1. Juan Soto wasn’t Plan A for the Yankees this offseason. He was the only plan. And now that he will be a Met for the rest of his career, the Yankees are currently freaking out at the Winter Meetings in Dallas without a plan. At least without a plan worthy of being accepted by the fan base. Because there is no backup plan when you lose out on a generational bat. There is no backup plan when the remaining free-agent options are on the wrong side of 30, have low on-base percentages and hit right-handed.

Soto was always going to go to the highest bidder and he stayed true to his plan. Whichever team gave him $1 more than the other teams was going to get him whether that team was the Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Phillies, Mariners, Reds or Tigers, it didn’t matter. Everyone always knew that about Soto from the moment he turned down the Nationals’ money and wouldn’t sign an extension with the Padres.

2. Soto went to the highest bidder, but there may have been other factors at play. No one knows what Soto’s relationship was with Aaron Judge. Judge said just a couple of weeks ago he hadn’t talked to Soto during the offseason, citing “giving him space” as the excuse why. Maybe Soto didn’t like playing for Aaron Boone and couldn’t foresee ever winning a championship with him at the helm. Maybe he didn’t trust Brian Cashman after he went a whole season without attempting to upgrade left field or first base. Maybe he didn’t like that Hal Steinbrenner didn’t care to have a relationship with him until he became a free agent. Maybe after sharing a field with the Yankees’ so-called top prospects (most of whom are similar to age as him but still in the lower and middle levels of the minor leagues) he figured the team’s long-term future was bleak. No one knows what Steve Cohen said to Soto when they met in California last month. No one knows what kind of relationship they formed and what promises were made.

3. I don’t understand Yankees fans who are giving Hal a pass here and saying they are proud of the team’s inherited owner for going toe-to-toe with the sport’s wealthiest owner. The reason the Yankees are in the position of needing to bid $760 million on Soto is because of Hal and his invincible front office headed by Cashman. The organization has made a decade-and-a-half of poor choices, and none poorer than not even meeting with Bryce Harper six years ago when he desperately wanted to be a Yankee and eventually signed for half the average annual salary of Soto. The Yankees’ offseason choices from six-plus years ago led them to where they are today. It’s the Yankees’ own fault for putting themselves in a position where the loss of a single player through free agency could disrupt their entire future because of poor planning and poor roster construction. That’s on ownership and the front office. They don’t get a pass for “being competitive.” They lost. Again.

And that’s the issue with these Yankees. They’re OK with losing. The higher-ups likely feel good about this loss to the Mets because they were “competitive” the same way the manager of the team talks about how he likes his team’s “compete” after avoidable losses. The only person happier than Soto today is Hal who nows gets to keep the $760 million he offered to Soto and is somehow being praised for “trying.”

4. Why do you think seven minutes after Soto’s 15-year, $765 million contract with the Mets was reported, the Yankees’ offer of $760 million over 16 years was also reported? The Yankees wanted to leak their offer to show their fans they didn’t lowball Soto and they offered $5 million less and one year more. In actuality, they offered less money overall and less money per year. Add in the Mets’ willingness to give Soto a $75 million signing bonus, escalators after five years that can bring the contract to $800 million and not a single deferred dollar in the deal, and the Mets’ offer blew the Yankees’ away. Hal wanted to save face after being repeatedly called cheap in recent years, and the best way to do that was to get the Yankees’ offer out there as soon as possible, so the fans would turned on Soto instead of him. It worked. It worked beautifully in Hal’s favor. Since last night, the vast majority of Yankees fans are calling Soto greedy and money hungry, as if they wouldn’t change employers within the same city in their own lives for more money.

The Yankees needed Soto more than he needed them. In fact, he didn’t need them at all, and the Yankees fans who have talked themselves into this being a good thing are fools. They are likely the same people who think Hal isn’t cheap because he offered a contract that wasn’t accepted despite owning the team that generates the most revenue in the sport, but is 18th in revenue-to-payroll ratio. The same fans who think paying $765 million is a bad business decision in a salary-cap-less league.

5. The Yankees have to live in the free-agent market because of their player development issues. It’s always been a problematic realization because the team’s owner has created a salary cap for his team in the salary-cap-less league, and now the problem has been elevated because the Mets just proved they will stop at nothing to get any free agent they covet. And odds are, every free agent the Yankees covet is going to be coveted by the Mets. As I said after every Clay Holmes blown save this season, when you have a closer who relies on balls in play to get outs, bad things can happen. Well, when your only way to build your roster is to rely on an auction process, bad things can happen. And taking Soto off this roster is as bad as it gets.

