some wonderful ending we got from Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic, no matter which way you were rooting.

Sports at its best still can take big places and make them feel like small towns.

Or even smalltown high school gyms.

And that is what happened on Tuesday night for the country of Venezuela, which has gone through a lot lately.

There’s even Yankee fans I know who think the Red Sox are going to win the American League East.

Big congratulations to my pal, and writing partner, James Patterson for “Judge Stone,” his latest No. 1 best seller, this one written with Viola Davis.

Conan was great the other night.

Again.

The Lakers have certainly saved their best for last, haven’t they?

And while we’re on the subject — are people still worried that Luka and LeBron can’t play together?

Asking for the rest of the Western Conference.

It really is still hard to believe that it wasn’t so long ago that Rick Pitino was coaching in Greece because he was radioactive in this country because of the way things ended for him at Louisville.

The next time somebody tells you that the sport is dying, tell them to take a look at the WBC television ratings.

All Cameron Young, the Sleepy Hollow kid, did last Sunday at The Players Championship was birdie the island hole to take the lead by going right at the flagstick, and then hit one of the greatest drives championship golf has ever seen — 375 yards – on No. 18 to close things out for the biggest win of his career.

Look out for him at Augusta.

Those 10 pitches that Gerrit Cole threw the other day got covered like Larsen’s perfect game.

To paraphrase something the great Pete Hamill once said:

When Howie Rose leaves the room it will be like one hundred guys leaving.