In the two weeks since the Yankees were swept by the Rays in the ALDS, Hal Steinbrenner embarked on an all-too-familiar mission: getting to the bottom of why his club ultimately failed in October yet again.

It was not, he concluded, a Brian Cashman problem, nor an Aaron Boone problem, as evidenced by both the GM and manager returning next season. Instead, Steinbrenner turned the spotlight squarely on the players, ratcheted up the heat on the hitters, and largely blamed them for the Yankees going a 17th straight season without a World Series championship.

“I don’t think you can pin the season and the unacceptable end to it on Aaron,” Steinbrenner said on a Zoom call with reporters from Tampa, his first public comments since last November. “I don’t think you can pin it on [Cashman], based on the roster he put together.

“This year, the offensive performance — just Hal’s opinion — really was detrimental to accomplishing numerous things, including the ultimate goal of winning a championship. We’re going to be looking into it.”

Whether that means changes to the coaching staff (including hitting coach James Rowson), the organizational hitting philosophy or the actual players that are in the lineup on a daily basis remains to be seen.

Of course, since their last championship in 2009, the Yankees have cycled through plenty of different players and different coaches. But in 2027, Boone will be back for a 10th season — the same number of seasons Joe Girardi got before he was let go in 2017 — and Cashman will be back for a 30th season (on a new contract that he said Wednesday was agreed to), trying once again to devise the right formula to bring home the franchise’s 28th World Series championship.

“Because I know how talented they are, and I know how intelligent they are,” said Steinbrenner, who indicated that he and his brain trust had a “weeklong conversation” about Boone that ultimately decided he was not part of the problem. “We’re OK with this leadership group. I understand the whole ‘Buck stops here’ thing. I get it. I absolutely understand that. But the reality is, you do have to look and try to figure out every year, including this year, what exactly the problem really was.”

Hal Steinbrenner (l) and Brian Cashman (r) during their Zoom session Wednesday. @TalkinYanks/X

Steinbrenner pointed to extended injury absences for Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, who played a combined 90 games, but even still, he thought the offense should have been better without them. The Yankees, in their third year under Rowson, finished the season eighth in runs per game (4.59), 26th in batting average (.235), 14th in OPS (.720), 24th in on-base percentage (.311), second in home runs (223) and 27th in strikeout percentage (24.7).

All of those numbers took a significant nosedive during the three-plus months that Judge missed with a broken rib (which coincided with Stanton’s five-month absence due to multiple calf strains), while All-Star Ben Rice was the only hitter to not regress this year.

The Yankees mostly survived that stretch (going 45-39) on the strength of their pitching staff, but it ultimately cost them a chance to win the division as the Rays consistently proved they were better on their way to the World Series.

Yankees center fielder Trent Grisham (12) strikes out swinging with a runner on base for the final out of the ninth inning during Game 3 of the ALDS against the Tampa Bay Rays at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. Charles Wenzelberg / New York Post

“In the end, the majority of the responsibility — I’ll say it for the fifth time, in my mind, my opinion — lies with the position players and the inability to score on a consistent basis throughout the course of the entire season, for the most part,” Steinbrenner said. “Not on the shoulders of Aaron Boone does the blame lie.”

In the days and weeks after another superior team beat them in the playoffs, the Yankees took plenty of criticism from not only their enraged fanbase but former players and managers, much of it having to do with a lack of accountability and no longer knowing what the organization’s standard is.

Steinbrenner, Cashman and Boone largely dismissed those concerns, though Cashman said he has spoken with some of those former players to hear them out. Instead, they were left trying to explain why another $300-plus million roster that Steinbrenner thought was “world championship-caliber” did not actually win a world championship.

New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner leaves the MLB owner’s meeting held at MLB offices in New York, Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. Corey Sipkin for NY Post

“As [Cashman] said, winning a championship is very difficult,” Steinbrenner said. “Yes, of course I’m upset sitting here having to answer these questions. And I know how upset our fans are. But believe me, we’re going to be doing everything we can, and if that means making changes in personnel or in players, then we will.”