One by one, Toronto’s relievers came in, emptied their bucket and made way for the next. Eight relievers doused the dying embers of another Yankee season Wednesday night, making a potentially risky strategy look brilliant for Blue Jays manager John Schneider and longtime pitching coach Pete Walker, the UConn grad.
One reliever not having it, and the series would have been headed to Toronto for a deciding game, but the Jays players did what they had to do, when they had to do it, and therein lies the tale as the life drained from the Yankees in 2025. No championship, no rings, no parade– what remains is a long cold winter to wonder why a franchise that has won 27 championships can’t win another, not for 16 years.
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One narrative fades, another emerges. The Blue Jays’ 5-2 win to finish the AL Division Series in four games was a testament to their determination to put balls in play, though the one team that struck out even less frequently than they did, the Royals, did not make the playoffs.
This one, at least, can not be piled on Aaron Judge, who went 9-for-15 in the series, 13-for-26 in the postseason. He has 17 postseason homers, six in elimination games and has helped the Yankees win nine October series since 2017, so he was never the postseason bust he was made out to be — nor is his monster Game 3 of this series the defining moment it is being made out to be. He’s a generational superstar, but he has never carried the Yankees on his back to the championship.
And as we learned, if nothing else this week, no one player can actually do that. The inability of the Yankees pitchers to keep games close rendered much of Judge’s production moot.
So what is it? A vicious cycle that keeps repeating itself, regardless of who the players or managers are. The Yankees have made the playoffs nearly every year since 1995, yet have won the World Series only once since 2000, the year they three-peated.
For baseball fans in Connecticut, the Yankees’ misery has company. The Mets, who outspent them and snatched Juan Soto away, missed the playoffs altogether. The Red Sox, making it for the first time since 2021, were eliminated by the Yankees in the wild card series. The Red Sox appear to be a team of the future, the Mets are a mess. Neither applies to the Yankees.
One of Derek Jeter’s stock answers after championships stopped coming: “Winning isn’t easy, maybe we made it look easy at times.”
For years now, the Yankees have made winning in October look impossible and it comes down to the explanation that haunts all losing teams. Champions do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and the Yankees haven’t. Last year, their defense fell apart in the World Series. This year, the Yankees played much better on the field, but Jazz Chisholm’s error Wednesday allowed Toronto to put the Yankees away.
The Yankees’ bullpen was much better than in past postseasons, but where they had five effective relievers, manager Aaron Boone’s faith in a sixth, Luke Weaver, helped cost them two games.
Most specifically, the Yankees’ two best and highest paid pitchers, Max Fried and Carlos Rodon, were both shelled. No team is winning a five-game series when that happens, even if the Yankees came from behind to win after Rodon left his start.
During the season, the Yankees hit .251 as a team, the Jays .265. Their on-base percentages were about the same, .333 for Toronto, .332 for New York. The Yankees walked more, hit far more more home runs, stole far more bases, but struck out nearly 400 more times than Toronto over 162 games. To the eyeball test, the Jays looked like the far more effective hitting team in winning 11 of 17 games head to head.
However, it’s safe to say that if Boone played his contact hitters and sat his all-or-nothing sluggers, as he did against Garrett Crochet in Game 1 of the Boston series, he would have been roundly criticized. The Yankees let Anthony Volpe play all year with a left shoulder injury. He looked better at times in October, but finished with a flurry of strikeouts.
These are all disjointed elements that came together to produce the latest postseason failure. Another tired narrative is ‘George Steinbrenner wouldn’t tolerate this.’ No, he would be angry, and issue a lot of angry statements. But that’s about all he did after coming back from his suspension in 1993. He fired managers at the drop of a game in the 1980s, and, trust me on this, kids, it was a lot worse for the franchise then. What does seem to be missing since George passed in 2010 is the sense of urgency he forced the Yankees to bring to the ballpark every day.
But even there, it’s unfair to say the Yankees “accept” postseason failure. However, it is just a function of baseball in 2025. One of sports’ few true “dynasties,” the Yankees dominated baseball between 1921 and 64, when there were 16 teams, was no draft, no limit to minor league affiliates and no free agency. They signed all the best prospects every year, and held them as long as they wanted, offering large packages whenever there was a single player they coveted. They couldn’t lose.
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The Draft, instituted in 1965, expansion and multiple rounds of playoffs were all innovations to prevent one-franchise domination. The Yankees’ consistency in reaching the playoffs during Brian Cashman’s 27 years as GM is a remarkable achievement in itself, but without suffering the last-place finishes, the Yankees don’t get a sniff of the best prospects during an era when drafting is no longer the inexact science it once was. They were fortunate to find Judge late in a first round, a few others, Ben Rice, Cam Schlittler, in later rounds. They commit more than enough money to sign free agents, but October magic isn’t out there to be purchased.
In the aftermath, there will be the usual call for heads to roll. That is not likely. There will be some changes, but the Yankees are what they are, one of 32 franchises vying for a championship, more successful than most, and all they can do is try to find the right players to fix their flaws, then go try all over again in 2026. No mystique, no magic, no guarantees that come with wearing pinstripes.