1. The Aaron Boone Yankees have never won a postseason series against a team that finished higher in the standings than them, so I’m not sure why I thought this series would be different. I guess I thought it would be different because of Cam Schlittler, but the careless defense and disappearing offense in the postseason that have defined the Boone era Yankees were too much for even the best pitcher in the league to overcome.
2. After the Yankees’ “swing at everything” approach against Freddy Peralta led to an eight-pitch first inning (the Yankees’ 1-through-3 hitters swung at seven of the eight pitches) for the Rays’ starter, Schlittler took the mound with the 2024 World Series Game 5 defense behind him. Schlittler got Yandy Diaz to hit a second-pitch routine ground ball to third base and Ryan McMahon — solely in the lineup for his defense — booted it. Jonathan Aranda followed with a ground ball out of the reach of a diving McMahon, and three pitches into the game, the Rays had runners on first and second. Next up was the league leader in grounding into double plays in Junior Caminero. Schlittler got Caminero to hit a ground ball to short, George Lombard Jr. fed Jazz Chisholm for an out and Chisholm turned and wildly threw the ball past first base for an error as Diaz raced home to give the Rays a 1-0 lead.
When asked if Chisholm would do the same thing if given the chance, with an unaccountable textbook answer his manager probably loved, Chisholm said, “Honestly, I’d probably still throw it.”
Ten pitches into the game, the Yankees had committed two errors, allowed an unearned run and trailed.
Schlittler bounced back to strike out Liam Hicks on three pitches, but the third strike was overturned upon a Rays challenge for catcher’s interference, as Austin Wells’ glove was in the way of Hicks’ swing. Hicks was awarded first base on the Yankees’ third error in 13 pitches.
Chandler Simpson then hit a ground ball to Chisholm and Chisholm made another wild throw, this one wide of second, but Lombard Jr. was able to adjust and prevent the ball from ending up in left field. Victor Mesa ended the inning with a ground ball to Chisholm that the second baseman was able to throw accurately to first.
The defensive letdown didn’t end there. After Ben Rice provided the Yankees’ first run of the series in the fourth inning to tie the game at 1, the Yankees’ defense put the game away for the Rays in the fifth inning.
Aranda opened the inning with a line drive to right field. Spencer Jones hesitated and got a late break on it and the ball fell in front of him for a leadoff single. Boone grew angry after the game when asked if Jones should have caught the ball. Both Jones and Statcast say he should have caught it even though the manager felt differently. Caminero followed with a double in the right-center gap and the Rays were set up with runners on second and third and no outs.
Hicks was up next and Boone brought the infield in. Just not the entire infield. He decided to have Chisholm play back off the grass, and guess where Hicks hit the ball: to Chisholm. Because of the positioning, Chisholm was unable to make a play at the plate, as the Rays took a 2-1 lead and Caminero moved over to third. Simpson then put the ball in play as well with a grounder to short that Lombard Jr. tried to rush, and as a result, got no outs. Caminero scored and Simpson reached first. The play was initially ruled an error on Lombard Jr., but later changed to a fielder’s choice. But don’t worry, Lombard Jr. would get an error that would stand in the inning when he threw the ball away with two outs. His two misplays extended the inning, and eventually, the light-hitting Richie Palacios worked an eight-pitch, left-on-left at-bat against Brent Headrick to drive in two runs to put the game out of reach. The Rays were given five outs to work with in the first inning and six outs to work with in the fifth inning. All five of their runs in the game were a product of official errors or defensive miscues.
3. “Some good defenders that didn’t make a couple plays,” Boone said after the game.
Oh, that’s all? Just a couple plays. I thought a “couple” was two.
Boone gave the same kind of postgame answers he has given in seven of his eight previous seasons as Yankees manager with his team facing elimination.
“You’ve got to find out what you’re made of,” Boone said.
I think we know what they’re made of.
“It’s gut-check time,” Boone said.
Every time in the past eight seasons the Yankees had to check their gut under Boone, their season ended. Yeah, maybe a few times they prevented elimination for a game, but they were always eliminated.
4. The Yankees are now 9-24 in the postseason during the Boone era when facing a team that finished higher than them in the standings. They have never won a best-of-5 or best-of-7 series after losing the first game. And unless they win their next three games, that sad fact will still be true.
The Yankees have got one-hit in Game 1 and that one hit was erased by a disastrous baserunning decision. They had as many hits (four) as errors in Game 2. They have scored two runs in 18 innings in the series: both Ben Rice solo home runs. Rice and Wells are a combined 4-for-12 in the two games and the rest of the lineup is 1-for-46. The team as a whole has a .086/.145/.224 slash line.
It took Drew Rasmussen and Bryan Baker one-hitting the Yankees in Game 1 for the Rays to make their one run hold up. It took the Yankees committing three errors in an inning, four errors in a game and a few other miscues and misreads for the Rays to score any of their runs and win Game 2. But that’s the Rays’ brand of baseball. That’s who they are. They rely on playing clean baseball themselves and capitalizing when their opponent doesn’t. They don’t sit around and wait for home runs to save their offense. They put the ball in play, take the extra base when it’s given to them and they give away nothing. The Yankees wait around for the home run to save them, struggle to make contact and give away everything. It’s not just the 2026 Yankees. It’s the Yankees every season.