6. Things are bad. Real bad. This is currently the Yankees’ Opening Day lineup by position.

C: Austin Wells
1B: DJ LeMahieu
2B: Oswaldo Cabrera
SS: Anthony Volpe
3B: Jazz Chisholm
LF: Jasson Dominguez
CF: Trent Grisham
RF: Aaron Judge
DH: Giancarlo Stanton

A second-year catcher who was abysmal for the last month-plus of the season; a middle infielder-turned-first baseman who has been shut down by the end of the season in three of the last four years; a utility player with no set position; a shortstop whose development has stalled; a middle infielder-turned center fielder-turned third baseman; a left fielder who wasn’t deemed good enough to play over the worst everyday bat in the majors in the most important games of the season; a center fielder who was allowed to appear in the same amount of playoff games as me; the reigning AL MVP winner who can’t hit in October and a 35-year-old designated hitter who can only hit in October. If you want to know how the Yankees’ consecutive season wining streak since 1993 comes to an end, there you have it.

7. I can’t imagine that will be the Yankees’ Opening Day lineup on March 27 against the Brewers, but maybe it should be, at least in terms of free agency? The Yankees’ best course of action may be to do nothing in free agency. The only two intriguing free-agent options left on the board are Corbin Burnes and Max Fried, but neither of them are left-handed hitters who are going to hit elite pitching in October. Though we know the Yankees aren’t going to sit idly. Not when their highest-paid stars are in their mid-30s, not when they are coming off a World Series appearance and not when the player responsible for them appearing in that World Series is now playing for the cross-city team that was supposed to always be the little brother.

8. Where do the Yankees go from here? Who knows. Eleven years ago when they lost Robinson Cano in an auction, they pivoted and spent crazily on Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran. They eventually released Ellsbury and filed a grievance against him to not pay him, paid McCann to play for the Astros and help beat them in the 2017 ALCS and traded Beltran to the Rangers.

Next year’s free-agent class is much better. But who’s to say the top names expected in it will still be free agents by the end of the next season? And who’s to say the Mets won’t want the best available free agents next year again and just keep upping their bid for them until the Yankees pull out and then leak their best offer to show they tried?

9. In all likelihood, the Yankees were going to sign Soto and call it an offseason. They would have run back the same team that just proved it wasn’t good enough to win it all against a watered-down version of the Dodgers. If the Yankees’ ceiling as currently constructed with Soto was to get embarrassed by the Dodgers without a rotation in the World Series, what would happen if the Yankees were to reach the World Series again against the Dodgers and have to face some combination of Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyer Glasnow, Blake Snell, Dustin May, Clayton Kershaw and others?

10. Like Boone’s 2003 pennant-winning home run that resulted in the Yankees losing the World Series, the Red Sox retooling that offseason to change the course of the rivalry’s history and Boone eventually being named manager of the Yankees only to have the most disappointing tenure of any person in the position’s history, Soto’s time with the Yankees is eerily similar. The Yankees traded away Michael King along with all of their pitching depth to acquire Soto. He led them to the World Series, which now will keep Boone and Cashman in place forever, only to be humiliated in the World Series, and now he has left them for their cross-city rival, completely changing the landscape for New York baseball moving forward. Was getting a lucky free pass to the World Series against the AL Central only to be destroyed by the Dodgers worth it to now not have King, a depleted farm system, Boone and Cashman forever and the Mets and their fans laughing in Yankees fans’ faces? Not for me it wasn’t.

On top of that, Judge’s reputation and legacy was tarnished with his ALDS, ALCS and World Series performances as was Gerrit Cole’s with him pointing to first base rather than covering it, and the Yankees pitching staff had to pitch an extra month worth of high-stress games only to win nothing, which will now impact their health and stamina for next season. Again, none of it was worth it.

It was only ever going to be worth it if Soto was going to play in New York until at least 40, try to help lead a parade through the Canyon of Heroes and one day wear the interlocking NY in Cooperstown. He’s going to do all that, it’s just going to be for the Mets and not the Yankees.

1. It’s hard to care about the Yankees until Juan Soto is signed, whether it’s with the Yankees or not. The entire elite free-agent market is on hold until Soto comes off the board, and therefore, the 2025 plans for the Yankees and every other team that is in on Soto are on hold until he signs.

