1. I’m still not over what happened in Games 1 and 5 of the World Series, and I don’t think I will ever be. The Yankees could have had a 3-2 series lead going back to Los Angeles for Game 6. At worst, they should have been down 3-2 going back to Los Angeles for Game 6 with a chance to do to the Dodgers what was done to them 20 years ago in the ALCS.

A lot has come out over the last nearly two weeks from the Dodgers’ side suggesting they may have completed the collapse given their fatigued pitching staff and the momentum the Yankees would have boarded their cross-country flight with. At the same time, a lot has come out over the last nearly two weeks from the Dodgers’ side suggesting they knew exactly how to beat the Yankees and avoid every losing to them: play hard and execute fundamentally. Two simple ideas that should be givens for any major-league player and any major-league team, yet two simple concepts that are foreign to the Yankees.

2. The Yankees thought they were talented enough to win on talent alone against a team equally as talented as them. They were sloppy in both the ALDS and ALCS, but their talent won out and they went a combined 7-2 in those two series because of the great disparity in talent. As soon as they faced an opponent of equal or better talent than them in every fact of the game, they were exposed as the fundamental disaster that they were for most of the 2024 season.

3. “We had a struggle with our baserunnning this year. We were a bad defensive team, without a doubt, at times this year,” Brian Cashman said last week. “But we also, when you add it all together, we were a really good baseball team that earned the right to win the American League and get all the way to the World Series.”

That quote from Cashman is everything that is wrong with these Yankees. While admitting the team’s glaring weaknesses, he turns around and tells you how good the 2024 team was. A team that needed an AL Central-only path to reach their first World Series in 15 years and then got the shit beat out of them once they got there. A year ago, Cashman was unhinged in telling the media the 2023 Yankees “were pretty fucking good” despite going 82-80 and missing the playoffs. So why wouldn’t he think a team that got their ass kicked in the World Series isn’t “really good.”

With those words, Cashman confirmed my suspicion that the Yankees’ front office was overjoyed with simply reaching the World Series and getting that weight off their shoulders. Everyone associated with the Yankees was just happy to be there. Everyone except Juan Soto, who was the last Yankee sitting in the dugout staring out at the field watching the Dodgers celebrate, while his teammates had already retreated to the clubhouse to listen to their manager tell them how proud he was of them losing the World Series.

4. The moment the Yankees clinched the ALDS over the Royals, Aaron Boone was officially coming back, and I believe even if the Yankees had lost their first-round series to the Royals, he would have been back. The man was brought back after 2023 when the team posted the franchise’s worst record in more than 30 years. Did you really think ownership and the front office was going to decline his option for 2025 after the team reached the World Series, especially since reaching the World Series was clearly the equivalent to winning the World Series for ownership and the front office.

On the same day Cashman told you how good the 2024 Yankees were, he also said, “I’m a big Aaron Boone fan. I think he’s a great manager and we’ve been luck to have him.” A few days later the Yankees announced Boone would be back. The pennant guaranteed Boone would have his option exercised, and exercised it was.

5. “The manager’s job is so impossible,” Cashman said last week. “It’s a very hard job to do. It gets harder in the postseason, because ultimately whatever you do either works or doesn’t.”

Poor, Boone. What a hard job he has. There were tens of thousands of people on social media in real time saying Luke Weaver should pitch the 10th inning of Game 1 of the World Series after going five up, five down on 19 pitches the previous inning and after having not pitched in six days. The same amount of people in real time questioned why Tommy Kahnle got the eighth inning in Game 5 if Boone was willing to go to Weaver in that inning anyway. I thought an impossible, hard job was being a brain surgeon. I don’t think the same tens of thousands of armchair major-league managers who know more than the actual major-league manager of their team could in real time make more sensible decisions than someone about to remove a brain tumor. Now that I know how hard and impossible Boone’s job of putting his players in the best possible position to succeed is I think I will cut back on my criticism of him.

6. “Aaron is a steadying presence in our clubhouse and possesses a profound ability to connect with and foster relationships with his players,” Cashman said after exercising the option.

Do you know why the Yankees love Boone and love “playing for him?” Because there is no accountability. Who doesn’t love a boss who doesn’t care about performance, production or results? Boone is the boss everyone in every job in every industry dreams of.

Boone doesn’t hold his players accountable because he isn’t held accountable by Cashman, who isn’t held accountable by Hal Steinbrenner, who doesn’t hold anyone accountable because the Yankees aren’t something he purchased because he achieved extraordinary wealth after a lifetime of hard work and smart business decisions.

