You want to believe this is all because Aaron Judge being injured, go right ahead. But the fact of things, which means the fact of who the Yankees have been for a long time now, is that they are the same team in October without him as they are with him. The Yankees win a lot of games during the regular season and then at this time of year they finally go down and stay down. But still selling championship or bust every year, until the only thing they get right is the bust part.
They have now gone 17 seasons without winning the World Series, once the coin of the realm on 161st St. but now a thing of the past the way Yankee October glory is. So they’ve done that under Hal Steinbrenner same as they once did under his father between 1979 and 1995.
It’s why who they just were against the Rays is who the Cashman/Boone Yankees always are in the end. You don’t think so? Starting in October of 2021, here is what they have done in the final round of their postseason:
Lose wild card game to Red Sox in ’21.
Get swept by Astros in ALCS of ’22.
Lose World Series in five to the Dodgers in ’24 after falling behind 3-0.
Lose division series to Blue Jays in four games in ’25 after getting rolled in the first two in Toronto.
Get swept by Rays just now.
The won-loss record in those series is 2-15.
Now you’re going to hear, louder than ever, that the solution is to fire the manager. And you’re going to hear once again about how much Hal Steinbrenner wants to win, look at how much money he spends. But if Hal is going to convince himself — or be convinced — that changing managers is the only way to change the course of Yankee history, then Steinbrenner the Son is watching the wrong movie. I’m not calling for him to fire anybody. Not my circus, and all that. But if he finally decides that change is called for, then what is called for here is regime change.
Unless, of course, Hal Steinbrenner is happy with things the way they are, with a full ballpark and YES money rolling in; with another team of aggregators during the regular season and investors begging to be part of the Yankee brand. But if you’ve watched this season, watched all the seasons under Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone, you know what the Yankee brand is:
It’s this. It’s being not good enough in the end, with or without No. 99 swinging away. And by the way? Neither Hal Steinbrenner nor Cashman can be shocked that they had to play the biggest games of their season without Judge, another year of his prime flushed now. Judge has now played 10 full seasons in the big leagues, some of them magnificently. But here is what he’s done in half of those seasons:
Played 112 out of 162 in 2018.
Played 102 out of 162 in ’19.
Played 28 of 60 in the COVID season of 2020 and 106 out of 162 in 2023 and 66 out of 161 in the season that ended on Wednesday night with Rays doing to them what somebody always does eventually. In those seasons, Judge has missed 293 out of 707 games. No one can be shocked that Judge was hurt again.
Now he watches his team get outplayed and outpitched and outhit by a team whose payroll is one-third as large as theirs is. And for the fifth time in eight postseasons, watches a visiting team celebrates on the field at Yankee Stadium.
“I hate watching that,” Judge said afterward.
Imagine how his fans feel, the ones who are told, year after year, how blessed they should feel to have all these winning regular seasons, and that they’re entitled ingrates if they don’t.
The Yankees never had a single lead against the Rays. In last year’s ALDS against the Blue Jays, they didn’t hold the lead in any of the three games they lost. Since Derek Jeter, the last of the Core Four, left in 2014 the Yankees have won the AL East exactly three times. But, hey, they sure are a freight train from hell on weak-hitting Red Sox teams in the wild card round now, in this era where you want to call them the Wizards of the Wild Card. Soon you’ll be hearing that Ben Rice and Cam Schlittler and George Lombard Jr. and Spencer Jones are part of a new core.
Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner (AP Photo/Adam Hunger)
The only time they’ve taken out a higher seed under the current regime when in the COVID year, when they defeated Cleveland on a neutral field. Cleveland from the AL Central. When they did make their one World Series since ’09, they only had to beat two AL Central teams — Royals, Guardians — to get there.
“Just a lot of disappointment,” Max Fried, the losing pitcher in Game 3, said. “It’s not the way we wanted to end, not what we were expecting.”
Fried clearly took it hard. They all did. But seriously? Why would anyone expect anything else from this latest version of the Cashman/Boone Yankees? Seven wild cards since Jeter retired. Since Cashman got rid of Joe Girardi for Boone, the Yankees have never advanced past a division series as a wild card. Since losing the ’03 World Series to the Marlins, another low-payroll team, they have made it to the Series twice. The Red Sox, as bad as they’ve looked in the last two Octobers, have won four World Series in that time. The Giants have won three.
Now they go bust again, scoring five runs in three games. It’s why Yankee fans don’t want Hal to tell them how much he wants to win. They want him to show them. Who’s Hal running back next season, if there even is one?