There is nothing worse than the MLB Hot Stove. The amount of sourced, rumored and exaggerated reports are annoying and tiresome … every single year. No one knows a fucking thing about where Soto is going to sign outside of Soto, his family and Scott Boras, and it’s possible none of them know and won’t know until the bids start coming in. I’m sure Soto knows where he wants to play and hopes that team is the highest bidder, but there isn’t a reporter or fan who has any idea of what’s going to happen with him or how much he’s actually going to sign for.

And with that let’s get to some questions from readers …

2. I know you feel strongly about re-signing Soto (as in you won’t follow the team anymore if they don’t). But hypothetically if they don’t sign him, what would be the best use of the money they’ll save on him and the others they’ll release based on this years free-agent class? – Chris

I have made my stance clear about the Yankees and Soto: re-sign him or I’m out. I will gladly resell my season tickets on the secondary market if he goes elsewhere. I’m not going to stick around to watch Aaron Boone manage the team for an eighth season with the faces of the franchise being Mr. May, who can’t hit or catch routine fly balls in the World Series, or Big Game Gerrit, who couldn’t have given less of an effort to cover first base in the inning that currently defines both of their careers.

The only way Soto leaves and I stay is if the Yankees pull off blockbuster trades to improve the offense and go to town on the free-agent starting pitching market. But there’s a better chance Soto ends up signing with the Red Sox than there is that that backup plan comes to fruition if Soto leaves.

3. Fourteen years ago, the Yankees were trying to sign Cliff Lee to fortify their rotation after not trading for him that summer because they didn’t want to include Eduardo Nunez in the deal. The same Eduardo Nunez, who, four years later would be released by the team for nothing in spring training, and then four years after that, helped the Red Sox beat the Yankees in the ALDS and win the World Series.

Back then, the Yankees didn’t have a Plan B if Lee signed elsewhere, and he did. He went to Philadelphia and the Yankees filled their rotation with Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia. By the time October came, Colon was hurt and Garcia was fatigued and ineffective. The Yankees went out in the first round. I wrote about the Yankees’ lack of a Plan B back then and I’m writing about their lack of a Plan B for Soto now.

4. The Yankees think they have a Plan B. We saw it begin to unfold at the end of last week when they non-tendered Jon Berti, but gave Trent Grisham $5 million. Why did they make those two moves? Well, not bringing back Berti freed up money for Soto, and bringing back Grisham allows him to potentially be their everyday center fielder if Soto goes elsewhere and Aaron Judge moves back to right. Why do you think Gleyber Torres and Alex Verdugo were held on to at the deadline? Why do you think Verdugo played over Jasson Dominguez and was never pinch hit for a single time by Dominguez in the playoffs? Because they are part of Plan B and the Yankees didn’t want to sour the relationships.

If Soto goes elsewhere, the money allocated from him will have to spent somehow. And then somehow is a combination of Torres and Verdugo and the Yankees going after free-agent bats like Pete Alonso, Teoscar Hernandez and Christian Walker and free-agent arms like Corbin Burnes, Slake Snell and Max Fried.

In actuality, there is no Plan B for the offense. The only plan this offseason for the offense is to re-sign the generational 26-year-old star and have him anchor the lineup for the better part of the next decade. Anything else is a letdown.

5. I know your posture on Soto, but realistically, if we had a better GM we could spend on better impact players with shorter contracts? – Douglas

I don’t think signing Soto to a 14- or 15-year deal is a bad business decision. Soto is a historic talent who may not have even entered his prime yet. Stocking up on the game’s best players increases your odds of wining. The first three hitters in the Dodgers’ lineup are all current and former MVPs. Two of them have exceedingly long contracts. That’s the price of doing business with top talent.

The Yankees’ trio of Soto, Judge and Giancarlo Stanton couldn’t hang with the Dodgers’ trio because Judge was such a zero, but remove Soto from the trio and you have a soon-to-be, 33-year-old Judge and a 35-year-old Stanton. Who becomes the third member of the trio? Alonso? Please, no. Anthony Volpe? Please hold your laughter. Austin Wells? Doubtful.

As of right now, the Yankees’ 2025 Opening Day position players will be Wells at catcher, either DJ LeMahieu, Oswaldo Cabrera or Ben Rice at first base, either LeMahieu, Cabrera, Jazz Chisholm or Caleb Durbin at second base, either Chisholm, LeMahieu or Cabrera at third base, Volpe at shortstop, Dominguez in left field, Grisham in center field and Judge in right field with Stanton as the designated hitter. I don’t know that a lineup featuring only those names keeps the Yankees’ consecutive season winning streak going.