After 2023, Steinbrenner said the season was “unacceptable” and then didn’t fire a single employee. Cashman has blown through more than $3 billion of payroll over the last 15 years while producing one embarrassing World Series appearance. Boone has a litany of performance-related excuses for his players after every single game and those players spend all season talking about tomorrow until there are no more tomorrows and then they talk about next year. Boone mentioned already looking forward to next year in his statement after being retained.

6. “I think he’s a really, really good manager,” Cashman said. “I think we’re lucky to have him.”

If I had a dollar for every sarcastic congratulatory text I received from friends who are fans of rival teams when Boone’s 2025 option was exercised, I could buy the Yankees from the Steinbrenners and re-sign Soto myself. That’s the first indication you know you aren’t “lucky” to have the manager you have of your favorite team: when everyone who isn’t a fan of your team is happy he’s still the manager.

7. All of those same friends have also chimed in to let me know Soto would be signing with their team, whether it’s the Dodgers, Mets or Phillies. They all think the best hitter in the world will be wearing their team’s uniform in 2025. There’s nothing for me to say to rebut them since I think they are right. When I watched Soto sitting in his pinstripes in the dugout looking at out the Dodgers, I think that was the last time I will see him wearing a Yankees uniform.

Since the moment the Yankees traded for Soto I have repeatedly written how I will walk away from the Yankees and baseball if he is not a Yankee for 2025 and beyond, and I’m holding to that. If Soto isn’t a Yankee for 2025 and beyond, I won’t be around to watch. I will learn an instrument or a new language or do whatever people who don’t watch baseball daily from late-March through October do. If the team that makes more than any other team can’t sign the player who is expected to make more money than any other player, then what’s the point?

We know what the Yankees are without Soto. They are the 2023 Yankees. An 82-80, postseason-less team. Without Soto, the Yankees are nothing. The guy just hit .327/.469/1.102 in the playoffs with more walks (14) than strikeouts (9). Nine strikeouts in 14 games against the game’s best pitchers. Aaron Judge had that many strikeouts by Game 2 of the ALDS.

8. Watching Soto this season has been like sitting in first class on an international flight with a cabin, personal bathroom and all-you-can-eat-and-drink options. I don’t want to go back to sitting in the last row of economy in a middle seat next to the bathroom. That’s where Yankees fans were while being forced to watch Jake Bauers, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Billy McKinney, Willie Calhoun, Aaron Hicks, Franchy Cordero and Greg Allen as outfielders in 2023 before the trade for Soto. I’m not going back to that.

If Soto leaves, so will I. It was a good three-decade-plus run as a Yankees fan. But I’m not about to sit around and listen to Steinbrenner and Cashman tell us how they made a competitive offer as Soto holds a press conference at some other stadium in some other city. I’m not going to sit around and watch Gleyber Torres, Alex Verdugo and Clay Holmes be re-signed and settle for a wrong-side-of-30 Pete Alonso. Because that’s what’s going to happen if Soto isn’t re-signed. The money allocated for him is going to have to be spent somewhere.

9. The Yankees just proved they’re not good enough to win a championship with the roster they had, including Soto. They aren’t re-signing Soto away from winning it all. They are Soto and more away from doing so. And with Boone coming back, they are Soto and a lot more away from negating the detrimental impact Boone has on winning.

10. There’s an expectation Soto will sign during the Winter Meetings a month from now. I don’t know if it will happen that early, but I hope it does. I just want it over with. I want to know if he’s going to be a Yankee for the rest of his career or if I just freed up three-plus hours a night from late March through October every year for the rest of my life. I want to know if I need to worry about what other pieces they are going to sign or trade for to end their championship drought or if I need to choose between Spanish or Italian and the guitar or drums.

1. The Yankees spent a little more than seven months showing who they truly were and everyone brushed it aside. It didn’t matter that they went 44-46 from June 15 on. It didn’t matter that they lucked into the easiest path to a pennant any team has ever had. They were in the World Series and everyone seemed to be so overjoyed by that fact they assumed the Yankees could hide their flaws over a seven-game series against the best team in baseball.

These flaws were on display against the Royals in the ALDS and the Guardians in the ALCS, but the talent disparity and lack of offense was too much for either of those two teams make the Yankees pay. Then came the Dodgers.