5. My kids have watched The Sandlot countless times, and therefore, so have I. At the end of the movie, grown-up Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez steals home as a Dodger and grown-up broadcaster Smalls goes wild on the call. Every time The Sandlot ends, “The Jet” is safe and Smalls goes wild. I don’t watch wondering if “The Jet” is going to be safe at home. The ending is always the same because it’s the same story with the same characters.
Like a movie, each season, the Yankees feature the same story and same cast: same general manager, same manager, same core players, same fundamental issues. Unlike a movie, every Yankees fan fails to accept that the ending will be the same.
Each season, the Yankees get off to a fast start and build up a division lead. Then summer hits, they play at the same level as the worst teams in baseball for a couple of months, while their oft-injured players get injured. They try to build a contending team on the fly at the deadline and patch up the roster deficiencies they ignored during the offseason, and then they spend the final weeks of the season trying to undo everything they undid during the summer. They end up in the postseason, and if they play an AL Central team, they advance, and if they play a non-AL Central team or a team that finished higher in the standings, they’re eliminated. Then they hold an end-of-the-season press conference to announce the return of the general manager and manager, and throughout the winter make it known they are bringing back the same roster (or close to it) from the previous season. Then they show up to spring training as if the previous year didn’t happen and act as if the upcoming season will end differently just because the winter separated the end of one season from the start of the next season. “The Jet” is never out at home and the Yankees never win the World Series.
6. Watching these Yankees every season is insane. It’s the definition of insanity. It’s what Brian Cashman said right before he traded Sonny Gray after the 2018 season: “I don’t feel like we can go through the same exercise and expect different results.” And yet, the Yankees continue to go through the same exercise every season during this era. Same manager, same type of players, and sure enough, same season-ending result. The Yankees believe next year luck will be on their side in the postseason and they will finally overcome the odds of the crapshoot they have considered the postseason to be ever since they stopped winning it. When the Yankees were the Yankees, the organization didn’t talk about the postseason as if it were a game of chance. It wasn’t until they stopped being the Yankees that the postseason became a tournament whose winner was lucky and nothing else.
7. If you’re using Tuesday to cite the 2001 Yankees or 2017 Yankees as to why the 2026 Yankees can reach the ALCS, don’t. Please. You’ve spent 166 games trying to talk yourself into why this time will be different, and it isn’t. It just isn’t. The 2001 team was coming off four championships in five seasons, and the 2017 team was led by a manager who was part of those championships. The 2026 team is led by someone who had six right-handed bats on his bench on Monday and only deployed one despite the Rays using left-handed relievers for 3 1/3 innings. (Not one reporter asked Boone about this either.) It’s led by someone who probably called his wife from the tarmac on Monday and asked her if she could check his office for his 2004 ALCS video because he needs it to motivate the team on Wednesday, like he unsuccessfully did in 2022. It’s led by someone who has never won anything as a player or manager. Someone who doesn’t know how to win in October, but talks and acts like he does.
8. “Winning the World Series is hard,” Boone said after last season. “Been chasing it my whole life.”
Boone wouldn’t know how hard it is to win the World Series because he has never won it. He never won as a player and has never won as a manager. All he has are two American League pennants. One came from his home run, which changed the course of history for the worst for the Yankees considering what the Red Sox have accomplished since Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS and because it led to Boone getting the job he still has. The other came against the easiest postseason field imaginable and was followed by a humiliating defeat in the World Series.
It’s unlikely Boone will ever stop chasing a championship. I can’t fathom a scenario where the Yankees win with him at the helm and no other self-respecting owner or general manager in the league with a ready-to-win roster would be foolish enough to hand the keys over to someone who has overseen such miserable disappointment. The idea that Boone is good at his job because of his regular-season winning percentage at a time when the majority of the league is tanking and pocketing profits or because he has made the postseason in seven of eight years at a time when 81-win teams are getting into the expanded format is comical.
9. Boone’s players believe they can do no wrong performance-wise because they constantly hear their manager and the rest of the organization talk about how great they are. It’s why Wells tried for third in Game 1 and why Chisholm would “do it again” when asked about his first-inning throw in Game 2. Cashman called the Yankees “pretty fucking good” after the team went 82-80 two years ago, so you can only imagine how he feels about the team with the highest payroll in the American League that couldn’t beat out the team with the third-lowest payroll in the majors for the division, but won 93 games.
Boone has created and fostered a culture comfortable with losing. His players recite the same tired lines they hear their manager use following losses. Everyone in the Yankees’ clubhouse talks about “tomorrow” like they’re auditioning for a part in Annie until there are no tomorrows. And now one loss away from their season ending early again, they are down to their last tomorrow.
10. Two days after the Yankees were eliminated by the Blue Jays in the ALDS last season, I wrote:
I fully expect the Yankees to “run it back” (as Aaron Judge mentioned he would like to do after Game 4) in 2026 with close to the same roster, the same failed organizational philosophies and certainly the same manager. And I fully expect another early postseason exit a year from now.
And here we are. The 2025 ALDS roster of position players was the same set of names as the 2026 Opening Day roster, just like The Captain ordered. Same roster, same failed organizational philosophies, and of course, the same manager. And now the same result: unable to beat a team they couldn’t beat for the division in the regular season and going home on the brink of elimination for Game 3. As expected, another early postseason exit a year later is right in front of them and only three straight wins will prevent it.
Last modified: Oct 6, 2026