6. We know what the Yankees are without Soto: a postseason-less team. We saw that in the last season without Soto in 2023. Without Soto in 2024, they certainly don’t win the division, and maybe aren’t a postseason team for the second straight year? It was Soto and Stanton who carried the Yankees in the ALDS and ALCS. It was Soto who had a 1.373 OPS against the Guardians and a 1.084 OPS against the Dodgers in the World Series. While Mr. May was striking out every at-bat, Soto hit the way he hit all year. He hit the way he has hit his entire career. Because there is no difference between regular-season Soto and postseason Soto. For the truly great ones, which he is, there is never a difference between their regular-season numbers and their postseason numbers.

Even more so, Soto cares deeply about winning, even for someone who has already won. It was Soto sitting in the dugout by himself staring out at the field watching the Dodgers celebrate their World Series win, while the rest of the Yankees had retreated to the clubhouse to listen to their manager (who still has never won anything as a player or manager) tell them how proud he is that they were embarrassed in the World Series, producing the single-worst defensive inning in the history of the Fall Classic.

7. How much is Cohen going to pay Soto? In my opinion, let him go and use the money to make a more rounded team. – Mike

To me, Soto is either going to sign with the Yankees or the Mets.

Last week, Hal said, “I’ve got ears. I know what’s expected of me.” I don’t know that Hal actually knows what’s expected of him, but we’re going to find out. The Yankees generate more revenue than any other team, and yet, they aren’t even in the top half of the league in terms of revenue-to-payroll ratio.

If the Yankees offer X and the Mets also offer X and Soto signs with the Mets, well there’s nothing you can do about it. (In that event, I wouldn’t walk away from the Yankees.) If the money is equal and Soto leaves, so be it, what can do you do? But if the Mets outbid the Yankees then that’s unacceptable. If you’re not going to go out of your way to sign Soto, who are you going to go out of your way to sign?

8. How did Boone manage to garner a second-place vote for AL Manager of the year? – Floyd

Knowing that the Yankees’ lack of ability to situationally hit and poor fundamentals keep getting exposed, what is being done to address the one defines that are the clearest weakness of this franchise? – Mark

Let’s lump these two together since they both have to do with the manager.

The first one is easy: Someone who never watches the Yankees play or is lazy or a combination of both voted for Boone.

As for the second one: Nothing is being done. It’s about accountability, which is a concept Boone doesn’t believe in.

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 Brian Cashman, who isn’t held accountable by Hal, 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 his option was picked up. Hal said last week he is looking to talk about an extension with Boone. Why? Because the Yankees beat up on the AL Central in the postseason and reached the World Series before getting beat up themselves by a non-AL Central team? What does it say about accountability that the entire Boone era has been a collective disappointment and the owner is ready to extend him and go against the no-extension policy within the organization?

Can you imagine the Yankees running back a Boone-led team, but without Soto in 2025? It’s not only dangerously close to happening, it’s more likely to happen than it is to not because free agency is crazy and all it takes is one team out of nowhere to come in with some absurd offer and Soto is gone.

9. Soto is the last player of his caliber to ever reach free agency. Every young player is taking the double-digit year deals for the nine-figure payouts years before they can reach free agency. In the summer of 2022, Soto turned down a $440 million offer from the Nationals. Sure, he’s going to blow past that number now, but it’s hard to think anyone else would be willing to turn down nearly half a billion dollars.

It would be one thing if the Yankees could produce great everyday talent or recognize the right free agents to sign. That would make missing out on Soto hurt much less and even acceptable. But look around the field and aside from Judge, the rest of the non-Soto players were signed as free agents, acquired through trades, are busts or unknowns. The Yankees’ two top prospects right now are Dominguez, who they didn’t want to play over Verdugo in the playoffs, and Spencer Jones who is a month younger than Volpe and couldn’t even muster an .800 OPS in Double-A this year. Soto just spent a year with the Yankees and is familiar with their young talent, and it’s why he likely questioned player development when the Yankees visited him in California.

10. Everyone expects Soto to make a decision during the Winter Meetings which begin two weeks from today. I wish he would do it earlier than that. I just want to know where he’s going, so I can know where I’m going. I don’t want to walk away from the Yankees and baseball, but without Soto I don’t see another option, knowing Cashman and Boone aren’t going anywhere.

Is Soto going to spend the rest of his career in the Bronx or elsewhere? Am I going to spend six-plus months a year watching and writing about the Yankees or is it time to learn a language or an instrument? As of now, I can’t help but feel like when the Yankees open against the Brewers on March 27 at Yankee Stadium I’ll be spending the afternoon playing the saxophone and speaking Italian.

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.