Stacked with three consecutive MVP bats at the top of their lineup, a true cleanup hitter, lineup balance and the deepest 5 through 9 in the majors, the Yankees would need to play a way they hadn’t with any consistency from Opening Day through the ALCS: flawlessly. They didn’t, and they lost the World Series in five games.

“They were the better team in this series,” Aaron Boone said.

They weren’t the better team in this series, they were the better team all season. They have been the better team for the last decade. The Dodgers have reached the postseason every year since 2013. They have reached the World Series four times in the last eight years, have won it twice and now have a full-season title to replace their shortened-season one.

2. The Dodgers lost Clayton Kershaw, Tyler Glasnow and Dustin May to season-ending injuries. They lost their replacements to season-ending injuries. They lost their replacements’ replacements to season-ending injuries. They had every reason to accept this wasn’t their year, but they never did. They never made excuses and they never blamed an endless list of injuries to their pitching staff when they easily could have. Can you imagine the amount of excuses the Yankees would have conjured up if they had the same injury fate as the Dodgers? The Yankees weren’t missing a single everyday position player or rotation member or bullpen arm in the World Series (unless you count Jonathan Loaisiga who last pitched on April 3) and they still couldn’t win.

3. The Yankees played all of the hits in the World Series: sloppy defense, bad fundamentals, awful baserunning, illogical managing, questionable lineups and poor situational hitting. To the Yankees’ credit, they showed up for the World Series the same team they were in the 171 games prior to the series. They never changed their identity. They conducted the worst defensive inning in World Series history and watched their season end with who else other than Alex Verdugo striking out. How can you not be romantic about baseball?

4. Gerrit Cole had a no-hitter going and a 5-0 lead to work with when the fifth inning of Game 5 began. The Yankees hadn’t blown a five-run lead all season, had their ace on the mound and were 15 outs from becoming the first team in World Series history to force a Game 6 after being down 3-0. They were about to shift all of the pressure in the series to the Dodgers by sending the series back to Los Angeles after staving off elimination for two straight nights. Instead, an unbelievable collapse erased their lead, and eventually ended their season.

“I think falling short in the World Series will stick with me until I die, probably,” Aaron Judge said.

I know why Judge took his eye off the line drive as it approached his glove to check on the runner at first. He thought Kike Hernandez was dumb enough to get caught on the bases trying to advance on an out because the Yankees assume players on other teams are as dumb and as poorly coached and have as low of Baseball IQs as they do.

I know why Anthony Volpe didn’t make a better throw to third to cut down the lead runner. Because Volpe tends to botch big plays in big moments. Who could forget the late-inning error in Arizona back in April or the one in Baltimore in the final game before the All-Star break. Sure, it was a somewhat unusual play with the shortstop throwing to third to cut down the lead runner, and it was a play Jazz Chisholm had maybe experienced two times since becoming a third baseman three months ago. But when you trade for a shortstop turned center fielder and have him play third base for the first time in his life things like that can happen. Only the Yankees would make their right fielder an everyday center fielder. Only the Yankees would play someone at first base in the postseason that has never played first base. Only the Yankees would call up their top prospect who’s not a left fielder and play him in left field and when he’s not perfect playing that position then not play him at all in the playoffs.

I know why Anthony Rizzo didn’t charge the ground ball hit at him and then take it himself to the bag to end the inning. Because he did it all season. I wrote about that same exact play countless times this year where Rizzo favored flipping the ball to the pitcher covering rather than taking it himself and each time it ended poorly. Cole shouldn’t have assumed anything and should have raced to the bag even if Mookie Betts was going to beat him.

5. “I think from a PFP standpoint we’re pretty good,” Boone said on a night when a Pitcher’s Fielding Practice play cost them the season. 

That quote is why the Yankees do the things they do. It’s why they run the bases “like they’re drunk” as John Sterling analogized this postseason. There’s no accountability. Cole failed in an unimaginable way to conduct an easy cover of first and Boone had the balls to say his team “is pretty good” at such plays. The night before in Game 4, Boone called Volpe a “great baserunner” after he only advanced to third from second on a double, which came before he later tried to stretch a single into a double and was only safe because his head dislodged the ball on his slide. It’s quotes like that which make Verdugo jogging to first base all season OK and why Gleyber Torres pimps fly balls that don’t go over the wall. It’s why Rizzo felt it was acceptable for him to stop running from first to second earlier in the series.

