The Yankees need to make some changes, but Cashman and Boone shouldn’t be among them

NEW YORK — The crazy part is, there is no obvious finger to point, no one to truly blame. Oh, some New York Yankees fans will want manager Aaron Boone gone. Others will wish the same fate on general manager Brian Cashman. But neither is the reason the Yankees lost the Division Series to the Toronto Blue Jays, three games to one.

In some ways, both Boone and Cashman draw high marks for 2025. Boone rallied his club from an 18-29 stretch at midseason to a 34-14 finish and triumph over the Boston Red Sox in the wild-card series. Cashman made a mostly successful pivot from Juan Soto last offseason and aggressively fortified the club at the trade deadline, albeit with mixed results.

Still, it’s another lost year for the Yankees, at least by the way they define success with their championship-or-bust approach. They’ve now gone 16 seasons since their last World Series title, all under Cashman, who has been GM since 1998. They’ve gone eight without one under Boone, and their only Series appearance during his tenure came last season.

Joe Torre won four World Series with the Yankees, and kept his job for 10 years. Joe Girardi won one Series, and also kept his job for 10. Boone’s expiration date, then, might be 2027, assuming a lockout doesn’t wreck that season. Cashman has guided the Yankees to 27 straight winning campaigns and four titles. But at some point, his time will come as well.

Just not yet.

The Yankees finished with the same 94 wins as the Blue Jays during the regular season and defeated an admittedly inferior Red Sox club in the opening round. But in the best-of-five Division Series, the Jays were simply the better team.

The problem for the Yankees, as I wrote earlier this week, is that perennial MVP candidate Aaron Judge will be 34 next April, and the team might already have wasted his best years.

Judge finished the postseason 13-for-26 with a ridiculous .500/.581/.692 slash line. His dramatic three-run, game-tying homer in Game 3 was a signature October moment. And for all that, the Yankees did not even reach the American League Championship Series.

The postseason can be cruel that way, particularly for a team needing to win four series, which was the Yankees’ fate after they lost a tiebreaker to the Jays for the AL East title and, ultimately, home-field advantage in the DS. But Boone thought this was the best roster of his tenure, and his team didn’t get as far as it did in 2019, 2022 and ‘24.

We can nitpick aspects of the Yankees’ play against Toronto. The occasional defensive lapses. The disappointing starts from Max Fried and Carlos Rodón. The hold-your-breath bullpen. The underperforming offense that included a 2-for-17 performance by leadoff man Trent Grisham and 14 strikeouts by shortstop Anthony Volpe in his last 19 at-bats, dating to the final game of the wild-card series.

Boone, though, was on the right track when he said the Blue Jays “took it to us this series.” The Yankees didn’t embarrass themselves the way they did in losing last year’s World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers. But they were outscored by the Jays, 34-19, including 5-2 in the clincher — trounced even though the Jays threw a bullpen game Wednesday night, and played after Sept. 6 without one of their top hitters, shortstop Bo Bichette, who is out with a left knee sprain.

Of course, injuries are part of the Yankees’ story, too — and not a small part, considering they lost their ace, Gerrit Cole, and a solid mid-rotation type, Clarke Schmidt, to Tommy John surgeries. All teams, though, deal with extended absences of key players. The Yankees, operating with the game’s third-highest payroll, warrant no pity.

Besides, as they look to next season, their rotation might be a strength. Fried, Rodón, Cam Schlittler, Luis Gil and Will Warren give the Yankees a strong foundation. Cole could return in the second half, while Schmidt, who underwent his second TJ, is more likely for 2027.

The rest of the club, meanwhile, needs work.

The task for Cashman will not be as challenging as it was post-Soto, and the GM wound up putting together a team that outperformed the one that signed Soto, the New York Mets. But Grisham, outfielder Cody Bellinger and first baseman Paul Goldschmidt are potential free agents, as are relievers Devin Williams and Luke Weaver. Other decisions also await.

Cody Bellinger will be one of a handful of potential Yankee free agents this offseason. (Kent J. Edwards/Getty Images)

Second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. is entering his walk year. Will the Yankees break their usual pattern and award their 30-30 man an extension? Maybe not, given Chisholm’s occasional lapses, making a trade at least within the range of possibility.

Another question: Will the Yankees stick with Volpe, who had a shoulder injury that may have hampered his play? Volpe was unsure Wednesday night whether he would require surgery. Either way, shortstops are not exactly in abundant supply.

Keeping Bellinger would appear to be a priority; most of the other pieces are replaceable. In his postmortem Wednesday night, Boone raved not only about the quality of his roster but also “a group of guys that really came together so well at the right time.” He seemed sincere, but the Yankees can’t run it back after such a disappointing finish. They probably should try to be more like the Blue Jays, more contact-oriented, better defensively. Boone believes the Yankees evolved into a good defensive club, but that point is debatable.

A certain percentage of Yankees fans will continue to be frustrated with Cashman and Boone, not wanting to hear about the difficulty of winning the World Series and how every season 29 of 30 teams end up disappointed. Earlier this season, when the Yankees were stumbling, it certainly was fair to question whether Boone was holding his players accountable enough, and whether owner Hal Steinbrenner was holding Cashman accountable enough. But the way the Yankees rallied in the final weeks and fought to the end in the DS almost certainly will discourage Steinbrenner from disrupting the status quo, which he never seems interested in doing, anyway.

Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ principal owner since Nov. 2008, has never had a GM other than Cashman, and might fear the unknown. Cashman views Boone as a trusted partner, and Boone’s connection with players is undeniable. As The Athletic’s Chris Kirschner wrote, “Managing egos is one of the main job requirements for a modern-day manager. Few are better at it than Boone.”

No roster, manager or GM is perfect. One problem with moving on from Cashman and/or Boone is that it would be not so easy to replace them with people who are better. The industry is not exactly teeming with quality executives and quality managers. What the Yankees get might not be better than what they have.

At some point, that argument loses steam. An organization gets stale, and requires change. The anti-Cashman, anti-Boone crowd surely believes such an upheaval should already have taken place. But the only voice that matters is Steinbrenner’s.

For the Yankees, getting eliminated by the Blue Jays was dispiriting, but not a disgrace. While any management team should get only so many chances, an overreaction in this case would make little sense.

Sometimes, you just lose.