There isn’t a single Yankee that would have run as hard to first like Betts did when Cole failed to cover. There isn’t a Yankee that would have run to third as hard as Hernandez did to cause a bad throw by Volpe. There isn’t a Dodger that would have let the cutoff throw evade them like Torres did in Game 1. The Yankees played the World Series as if they were going to win simply because they reached the World Series. The Dodgers played like a team that knows what it takes to win because they have actually won before.

The talent gap between the Yankees and Dodgers isn’t much if there’s any at all. But the Yankees don’t have enough talent to win on talent alone. They don’t do any of the little things right. They drop balls and boot grounders. They don’t cover bases and don’t catch cutoff throws. In Game 5, they dropped a line drive, threw away a grounder, failed to cover first on a ground ball, picked up a catcher’s interference and even had three disengagements leading to a balk. That would be a bad week in the regular season. The Yankees did all of that between the fifth and ninth innings of a World Series elimination game. After losing Game 1 of the World Series when they had an 89 precent win probability, they one-upped themselves by blowing a 96 percent win probability in Game 5.

“We didn’t take care of the ball enough,” Boone said stating the obvious.

6. The praise for Cole’s performance is a little over the top. Boone called him “awesome” and everywhere you look he’s getting celebrated like he’s Madison Bumgarner. Did he pitch well? Yes. Was he part of the meltdown? Yes. He didn’t cover first on the potential inning-ending play. He was also the one who put a 1-2 fastball in the same spot to Freddie Freeman that Nestor Cortes did in Game 1 to plate two runs, and it was Cole who let Teoscar Hernandez tattoo a hanging slider in a 1-2 count to tie the game. Cole pitched well and was able to give the Yankees two more innings after the fifth-inning mess, but let’s not act like he was a hero. There were no heroes wearing pinstripes in Game 5. Not on the field playing, and certainly not in the dugout managing.

7. “I haven’t had that feeling of celebrating and going home,” Boone said. “I’m 51. I’ve poured my life into that. When you get that close it’s heartbreaking.”

It’s hard to envision the Yankees ever winning under Boone. We just saw what he was capable of in the biggest games he has ever managed and it was a shitshow centered around not knowing how to properly utilize his best bullpen asset in Luke Weaver.

In Game 1, Boone didn’t go back to Weaver for the 10th inning with a one-run lead despite Weaver having gone five up and five down on 19 pitches and having not pitched in six days. The next day Boone said it was a move he would have liked to do differently. In Game 3, he let the Dodgers see Weaver in a game the Yankees trailed by four runs in the ninth. Then Boone saved his best act of the season for last in deciding he would use Weaver for two innings in the game, but not before he tried to steal an innings worth of outs from Tommy Kahnle. If Boone was willing to get six outs from Weaver, why didn’t he start the eighth inning when the Yankees held a one-run lead. By the time he was allowed to remove Kahnle, the changeup-only righty had loaded the base with not outs.

8. “I let my team down,” Kahnle said.

Yes, you did, Tommy. Kahnle didn’t throw a fastball in the World Series. He threw only changeups in every appearance and when you only throw changeups, they are no longer changeups since they don’t “change up” from anything. And when you can’t throw one for a strike and the opposition stops chasing them outside of the zone, you get the type of inning Kahnle provided in Game 5: three batters faced and none retired.

9. “The ending is cruel,” Boone said.

He should know. Seven years as manager and none have ended happily. Boone has overseen a postseason-less season, a wild-card game loss, two ALDS losses, two ALCS losses and now a World Series loss. The only type of loss he has yet to manage is the three-season-old, best-of-3 wild-card series. Maybe he will gift Yankees fans that type of loss in 2025 to complete the list.

I don’t think the season was over for even 15 seconds before Andy Martino put out a sourced report Boone will be back for 2025. No shit, Andy. The guy was given a new contract after the 2021 season when the team was the odds-on favorite to win the World Series and instead finished third in their division and fifth in the AL. He was retained after last season when the team missed the postseason entirely and posted the franchise’s worst record in three decades. Getting to the World Series is like winning the World Series for ownership and the front office. Not even a week ago Brian Cashman once again brought up how he still believes the Yankees were the AL champions in 2017 even though they didn’t win the ALCS.

10. The Dodgers used their bullpen in the postseason like no team ever had before and it was clear in the final innings of Game 5 when they were willing to possibly let Blake Treinen destroy his elbow and rotator cuff that they were running out of options for the series. I have no idea how the Dodgers planned to piece together 27 outs in Game 6 and again if the series got to Game 7. The Yankees would have had momentum, no pressure and an immense advantage pitching-wise if the series went back to Los Angeles. They would have had a real chance of pulling off the historic 3-0 comeback. But the series isn’t going back to Los Angeles. The series is over and the season is over because the Yankees couldn’t hold a five-run lead in the fifth inning.

1. When I left Yankee Stadium on Monday after Game 3, I had come to terms with the Yankees’ season ending in a World Series loss to the Dodgers. The realization began when Freddie Freeman hit the two-run home run in the first inning and continued with the Yankees’ offense being retired with ease inning after inning. I woke up on Tuesday accepting of the fact that my wife and her family would be holding a Dodgers’ championship at the expense of the Yankees over me for all of time.

2. I decided to watch Game 4 from home instead of at the Stadium. If the Yankees’ season were to end on on Tuesday, at least I could turn off the TV and walk to bed to begin the five-month layoff until the next meaningful baseball game. If they were to win, great, I would get to watch at least one more game of Juan Soto as a Yankee on Wednesday.

3. They did win. And while the final score makes it look like a lopsided rout, it really wasn’t.

“It was a good ballgame,” Dave Roberts said, “until it wasn’t.”

The Yankees trailed early, made an egregious baserunning error, and then finally got the big hit they have been waiting for all series from the player who made the egregious baserunning error. That player was Anthony Volpe and the big hit was his third-inning grand slam to give the Yankees their first lead since the 10th inning of Game 1.

“I think I pretty much blacked out,” Volpe said, “as soon as I saw it go over the fence.”

4. Volpe’s blunder on the bases on Austin Wells’ double off the right-center wall was ridiculous. It’s no less ridiculous because he hit a grand slam the following inning, it just made the pain and the potential disaster of it in an elimination game go away. Later in the game, Volpe again made a baserunning mistake when he went for two and was initially thrown out by Teoscar Hernandez at second base before his head dislodged the ball on his slide. This from a player Boone called “a really good baserunner” during his in-game interview immediately after Volpe’s mistake on Wells’ double.

The Golden Boy had himself a night and it ended with David Ortiz taking a picture of Volpe and Derek Jeter together on the field after Volpe did a postgame interview with those two and Alex Rodriguez. Three men who were all part of the only 3-0 comeback in baseball history.

“We’ve been through so much the whole year,” Volpe said. “We’re not going to go down easy at all.”

5. Aaron Judge reached base three times (hit by pitch, walk and single) and drove in his first run of the series. Gleyber Torres homered and had three RBIs, Wells had a pair of extra-base hits (double and home run), Soto doubled and even Alex Verdugo had two RBIs. Every Yankee except for Anthony Rizzo reached base.

“We just wanted to go 1-0 today and win today,” Volpe said, “and see where it took us.”

6. The 11-run outburst was enjoyable as it was the Yankees’ first laugher in the postseason. Prior to Game 4, their first 12 postseason games this October were all decided by three or fewer runs. After scoring seven runs in the first three games and 28 innings of the World Series they scored five runs in the eighth inning alone. I don’t expect a similar outburst in Game 5, but the Yankees don’t need an outburst like that to win.

7. In the past, when the Yankees were on the verge of being swept in four, like they were in the 2012 ALCS or 2022 ALCS, they just rolled over and went to the offseason, so I expected a similar ending in this series, especially after the Freeman home run in the first inning. I didn’t expect a win and because I had accepted the season was essentially over, Game 4 presented an odd feeling: I was relaxed watching it. I wasn’t upset when Freeman hit another first-inning home run. I wasn’t angry when Volpe ran the bases like “he was drunk” which is how John Sterling has described the Yankees’ baserunning. I didn’t get overly excited when Volpe hit his slam or when the offense put up a 5-spot in the eighth. I wasn’t worried when the Dodgers turned a three-run deficit into a one-run deficit in the middle innings. I didn’t celebrate when they closed out the win.

That will change on Wednesday in Game 5. Now that they showed some life and some fight and some offense, it’s hard to not look at the Gerrit Cole-Jack Flaherty matchup in Game 5 and feel like this series should get to a Game 6.

8. In order to get to a Game 6 on Friday at Dodger Stadium, Cole needs to be an ace in Game 5 at Yankee Stadium. I don’t trust Cole to go out and shut down the Dodgers because I don’t think he’s completely healthy (why else would he be removed after 88 pitches in Game 1?) and because he hasn’t been the type of sure-thing he should be in games like this in his career. But I have no choice. The only way the Yankees extend their season is with Cole pitching like he’s supposed to in these moments and the offense building off their Game 4 performance and not reverting back to their Games 1, 2 and 3 performances.

9. The formula in Game 5 needs to be Cole for seven and then Tommy Kahnle and Luke Weaver for the eighth and ninth. That’s the cleanest path to victory. I doubt it will be that easy. These Yankees never seem to make anything easy.

10. “Why not us?”

That was the moniker of the 2004 Red Sox when they began their historic comeback against the Yankees. The Yankees and Yankees fans aren’t there. Not yet. But if the Yankees are able to win Game 5, save their season for a second straight day and send the series back to Los Angeles? Then the “Why not us?” talk can begin.

The Dodgers are going back to Los Angeles after Game 5 no matter the result. I’m cautiously optimistic the Yankees will be going with them.

Nine down, Three to go.

1. Pathetic.

Needing to win Game 3 to avoid going down 3-0 in the World Series, the Yankees’ offense put together a disgraceful performance against a starting pitcher that every team has gotten to this season. The Yankees were no-hit into the fourth inning and were held scoreless by Dodgers pitching through 8 2/3 innings. Their only two runs in the loss came on a meaningless two-run home run by Alex Verdugo in the ninth that he admired as if he were Freddie Freeman hitting an actual timely home run. They got another shit start from a starting pitcher — the one facet of the game they had a distinct advantage in entering the series — picked up another infield error and had their moronic third-base coach create yet another out at home plate in a season full of them. Once again, the bullpen did its job to keep the Dodgers at bay for a lengthy amount of time to give the offense a chance to come back, but the offense never came back, taking fastball after fastball down the middle, while continuing to chase breaking balls off the plate.

2. After Game 2, I wrote:

The first inning of Game 3 is the most important inning of Clarke Schmidt’s life. Yankee Stadium is going to be loud. It’s going to be raucous. It’s going to be full of believers who think this series isn’t over (including yours truly). He has to put up a zero. He can’t let Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernandes get to him. Not in the first inning. If they get to him later, so be it. He has to give the bats a chance to get on the board first. He has to give the crowd a reason to stay loud and stay involved. He can’t go out and have a Rodon-like inning and allow a crooked number. Don’t allow any number.

So much for that. Schmidt walked Shohei Ohtani on four pitches to begin the game and two batters later fell behind Freeman 2-0 and then threw the future Hall of Famer a fastball he crushed into right-field seats for an early 2-0 lead. Freeman has now homered in every game of this series and for the player who was supposedly playing on one leg entering the World Series, he’s now in line to be the unanimous MVP of the series.

Schmidt was bad, just like Rodon was in Game 2, and now after 12 postseason games, the Yankees have received three good starts (ALDS Game 4, ALCS Game 1 and World Series Game 1). Their starting pitching has failed them just like their offense has.

3. The always-delusional Nestor Cortes put it best in how the Yankees will spin the series: “This series, stuff hasn’t gone our way.”

The Yankees internally likely feel the same way as an organization as Cortes. They don’t look across the field and see a team that is doing everything better than the Yankees. They look across the field and think the Dodgers have gotten all the breaks. That they’re luckier. That they’re better at playing craps. Since the postseason is just a crapshoot, right?

Aaron Boone not using Luke Weaver in the 10th inning in Game 1 wasn’t a bad break. The offense having one hit through eight innings in Game 2 and Aaron Judge and Anthony Volpe destroying the ninth-inning rally wasn’t unlucky. The offense taking the night off in the first World Series game at Yankee Stadium in 15 years wasn’t the result of bad bounces. In the World Series, the Yankees haven’t played like the championship-caliber team Boone, Brian Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner will tell us they are once they lose one more game. They have played like the team that went 11-23 from the middle of June until the end of July.

4. After watching the team’s listless offensive performance in Games 1 and 2, Boone decided he would change his lineup for Game 3. Except he only made one change. He removed the struggling Austin Wells for in favor of Jose Trevino. Wells has been bad for more than a month, but at least there’s the threat of him running into a fastball, no matter how small that threat is. There’s no threat for the opposition with Trevino at the plate. The only threat is toward his own team that he will hit the ball on the ground and make two outs instead of one. And for as bad as Wells has been, at least he’s capable of holding the running game in check.

5. Boone’s intelligent move to jumpstart his offense was to put the worst bat of the 13 position players on the roster in the starting lineup, completely disregarding the additional righty-righty matchup he was creating — the type of matchup he lives to avoid. But with the Yankees trailing late in the game, he decided Wells gave him a better chance to produce offense and had him pinch hit for Trevino. A genius at work. Never change, Boone, you idiot, never change.

The Boone Yankees are 6-18 in the postseason against non-AL Central teams with no series wins. 

6. “I know how good this team is,” Alex Verdugo said, “and if that team can win three in a row, why can’t we win three in a row?”

That team’s star players are hitting like stars and their role players are playing their roles. The Yankees’ offense is being propped up by Giancarlo Stanton and Juan Soto and no one else is doing anything, especially Judge.

7. “Don’t listen to the outside noise, because it’s just noise,” Judge said. “We’ve got a job to do on the field.”

The outside noise was all positive for Judge on Monday. Yankee Stadium erupted when his name was called during player introductions before the game. The Stadium gave him standing ovations for each of his four miserable plate appearances. And he repaid the pity cheers and embarrassingly soft display by the fan base by going hitless once again. After going 0-for-3 (with a meaningless walk in the eighth inning) in Game 3, Mr. May is now 1-for-12 with seven strikeouts in the World Series. He has completely devalued his regular season with his postseason, striking out in 20 of 43 at-bats.

8. “We’re trying to get a game tomorrow, OK?” an annoyed Boone said. “Hopefully we can go be this amazing story and shock the world.”

What time do you think the viewing party is in the Yankees clubhouse of the 2004 ALCS video Boone showed the team two years ago? 3:30? 4:30? Maybe Boone can have the Stadium video screen operator show Dave Roberts’ Game 4 stolen base and David Ortiz’s walk-off home run off of Paul Quantrill in between innings on Tuesday? Maybe Boone can ask those two to address his team prior to Game 4 since they will both be at the Stadium?

Since the comedic comparisons of this team in the 2024 World Series to the 1996 and 2001 Yankees are no longer valid, I’m sure there will be plenty of talk on Tuesday about how this Yankees team compares to the 2004 Red Sox. Spoiler: they don’t.

9. I want nothing more than for the Yankees to win on Tuesday and Wednesday in The Bronx, and then win on Friday and Saturday in Los Angeles to become the second team ever to erase a 3-0 deficit in MLB history. But it’s hard to believe in this Yankees team when there’s a better chance they are getting no-hit into the fifth inning or being shut out into the eighth inning of Game 4 than there seems to be that they can win Game 4.

10. For the first time this postseason, the Yankees will play a game facing elimination in Game 4. If the Yankees lose Game 4, their season is over. There won’t be another Yankees game in 2024 and there may never be another game with Juan Soto as a Yankee. Their last two postseason appearances will have ended in four-game sweeps to two teams that are actually championship-caliber and not in the way the Yankees talk about being since you have to actually win a championship to be considered such.

1. It’s a good thing Aaron Boone didn’t go back to Luke Weaver in the 10th inning of Game 1 of the World Series, considering he wasn’t needed in Game 2. The decision to not use Weaver after the righty went five up and five down on just 19 pitches is the single biggest reason the World Series isn’t going back to New York tied at 1.

2. The second biggest reason is Aaron Judge. Judge was atrocious once again in Game 2, as he continues to hit like a 6-foot-7 version of Anthony Volpe. After going 1-for-5 with three strikeouts in Game 1, Judge followed it up with a nice 0-for-4 with three more strikeouts. Back-to-back hat tricks from the AL MVP in the World Series with the championship on the line — the same championship he relentlessly refers to needing to win.

3. Judge certainly has a funny way of showing how important winning is to him. His strikeout rate and chase rates are through the roof in October compared to March through September. If Giancarlo Stanton is the second coming of Mr. October then Judge is the second coming of Mr. May. When Joe Davis exclaimed, “Gibby, meet Freddie!” following Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam, the image of Judge standing next to Dave Winfield on the Dodger Stadium field before Game 2 made me think, “Winnie, meet Judgey!”

4. Before Game 2, I wrote about how big of a problem Judge has been and he went out and added to his problematic resume. After breaking the AL home run record with 62 in 2022, he went 1-for-16 with a single in the ALCS. After producing one of the greatest offensive seasons in the history of baseball this season, he’s 1-for-9 with six strikeouts in the World Series (after going 5-for-31 with 13 strikeouts in the ALDS and ALCS).

This is a legacy series for Judge. He can’t be considered among the all-time Yankees greats without a championship. It would be different if he were playing with the putrid players Don Mattingly was surrounded with during his career, but Judge has been surrounded by elite talent, superstars and one of the Top 3 payrolls in the league in his career. It would be different if he were having an all-time postseason and the rest of the lineup was doing nothing, but he’s the one doing nothing. He is the one holding the Yankees back.

5. You would think this can’t possibly continue, but I thought that during the ALDS and it continued in the ALCS. After the Yankees won the pennant, I thought it wouldn’t continue in the World Series but it has. Judge isn’t just missing pitches or hitting into bad luck. He’s taking fastballs down the middle and swinging at curveballs in the dirt and splitters on the verge of hitting him. He’s a mess. It’s hard to believe a switch can just be turned on and he can be the real version of himself in Game 3 after having not been that version of himself in a month now.

6. If you remove the idiotic decisions from Boone in Game 1, the Yankees were an out away from winning that game. Despite the offense producing one hit over the first eight innings of Game 2, they were a base hit away from tying the game in the ninth and an extra-base hit away from taking the lead. That’s how close these games have been and Judge has been the difference. The Dodgers are doing everything they can to not let Juan Soto and Giancarlo Stanton beat them since no one else is capable of it, and Soto and Stanton are nearly beating them. If Judge were his regular-season self right now, the Yankees may be heading home up 2-0 in the series. Instead their backs are against the wall and in desperate need of a win in Game 3.

7. Judge and the offense as a whole aren’t entirely to blame for the Game 2 loss. Carlos Rodon wasn’t any good, of course, because Rodon isn’t very good. Another regular-season hero, Rodon was praised for pitching to 3.96 ERA this year while making roughly $800,000 per start. No one shuts down a team with nothing to play midseason while racking up double-digit strikeouts like Rodon, the way no one will smash five home runs in five games against teams playing out the string like Judge. After Rodon’s Game 2 stinker, he now has a 5.60 ERA in four starts this October and a 6.64 ERA for his postseason career. The Royals, Guardians and Dodgers have an .820 OPS against him in the postseason. He may have only walked one in 17 2/3 innings, but that doesn’t matter when you’re giving up home runs at the rate Rodon has in the playoffs. If the Yankees are going to come back and win the series, Rodon will get another start. I wouldn’t expect a different kind of performance.

8. Going into the series I wrote the only advantage the Dodgers had over the Yankees was at 5 through 9 in the lineup and that has held true. While the Dodgers are getting production from career league-average- and below-league-average hitters, the Yankees continue to not. A player like Tommy Edman is the definition of league average for his career with a 100 OPS+, and yet he won NLCS MVP against the Mets, and in the World Series, he’s 4-for-8 with two doubles and a home run and some great infield defense. Meanwhile, the Yankees’ career league-average- and below-league-average hitters all suck whether it’s Volpe, Alex Verdugo or Austin Wells. There’s no belief any of them will ever come through in a big moment, and that was never more true than when Volpe struck out in the ninth inning in Game 2. Every time you think Volpe has figured it out and is about to emerge as a star he reminds you why he has an 83 OPS+ in 1,290 career plate appearances.

9. The first inning of Game 3 is the most important inning of Clarke Schmidt’s life. Yankee Stadium is going to be loud. It’s going to be raucous. It’s going to be full of believers who think this series isn’t over (including yours truly). He has to put up a zero. He can’t let Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernandes get to him. Not in the first inning. If they get to him later, so be it. He has to give the bats a chance to get on the board first. He has to give the crowd a reason to stay loud and stay involved. He can’t go out and have a Rodon-like inning and allow a crooked number. Don’t allow any number.

10. I don’t want to hear about what the Yankees did in 1996 when trailing 2-0 or how the 2001 Yankees returned home down 2-0 before winning three straight in the Bronx. Unless youthful and prime and peak Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Paul O’Neill, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte are going to be playing and pitching for the Yankees over the next few nights, it’s meaningless. This Yankees group has never done anything. They have never won anything. This is their first time in the World Series and they have yet to win a game in it. Until they do it, there should be no comparisons to the dynastic teams and players that went to the World Series in six of eight years and won four of them. Let’s start with one win and that win has to come in Game 3. Otherwise, I hope Boone still has the 2004 ALCS highlights video lying around that he used to motivate his team in the 2022 ALCS when they were down 3-0.